The Mental Moshpit
Moshpits are easily one of the best parts of partying. It’s nice clearing the space out, and then getting unbelievably lit when the time comes. In this article, I’m going to talk about the importance of clearing space out in your mind, and how it can help to prepare you for your beat drop.
There exist certain species of shark that breathe by moving forward and drawing oxygen from the water that moves across their gills. The Great White shark is a notable example. These little guys are known as ‘obligate ram ventilators’ because they are literally obligated to ram water into their mouths to breathe (Pause indeed).
What this means for our aquatic acquaintances is that they can’t stop moving forward, or they risk dying from suffocation. This means that for sharks, staying still is the same as swimming backwards (assuming no strong current pushing water into their face) because they won’t be getting enough oxygen either way. They must move forward to survive. I use this analogy because humans often mimic this paradigm in their attitude to work. For us, moving forward is being productive, staying still is being unproductive, and moving backwards is being counterproductive. We feel that we must be productive, otherwise we’re effectively dying. In this paradigm, we treat being unproductive is the same as being counterproductive. But I want to challenge this notion today. Because being unproductive is not the same as being counterproductive, and therefore it shouldn’t take the same negative tone. I believe it should be treated with far more neutrality, and in some instances it is a positive thing. But this can only come as a result of a paradigm shift, which I will explain in this article.
The mindset that we need to keep moving in order to survive is beneficial to some ends. It serves as a good stimulant to make us want to do work. If I get up and feel like I must be productive in order for the day to be good, then I will try to be as productive as possible to make the day as good as possible. If things weren’t this way, it would be hard for humanity to get anything done. Moving forward is somewhat necessary for survival. We (at some point) need to pay bills, feed our children and clothe ourselves. The more productive we are, the easier that becomes. For the sake of this article, let’s call this mindset the striving paradigm. Physical survival won’t happen by itself, so we must strive to survive (#bars).
There is such a thing, however, as too much of a good thing. That mindset is effective largely because it induces panic within us, because we don’t want to drown. We don’t want to be homeless. We don’t want our people to starve. We’re afraid of not surviving, and rightly so. So we must get out there and be as productive as possible to put as much distance as possible between us and that fear, so it could never happen to us. Taking this mindset to such an extreme is a very common thing in society. We must work to be valid and if we fail to do enough, then we fail to be enough.
The issue that arises from such a mindset is that whilst it can help us to perform well under pressure and fulfill our basic human needs, it’s unsustainable in the long run. We are forced to treat perfect as the enemy of the good in a constant strive for something better. But perfection is only an illusion, a function of infatuation. And one of the key characteristics of infatuation is that it fades over time, and with it goes the illusion of perfection.
I’ll give you my own example. I’ve just finished my first year at Oxford. I came in a textbook overachiever. Great GCSEs, even better A-Levels, a belief that I was a super smart student and when the pressure was on, I could grind anything out. Come the first term of Oxford, that mindset was shattered. I didn’t want to get up and do the work. It just felt so hard, like there was this thick mass of cloud in my brain separating me from who I thought I was, and stopping me from sitting my ass at my desk. I wondered where that top-tier student that all my friends and family were in awe of had gone. I’d try to hype myself up and go Super Saiyan like there was some switch to make me start working hard, but I just could not, I just would not. Alas, I was burnt out.
About a month went by like this, and it was one of the worst periods of my life in terms of mental health. Every day I would get up with a different resolution on how I was going to get the work done, and about five days a week I would go back to bed having not done a single thing. The other two days were just manic catch-up, all nighters etc. I was no longer excelling in my studies, and suddenly the person I wanted to be was moving further away from the person I was, leaving me neurotically staring at the gap inbetween. It got so bad that I considered dropping out of Oxford multiple times, and moving elsewhere or dropping out of education full stop. I was burnt out, but I wanted to carry on achieving, working at the same level I could previously get myself to. And it was doing me no favours.
The survival paradigm
No paradigm shift actually occurred to take me out of that moment. The term ended and I moved out and went back home. It was a real saved by the bell moment for me. I was now in a position where I was no longer physically in Oxford and there would no longer be deadlines. I could finally breathe…not. I still spent every day feeling the same, right up until the 23rd December. I was lying in bed with a migraine from the stress, doing my usual routine of stressing out and thinking about all the work I should be doing. But I decided to ask myself an important question this particular night. I took the belief that I needed to be a perfect student and person to its rational end. Why does it truly matter to me? I realised it didn’t, but I thought it mattered to other people. I thought that I could only be loveable if I performed, so my value was hinged on my ability to be spectacular. And I didn’t want that anymore. I said 3 magical words to myself. “You are enough”. Almost instantly, it felt like weight had been lifted off of my shoulders. Not all of it, but I was onto something. I realised that I didn’t need to hinge my value on my academic success, or my productivity or anything else. to myself that I, right there in that moment, was everything I needed to be, and that I would live that out fully. I told myself that until I feel ready, I’m not pushing for productivity. I’m not pushing towards goals. I’m not trying to do anything. I said if I can wake up in the morning and survive the day, then I’ve won and I really meant that. I vowed that for the foreseeable future, my main goal was survival. And just like that, the mental moshpit began to form. I had entered the survival paradigm.
Of course, things still felt dark. I don’t want to give the impression to any of you that the paradigm shift alleviated my struggles and made my life dandy again. Sure it felt good for a while, but that’s just novelty. When I started to feel bad again, I panicked for a bit, because I was scared that my paradigm shift was failing me and I was going to go back to that dark place. But the beauty of the survival paradigm for me is that it exists at the ground level, so it is designed for those moments when you’re at your lowest. I sat down and said to myself “Chill, you’ve been here before, and you know what to do. Just breathe, and remember that if you can survive this day, then you’re just as much of a winner as you would be if you won a Pulitzer Prize. Survival is the 100% mark, and that’s all there is to it”. Some days I could run. Some days I would walk. Some days I would crawl. And some days I would let out the tiniest wriggle. But the biggest element of survival for me was not stopping. Just like an obligate ram ventilator, I could not stop. But isn’t that the problem we started off with? No, and it’s to do with how we view moving forward, staying still, and moving backwards. In the survival paradigm my behaviour was extremely unproductive, in the sense that I got nothing meaningful done. But ask yourself “what does productivity look like?” Does it have to be working towards a crazy ambition, or building out a dream? Can’t a productive day just be getting out of bed, brushing your teeth and having a shower? I’m not suggesting we approach our entire lives like this, but I am suggesting that at many points in our lives, we are going to be unproductive. Burnout happens to the best of us, and sometimes we just can’t be fucked. And that’s okay. You can embrace unproductive behaviour, and say that for now, this is enough.
NB: There is no hard and fast rule like there is for deloading at the gym, but we can look out for the signs of burnout and try our best to sense when we need to shift into the survival paradigm for a while. Maybe for a day. Maybe for 3 months. It’s literally your life. But in the survival paradigm, being unproductive is NOT moving backwards. Being unproductive is allowing yourself space to live so you can keep moving forward some day, and that sounds pretty productive overall to me.
And the best thing? You can feel when it’s time to get started back up again. I hit a period where I said calm, let’s open these books. I’m reassured in myself and I’m in a headspace to broach this. And because I had displayed so much compassion, empathy, love and care for myself by giving myself space to breathe, I could really reassure myself. I could believe that I loved myself, because I displayed it through my actions. And that has allowed me to go so much farther in the long run. If I continued to push myself, lord knows where that would have got me. But I’m frightened to think about it. So breatheeeee, my Gs. Genuinely right now with me. Take a deep breath. Relaxation in — 1,2,3,4,5. Stress out — 1,2,3,4,5. Relax your shoulders. Relax your face. Relax your fists, your neck, your eyes, all of it. You’re doing enough. You can redefine what a good day looks like to suit your needs. You can run, walk or crawl. Just please do me a favour and don’t stop. Don’t give up, and don’t force yourself to move more than you’re ready for. Create that moshpit, and tell productivity to step the F back. When the beat drops, you’ll both be ready.
