Two and a half months into the new company, I had a morning where everything felt heavy. Coffee gone cold. Cursor blinking. Metrics flat. My brain started the greatest hits:
What if this doesn’t work?
Maybe I’m not that good.
Everyone else seems better at this.
None of that came from reality. It came from my head.
The mind is a brilliant storyteller and a terrible forecaster. It layers narrative, old bruises, and fear over neutral facts until a moment feels existential.
In Zen there’s a line I like:
the world isn’t what it seems — and it’s also not different.
Translation: your perception isn’t the truth, but reality is still right here, unchanged.
The dashboard wasn’t judging me. It was just numbers. Data points, not a verdict.
Pain is data. Suffering is the story you add on top.
Once you see that, the loop loses power. You stop arguing with phantom futures and return to the next concrete move: write the email, ship the build, call the user, publish the post. Action is the solvent; it dissolves the fog.
Nothing is as bad as it feels in the moment. Most things are just neutral steps on the path.
Get out of the thinking mind and back into the doing body. Want to make something real? Start moving. Clarity follows motion.