On the pain, unease, and anxiety you're made to feel 24/7

Read this if you feel a constant "refrigerator hum" of anxiety, depression or unease, and want to make sense of it.

 

Look. I know you think you were born damaged.

I know you’re convinced that you’re broken—that you're weak and pathetic—given your track record of reckless time wasting and procrastination.

I just want you to know—no, I need you to know—that none of that is true. You're not weak. You’re not broken—in fact, you’re the opposite of broken. You’re functioning exactly as you were designed.

All those vices you’ve been consuming… all that doomscrolling on Reddit, then YouTube, then TikTok... it’s just your way of pacifying and coping with the constant pain and unease you were born to feel 24/7.

And it’s not just you who feels it… It’s all of us.

So where does this unease and pain come from?

Why are we—when not distracting ourselves with our vices—so damn restless and unsatisfied?

I mean, it’s not like we’re lacking in anything fundamental. It’s not like we, in our day and age of comfort and security, have much of a reason to feel so consistently terrible, right?

Well, it’s kind of messed up, but us humans were designed to be perpetually unhappy.

More accurately, we just fell into being this way over millions of years of evolution. Like how natural selection brought us opposable thumbs and peripheral vision, the same survival forces brought us a constant background ache of discontent.

And the reason for that is simple: Motivation.

Evolution favored our discontented ancestors because they worked harder and were more likely to survive. Their hunger and discomfort fueled their motivation to get out there, take risks, use energy, and change things to their advantage.

 

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Now, I know what you’re thinking.

"That’s all great for, like, cavemen or whatever, but this doesn’t apply to me. I’m miserable as hell, and yet I feel the opposite of motivation. Most if the time, all I feel is tired, lazy, and apathetic. Most of the time, I can barely make it out of bed."

Fine, but take a step back for a second. Look beyond your bubble and your daily self-discipline struggles. Consider the world around you, and put things into context.

Observe just how extensively our environment has changed since the days us humans roamed the grassy African savannahs or the snowy Siberian plains. When our nomadic ancestors were motivated to relieve their evolved discontent, when they decided to do something to scratch the uncomfortable itch of lacking and wanting... they had to work for it. They had to take on risks and endure long and dangerous missions and quests.

In their world of scarcity and danger, relief and reward never came easy. There was always a cost of time (days) + energy (thousands of calories) + risk (potential death). Costs and the rewards were finely balanced.

That’s just not true any more.

Every single one of the survival rewards we can possibly feel—from the gratification of sex, to the comfort of belonging to a tribe—has a vice-based shortcut. The tech, food, and media industries have left no stone unturned.

And with our modern-day vices, the cost of relief has been all but eliminated. The time-to-reward is now seconds. The energy involved is the fraction of a calorie it takes to tap a screen. The risk, non-existent.

This sounds amazing—and in many ways, living in our modern utopia of abundance really is exactly that—but this has consequences. There are side effects.

On the societal level, we have unprecedented rates of addiction, depression, anxiety, ADHD and chronic underachievement. Since we don’t have a frame of reference of what it was like before, we’ve collectively decided to shrug and say...

“This is normal… we’re all, by nature, impulsive, lazy, unfocused and gluttonous.”

But we’re not living in Normal Times.

Normal was... you were fearful, dissatisfied, horny and hungry… so you were motivated to seek out and protect against predators and other dangers.

Normal was... you worked to form tenuous but crucial alliances; you found and courted a mate (while trying not to get outcast for approaching the wrong one), and you hunted for what sure as hell did not want to be hunted.

Normal was... you did all those things, you—hopefully, fingers-crossed—survived another day, then you went to sleep utterly spent but with a brief moment of serenity and inner-satisfaction.

Normal was... you woke up to a new set of needs and threats, but, luckily, the discontent and the promise of relief and reward motivated you to get up and do it all over again.But now, our circumstances have changed in the blink of an eye...

We now live in Abnormal Times.

Abnormal is... you feel fearful, dissatisfied, horny and hungry—just as our ancestors did—but then you’re “motivated” to… what? You're motivated to grab your phone, scroll through sensational news and outrageous comments on Reddit or X, feel pings of pretend status on Instagram, get instant gratification through porn, and inhale some ultra-processed, high-calorie, artificially enhanced food… all before 10 am.

Abnormal is... doing all those things, which work insanely well to quiet and numb the inner discontent—but then snapping back to reality where… no, things aren’t actually better... no, my problems aren’t actually solved... no, I still have that super critical thing due today but now I have even less time… which then leads to more stress and discomfort… so more of an impulse to grab at your vices to escape... but then more stress, so more vices, and so on until you’ve blunted your brain’s pleasure receptors making it require even more for a sliver of relief and reward.

Abnormal is... going to bed with nothing to show for your day; ruminating and stressed from procrastinating on all your modern obligations and worries—paying rent, getting good grades, landing a job amidst rising unemployment, bracing for the next economic collapse, pandemic or, I don’t know, the outbreak of World War III…

Abnormal is... waking up the next day, with the same heavy burden, but with the same wired “motivation” to relieve it quickly, albeit mistakenly and temporarily and stupidly, through some more mother-effing vices.

We live in abnormal times.

We just weren’t made for this world.

What then is the solution?

Well, the Habit Reframe Method, it's setup steps, and it's insistence on taking on the "Meditator's Mindset" is precisely designed and optimized to help you navigate our new, abnormal world.

But Step 0—as in the step you can do right now using zero work—is to forgive yourself.

Because here’s the truth: it’s not your fault.

All your procrastination and time wasting. All your abandoned projects and habits. All your broken promises and resolutions... none of it is your fault. It’s not about you being weak or lacking in discipline or self-control.

For the first time in history, vices—shortcuts to relief and survival rewards—are available to us anytime, anywhere. And they’re hyper-optimized, uniquely tailored to you and your interests; uniquely optimized to push your precise emotional buttons and drive you towards an neverending loop of distraction.

So it’s not on you.

An essential part of your self-improvement journey must be cutting out all the self-directed blame, hate, and reprimand.

You need to forgive yourself for your past slip-ups, broken promises and failings. You need to forgive yourself for your zero-days and abandoned commitments.

You need to forgive yourself because you deserve to forgive yourself.

A huge driver of “bad” behavior is bad emotions—the kind we then escape through vices. And nothing feels worse than self-hate, criticism, and reprimand.

So, you need to let it go. Seriously. You need to offer youself some much needed—and deserved—self-love, compassion, and forgiveness.

Because, it’s not on you. It’s not your fault—and if you're having any trouble accepting this, the help and support of a professional is absolutely essential.