How do you deal with stagnation?

[Tzuyu]

Mostly looking for advice from IPs, or people that consistently deal with this. Anyone is welcome ofc.

My usual go-to method is to throw myself into a hobby until something sparks again, just restlessly work on improving skillwise, drawing mostly. Hours and hours just ripping into paper, it's not working anymore though. I get no dopamine hits from drawing lately, so I've stopped.

It feels like you're submerged in wastewater and a black muddy staleness is filling your lungs and orifices. I've usually had a neutral or dismissive view of the future, but that was just choosing to ignore it in the past. Once I start actually thinking about it a great sense of heavy dread begins to permeate your being. Not anxiety, or fear. Just a sense of doom.

My parents have lived an incredibly mediocre life. They go to their office job and go home. They're too tired to do much besides watching TV and occasionally chatting with friends about nothing meaningful. They don't read or have hobbies. That future is the most terrifying thing I know. It's a life script not fit for wiping anyone's ass with. I want to draw comics for a living but our family is not blessed enough to afford failure. And nothing is guaranteed in that industry even if you're the most talented person on Earth and Heaven.

The more you go forward the more it's like stepping into a deep tar pit that dries faster and faster each time you lift your leg and put it down again. Your body stops moving and goes still. Time still hurtles through you while you're paralyzed, unable to do anything. Stagnation.

I don't think it's depression, although a change in mindset in needed. Something's broken. What helps without necessarily amounting to numbing yourself or ignoring the issue? Where do you find satisfying autonomy nowadays?

[ouronis]

I cultivate the mental qualities, awareness, and mantras needed to essentially force myself to do things. I do this by running (ignoring my mind screaming at me to stop doing hard things), paying attention to what my mind is doing when I'm behaving in a way I'd rather not and then resisting the thought, not giving in to fear or anxiety, etc. Also, being comfortable with saying that I don't care if I stagnate in certain areas as long as I make progress with others. I think personality is a big player here, your parents might not give a shit whether they stagnate and you do, so as long as you have that driving force you won't end up where they are. Understand you'll have to fight your biology for this.

[Hot Scalding Gayser]

If you like to write comics, keep writing comics and try to get them published. Don't let stats or the Te rules/laws of it all stop you. The truly successful people always ignore that stuff and just do their own thing and are self-confident anyway and the success comes to them. I think if you want to be recognized then a balance of creative art and appealing to other people's sentiments is paramount. If you really think about anything that is both creative and makes a lot of money- you will find those elements. It is creative and unique but also empathetically gives people want they want (to an extent) It's not just totally up it's own ass. Being an artist isn't the same thing as being a narcissist and I think people forget that.

And of course it won't happen right away. The most successful people are also the people that failed the most. You have to keep at it. Most famous writers and authors and cool creative types will tell you they got rejected like 249234723 times and then finally somebody out there didn't reject them and they are all super famous and more powerful than Oprah because of it. (an exaggeration of course but you get my drift)

But yeah fuck Te and the laws and cold heartless statistics and 'blah blah odds are stacked against you' Who cares. Odds are stacked against all special creative weirdo artistic misfits with more max MP than max HP. That is just going to make your victory all the more triumphant.

[Computer Loser]

Don't look at it as stagnation - look at it as empty space, a gift you have now in front of you. This gift is letting go of the old you and becoming a new you.

The old you had "stuff" to fill its time with, which you no longer feel have interest in. This happens for a lot of people when they remove certain elements from their lives (drugs, alcohol, a hobby, people, their usual routine)... and all they're left with is this empty space.

Use this time to be comfortable doing nothing (meditation/prayer) ... Often times being bored may also be a defense mechanism to distract our minds from pain/trauma/our past... Make this time to fully feel those things that come up.

Additionally, try your best to find new challenges :

--Make/Find a new routine
--Write out new/worthy goals/challenges
--Get things handled in your life u haven't yet (handling your finances, learning cooking + cleaning, errands, etc)
--Keep doing the usual (drawing comics), Just push thru the boredom. Eventually you'll "break out" out of plateaus
--Volunteer. Help out the community
--Call an old friend/Send them a letter
--Start a journal/blog
--Devour new books, food
--Take a walk in a calm trail/forest
--Exercise
--Find a new hobby (throwing axes, breakdancing, powerlifting, etc)

All else fails, just listen to this:

[Tallmo]

Best way for me to deal with stagnation is to work for other people, engaging in some social activity, making myself useful. The beautiful thing is that if I can activate my libido this way, then the freed libido can also be used for my private projects.

If you want to do comics, just keep on doing it. I came to think of a documentary I watched a while ago. It was about a Finnish author. When he was young he had a day job as an engineer because he had to support his family, but in the evenings he wrote his first books. Later when he had gotten several books published he could write books as his full time job.

[sbbds]

Get an Ep type to come and toss your salad.

[Tzuyu]

Get an Ep type to come and toss your salad.

Despite what Socionics says, there's plenty of boring EPs tbh. They're showy and move around a lot but there's no substance. This one IEE girl would only talk about her crush on and on and on, made me wanna throttle her throat and commit suicide. Salad is yummy tho.

[sbbds]

Despite what Socionics says, there's plenty of boring EPs tbh. They're showy and move around a lot but there's no substance. This one IEE girl would only talk about her crush on and on and on, made me wanna throttle her throat and commit suicide. Salad is yummy tho.

Lol. At least your stagnation would be over!

[Ruzarh]

Supervision, or its idea, is the only thing that works for me (programs like work time, Trello work great for this). I feel a sense of responsibility that something is expected of me, and I'm working not just for myself but for my "boss."

[ContractedCriminalboy]

Mostly looking for advice from IPs, or people that consistently deal with this. Anyone is welcome ofc.

My usual go-to method is to throw myself into a hobby until something sparks again, just restlessly work on improving skillwise, drawing mostly. Hours and hours just ripping into paper, it's not working anymore though. I get no dopamine hits from drawing lately, so I've stopped.

It feels like you're submerged in wastewater and a black muddy staleness is filling your lungs and orifices. I've usually had a neutral or dismissive view of the future, but that was just choosing to ignore it in the past. Once I start actually thinking about it a great sense of heavy dread begins to permeate your being. Not anxiety, or fear. Just a sense of doom.

My parents have lived an incredibly mediocre life. They go to their office job and go home. They're too tired to do much besides watching TV and occasionally chatting with friends about nothing meaningful. They don't read or have hobbies. That future is the most terrifying thing I know. It's a life script not fit for wiping anyone's ass with. I want to draw comics for a living but our family is not blessed enough to afford failure. And nothing is guaranteed in that industry even if you're the most talented person on Earth and Heaven.

The more you go forward the more it's like stepping into a deep tar pit that dries faster and faster each time you lift your leg and put it down again. Your body stops moving and goes still. Time still hurtles through you while you're paralyzed, unable to do anything. Stagnation.

I don't think it's depression, although a change in mindset in needed. Something's broken. What helps without necessarily amounting to numbing yourself or ignoring the issue? Where do you find satisfying autonomy nowadays?

I get the same way. That stuck in the rut same old same old ennui feeling to where going on with this routine in life indefinitely brings about mild dread. I have no solutions to it.

[Ruzarh]

Supervision, or its idea, is the only thing that works for me (programs like work time, Trello work great for this). I feel a sense of responsibility that something is expected of me, and I'm working not just for myself but for my "boss."

[Lolita]

I don’t know what stagnation is? I just keep doing things. It’s easy to find things to do and that way you don’t get bored.

[Aramas]

For me, meditation and high magick have worked better than anything else. I think some stagnation in life is necessary. I don't try to avoid it.

Humans weren't meant to always be doing things. The feeling that you always have to be doing something comes from authoritarian indoctrination. Is sitting quietly and doing nothing really so bad?

Like a lot of situations, trying to avoid stagnation or get out of it can cause you to remain there. If you feel stagnant or dead, there might be a good reason you're there. Just like fields sometimes have to lie fallow, people's lives sometimes have to stop or be boring.

As far as the cure for mediocre lives goes, one of the best cures for that on a social level is to not have children and to only buy things you can make real use of.

[Aster]

I don’t really think about it, tbh. I don’t ever really feel bored either, more like overwhelmed by everything. Things happen and I feel like I’m just along for the ride, following the waves. I find if you just wait a little while, something will happen eventually to get you out of wherever you are, lengths vary, but I always find it a learning experience.

[The Reality Denialist]

Despite what Socionics says, there's plenty of boring EPs tbh. They're showy and move around a lot but there's no substance. This one IEE girl would only talk about her crush on and on and on, made me wanna throttle her throat and commit suicide. Salad is yummy tho.

Sounds like limited resources. These times are extra tough in those terms. Anyway go full SLI: cabin in the woods and eat squirrels.

[WVBRY]

Sounds like what you're describing isn't so much stagnation as it is fear.

Where do you find satisfying autonomy nowadays?

I find satisfying autonomy in doing as many practical things myself as I can. I figure the more I can do, the more I will be able to do when a crisis or emergency happens and practical skills are needed. Hopefully that will never happen. A warrior in a garden, rather than a gardner in a war.

[Resonare]

Personally, I write all of my goals down and organize them based on the aspect of life they fall into, i.e. Health, Finance, Spiritual, Creative, Career, Leisure and Social. I find that stagnation tends to happen when I'm trying to forcefully finish a goal in an aspect of life that my mind isn't in the right frame to finish, so to avoid this I switch to the goals i the aspect of life I think I'm best suited to work in. Really helps if you have the tendency to become tunnel-visioned on a project like I do.

[EUDAEMONIUM]

The thing that helps me is figuring out what I want to do and apply strict structural steps in reaching that goal.

So you already know that you aren't satisfied with your current state, now find out why. Then try to figure how to can fix it.

Drill down on the steps that are involved in change until they are in small manageable pieces.

But that's unwarranted advice from an EJ (rare, I know).

[rose]

It's gonna sound counter-productive, but I give into the stagnation. I generaly lie down and think of nothing, or barely anything. After a while I get up without even thinking of it and start doing things as if this had never happened.
No pressure, no stress.
Even helps me feeling better rested.