I feel like there has been a big shift in my life over the past few months that has made me disconnected from others, a bit more unhappy, but also a bit more productive. And I guess the question is, no bullshit, is this a vaild mindset that successful people have. Everyone I know tells me to "tone it down" but I don't want to do so if their only reason for saying so is it's abnormality.
The mindset is thus, it is never good to indulge in pleasure for pleasures sake, but it is good to indulge in displeausre for displeausres sake. For example, I only take cold showers because there is no benefit in a hot shower and there is the mental benefit of training your mind if you were to take a cold shower. Or I purposely restrict the foods that I eat to avoid ones I find pleasurable and fill my extra macros with ones I find gross.
I get scared of the feeling of attachment to things that don't matter. I recently started keto again and noticed that the hunger pangs were making me question this whole mindset. I looked at all these delicious foods around me that I coudln't have and it made me wonder if my mindset was misguided, if it was okay to indulge every once in a while... but then eventually I stuck through and thought to myself "I am really going to quit this goal because of a piece of food?".
Like every time I end up skipping out on a hang out to study or miss some thing that I thought would be pleasurable in the moment, my mind always adjusts and I realize that I really could have gone without the pleasure, but I guess I wonder.... how can I tell if that voice telling me to "let up" and "enjoy life" is correct? IS it ever correct or worth listening to?
I feel like a lot of the time I do end up engaging in a pleasure (ie. hanging out, eating a food I like) I am either right in assumption that the amount of pleasure I get does not weigh up to what I expected in my mind (you get something for Christmas that you only care about for like a day) or I do like the pleasure and end up feeling guilty about giving in to and feeding that attachment.
I feel pretty unhappy and I think part of that is because of a lack of clear goals, and maybe I am turning to comfort as an excuse for that. LIke with keto, I have no goal except to do it because it seems harder than normal eating and givse me a slight mental boost, maybe my logic would be more valid if I were doing it because I had a diet goal or something, or maybe I am "giving in" and just should shut up. What are your guys' thoughts?
I don't want to lose this discipline and go back to being a lazy slob who gives in to constant comfort, but I wonder if I am slowly losing some part of being human by never giving time to rest. Essentially the question is, is my attitude an attribute of high preformers or simply the mentally unhealthy?