People have a tendency to think of all their problems as problems of our minds, and it's true that we have our own minds, but problems don't arise from them; problems arise from what we do with our minds. If you try to solve your problems by talking about them in your mind, or even if you do get your thoughts completely focused on your problems, even though you are more aware than ever of their intensity and hard to ignore nature, this doesn't work.
Have you ever reached the end of a given challenge and felt discouraged because you 'knew' how to tackle that challenge but things were not progressing as fast as you thought they should be? This is an 'oversight' that you are stuck in downtime. If this is happening to you right now, you may need to adopt this process, or another tool, to gain control over your 'down time'. These are the things you are going through right now. Try to work on each of them.
It makes me feel like I have failed, that I'm not good enough, or I don't have good people to bounce ideas off of. As I've discussed with my collaborators at Ubisoft and Disney, I am not great at talking about our games during meetings. I tend to be very intense, and speaking often and freely is challenging. You might say I am a naturally sociable person, and I love games! But at the same time, sometimes I'm not up for having our cool games debated.
Of course the good news is that you can overcome this common problem, and this too, will be the result of practicing self-discipline. We need to spend more time on one specific thing, to develop a plan. But you will have to practice for a long time, sometimes for many months before you will feel like you are getting anywhere. You will have to put in the time and effort to make sure you are in control.
When you feel like nothing's working at all. Sometimes it's my mind playing tricks on me, so I know it's just me but I can't pinpoint what it is. From what I have experienced and experienced by trial and error, the right way to cultivate mindfulness and self-awareness is to spend time in any and every situation we face. When we spend time alone, with our family, with the dog, with friends or strangers, we have the chance to interact with them.
It is something that we all have to go through, from time to time. Especially those of us who have lived a life where we've been over-stressed for years and were told that we would succeed if we followed the system we were being conditioned to follow, and had the necessary tools that can fix our problems. What follows is a very personal story that I, and others, have experienced. I hope it's informative, and possibly helpful to someone else who is about to go through it.