How I'm thinking about Right Now, Not Yet
Reflection
In my last reflection, I revealed I have an affinity for shows and writing that focus on the supernatural.
Here’s another secret: I enjoy reading self-help and self-improvement books.
In fact, if I’m not listening to the most recent lecture from my current business class, I tend to have a self-help audiobook queued up.
As is the case with almost anything I read, I don’t agree with everything. In fact, when it comes to self-help and personal development, I rarely agree with much of what I read or listen to.
And just like my love for the odd sideshows of the paranormal, my approach to self-help is guided by skepticism.
In many cases, I finish a book not because I’m so invested, but because I disagree so adamantly.
Unfortunately, much of what’s written boils down to platitudes and one-size-fits-all thinking.
Sure, positive thoughts are great, but for a marginalized or oppressed group, it can feel pretty impossible. Viktor Frankl couldn’t spirit himself out of a concentration camp with positive thinking.
Then again, Frankl escaped in a different way—by redefining control and meaning itself. Instead of allowing his situation—or more directly, his captors—to have control, he found meaning in something they couldn’t take away: his ability to choose.
Frankl found meaning by developing logotherapy, a philosophy built on the idea that no matter your circumstances, you always control one thing—how you choose to respond.
For the rest of us, who aren’t in a situation as dire as Frankl’s, much of self-help rhetoric is built on the flawed idea that "what worked for the writer will absolutely work for you"—but that foundation is made of sand.
That’s what this week’s post intends to expose.
Many of us envision a desired reality, but we head toward that destination by moving east or west—toward success or validation.
While this type of movement isn’t inherently bad, it can distort reality in ways we aren’t aware.
Imagine for a moment a short-term desired reality is to take an epic family vacation.
Right now, you plan and prepare. You build a dream board, think positive thoughts, and align savings, hard work, and focus on “making that dream a reality.”
All of this is chasing a desired reality—a dream vacation that isn’t Right Now, but Not Yet.
In general, we see two paths for the desired reality that exists in the Not Yet: success leads us to achieving our goal of an epic vacation, and failure results when we don’t.
If you’re like me, you’ve taken trips like this. And while you can enjoy the experience, a non-trivial part of your time there is spent thinking about where you might like to go next and how you wish you didn’t have to leave.
Even when we reach a desired reality, another version takes its place. The success loop never really ends; it just resets.
In other words, we reach a desired reality, only to find another version of it waiting for us. At this point, the success loop becomes a treadmill—one that’s hard to escape.
There’s always a better vacation, a nicer hotel, or a trip with less planning and more family time. Whatever the case may be, whatever reality was, didn’t quite hit the mark.
And this describes the best-case scenario. For those who accept they can’t achieve the desired reality, they move in the opposite direction—seeking validation for why they failed and what they need to do differently.
Ironically, in both cases, we often lose sight of why we wanted to take the trip in the first place. But what really gets lost in the shuffle is choice.
This is where, having experienced this myself, I ask, “Why?”
And therein lies the secret. Asking why we chose a particular version of Not Yet to pursue isn’t just for vacations—it applies to almost everything in life.
The problem is, many of us focus on a desired reality that is attached to success or validation—not meaning or understanding.
We ask what we want our desired reality to be—not why.
With this in mind, an expensive vacation isn’t bad—unless we never ask why we’re choosing it.
So, if success and validation are traps that put us into a loop, what are we supposed to do?
This is one of the questions I intend to answer with Right Now, Not Yet. For now, I’ll leave you with this note about north and south movement—toward meaning and understanding.
On Earth, if we move west, we will always move west. If we move east, we will always move east. Even if we actively choose to change direction, we’re bound to retrace our steps.
Over time, we lose sight of any other direction, focusing only on moving toward success or validation.
However, the poles present an interesting conundrum—one that has always intrigued me.
When standing at either pole, there’s only one possible direction. If you stand at the North Pole, you can only travel south. If you stand at the South Pole, you can only travel north.
Our compass cues us that we’ve reached a point of decision—a moment of choice. And crucially, it still shows us the other directions.
Put another way: when we move north or south, we always reach a point of reflection. We must move toward either meaning or understanding, but in doing so, we may also find success and validation.
Understanding this will take effort, and we may not be able to get to our destination right now—but that’s okay. It’s simply a case of Not Yet.
Choose a path that focuses on meaning or understanding, and you can eventually reach any point on the globe.
"What" describes. "Why" gives meaning—to both Right Now and Not Yet.