When I started following bitcoin culture every once and a while I'd hear someone say "zoom out". It would usually be in response to someone else talking about a dip in fiat price. You can take this simple comment and apply it many other places. Of course it can be applied to investments, or anything long term. The old phrase "Rome wasn't built in a day". Or if you go to the economics side of things you often hear about "time preference" from the Austrians(which is a deep thought provoking topic btw).

We live in a very short term mindset culture. We want everything instantly. We have little patience. I'm not a kid anymore and I can tell you that this impatience culture has increased in my life time. My parents noticed it of course but when I was young I thought they were just old and out of touch. Now I see their vision and wisdom more clearly. Have you ever wondered why time seems to move faster the older you get? When I was a kid it seemed like I would never get to summer break. It seemed like Christmas took forever to get here. It seemed like I would never get my driver's license. Today it seems like 5 years passes by in no time. It seems like I blink and a new month is here. Time seems to function differently the more time I've have spent living.

I think this is the zoom out effect. Zooming out is a very important practice. Zooming out allows you to take a higher view. Just like climbing to the top of the mountain allows you to see things you can't see in the valley, zooming out allows you to see how the struggles and triumphs in life led you to where you are now. If you have a bad day, you make a dumb mistake, or someone is unkind. Zoom out. Is this an anomaly, or is it a pattern? With only a short time frame it is hard to see, but over time the truth reveals itself if you care to take the time to look. Do you hate your job or work? Maybe this is a rough patch. Maybe you need to take some time off and zoom out. Maybe something changed that you missed. Maybe it is an internal change and not external. It can be hard to see this without zooming out.

When we zoom out we can gain context. When we take time to reflect and ask ourselves tough questions we can see lies we may have believed. Some of us tend to battle negative self-talk. Some of us see our faults and failures and then magnify them. We zoom in on each event that is negative losing sight of the context. Zooming out helps provide context. Others fail to see their areas for improvement. They are full of self confidence to the point of being blind to warning signs. They need to zoom out as well. Sometimes even zooming out isn't enough. Sometimes you need someone else to help you with getting a new perspective.

I've been meaning to write about my recent experiences with refocusing, @siggy47 encouraged me to do it and here it is. When I started thinking about zooming out today I wasn't thinking about what I'm going to tell you, but the further into this I got the more clear the path became. I've been in a dark place mentally for some time. Most people that know me would not notice it. My wife is probably the only one that saw it. I don't feel like I'm out of the woods yet, but I can see the path forward and I'm walking it now. Back in February @elvismercury mentioned JBP's self-authoring program in a thought provoking post by @Fabs. I had checked it out before and almost started it but for some reason I didn't do it. Elivsmercury's comment was the reminder I needed. About a month ago I took a weekend and did the Future Authoring exercises. I highly recommend it to pretty much anyone. One thing it did was help me zoom out and reset my focus and thinking.

I realized that while I have been feeling burned out and down, I really needed to take time and zoom out. There have been some rough things I've experienced in past few years that really hit me hard. In many ways I'm just tired. But it is easy to let hard times lead into self-pity. In-action then leads to more in-action. This is a vicious cycle that only leads down into dark places. Taking a weekend to focus on figuring out my path forward was what I needed. The first day was not fun. There were many questions that I responded to that made me feel worse about myself. I was tempted to stop the whole process a couple times. But, I pushed through to the next day. Then a light bulb came on for me. I needed to zoom out and when I did I recalled some daily practices that I used to follow. I had let slip. I realized that I had accomplished many goals over the years but hadn't refocused on clear definable goals. I also realized that I have been trying to do to many things at once, failing to complete them, and then feeling defeated when I think about all I hadn't done. I realized that I had stop doing things that had worked for me in the past. When I saw this it was like a door opened and I could see a path out of a dark cave.

The simple way to describe what I did was that I zoomed out. I took time to turn off all distractions and focus on looking ahead and behind with a wider scope. If you are in a rough patch right now I encourage you to talk to someone. My path forward really started with talking to my wife. Maybe you should check out the Self Authoring program. Maybe just try to zoom out and realize what you have done over the last 10 years. Are you excited about where you're going? Do you know where you're going? Its always changing but every so often try to zoom out for a bit.