Today I would like to discuss some of my thoughts and experiences regarding progress and what can get in the way of it. Specifically, progress in a broad sense, that feeling of moving forward, going towards something, things like that. Growing up, I had a lot of intense emotional experiences, and since children are not taught how to properly digest these emotions, I–like everyone else–developed ways to avoid feeling these feelings. However, what I didn’t realize at the time, is that this was a big mistake, which is not the fault of my own, or really the people around me, it was simply made out of ignorance. What happens is we start developing behaviors to handle our emotions, and those adaptations actually work for some time. For me it was going to the basement and playing video games after school to help myself relax and not have to “think about” the world. For others, it can be surrounding themselves by lots of people all the time, so they can avoid their feelings. Overall though, the fundamental thing that is happening, is an avoidance of the internal emotional state. This is especially common for men, and it is my belief that this is what is causing a lot of mental health problems for men in the current day, and the struggle with “failure to launch”. Especially given the overwhelming access to distraction, and therefore, avoidance of the internal state. This leads to an inability to detect how one feels about something, or what one wants to do. The world will constantly offer different things for you to do, different ways you should act, etc. However, what is possible, is to develop what you think about all of those things, and this cannot be done without spending time alone with yourself.