From a long distance, you can tell if someone is living his or her dreams. It is possible to tell simply by gauging the conduct of the person, his or her mental disposition to the basic principles of life. How such a person conducts his/her business, how he/she aligns with stated goals and the various perspective from which he or she views everyday life; are key elements that define someone’s life and business.

Now, what could stop someone from living his/her dreamed life? Think about distraction (which could be self-inflicted or external,) having a heavy attention deficit, and of course, being hardly present. You can be there physically… but not quite there mentally, very far away emotionally, and completely dead spiritually.

You have too many things you have to do, and too many things you wanted to do. Then when frustration set in, you sit down to write them down: your goals!

Research states that writing your priorities down can help determine whether you will succeed in the foreseeable future. Well, we can’t agree less. After all, putting it down in writing means you have a goal, to begin with; and that can take you to places.

BUT… writing down your goals is just a fragment of the entire equation.

You can IMAGINE all you want. You can SAY all you want. You can WRITE all you want.

But really what matters is the ACTION you take.

You want to jog 2-3 times a week for 3 km? Do it and stop brooding about it.

You want to give, be helpful, and make people happy? JUST DO IT and stop imagining what it would be like.

Anything other than this is pure mental masturbation.

Mental Masturbation: The Silent Assassin That Kills Dreams

As I sat down to write this article, I did a fact check on the term “mental masturbation,” and it is surprising that even the Urban Dictionary has a daring and indicting meaning for it. It defines mental masturbation as “The act or process of engaging or participating in a useless but intellectually enlightening conversation, mostly as an excuse to avoid taking constructive action in one’s personal life.”

Now, go over that again and peruse the definition. You will discover that the key point in this interesting definition is… an excuse to dodge the task of undertaking constructive action regarding your life. The emphasis here is on the word “action.”

That is the point with so many people. It happens to me and is still affecting many today.

I was spending so many hours on talking on the phone with friends and family members. We talk at length about my life, the various business projects I find attractive, and the things still keeping me back from my ideal scene. We discuss what it would take to have a major breakthrough while sharing quotes from books and tips picked up from gurus.

After all these, I would finally tap the “end call” button, with hundreds of minutes showing up on the phone time call indicator. And with my ear getting hot and red, I let out a deep sigh of relief, feeling satisfied and excited about such new and promising ideas and I can’t wait to get started.

Just then, my lady would walk into the room and it was time to do something else, or my “work day” was over, and what had I truly achieved?

Nothing!

Yeah. I spent countless and precious hours having these exciting, intellectually inspiring conversations, but I was never taking a single action: yes, let’s call it mental masturbation.

4 Overlooked Ways Mental Masturbation Negatively Impact Your Life and Business

From the above analogy, it is clear that inaction is the hallmark of mental masturbation. However, this can further be broken down into 4 elements that can significantly affect your life and business. These are;

1. Indulging In Escapism Habits

When you’re highly entrenched in the game of retreating from reality, to living a life of fantasy, the ability to take actionable steps aimed at realizing your business or life goals, becomes a fleeting illusion. Yup. Life situations at times could be hard and even unbearable to some degree, making it more tempting to withdraw inward as an escape from the realities into a world of fanfare fantasy. Instead of tackling or facing the challenges that confront us, we choose to escape from our lives.

Escapism is self-defeat—a process that denies us of spending quality time with ourselves. When you indulge in escapism habits like endless hours on social media, watching movies, excessive video games, gambling, drugs, alcohol, countless hours of watching sports, entertainment, and porn; you are only defining who you really are. You will never be able to get that business going or live the life you want.

You will continue to wish you were someone—some celebrity or athlete—yet wake up to see your old self every morning. This is especially true for the losers out there who have a hard time picking up women. Not only do they lack confidence, but they also fear rejection to the point of not trying to pursue the women that they want. Because of this, they will always resort to simply dreaming of beautiful women and physically masturbating, which is another form of escapism as well. Life is full of fears, but since you have chosen to mentally masturbate your fears away your fears instead of practically doing something about them, you can never make headway in business or live a meaningful life.

2. Consuming Useless Information

Useless will always be useless, no matter how intelligent it sounds or looks. Engaging in intellectually stimulating conversation with practically useless information is a recipe for disaster. One of the reasons why so many people are failing to create their ideal business or have a meaningful life is because they are consuming a lot of useless information. Instead of consuming information that they can actually APPLY in real life to achieve real time results, they want to impress others by simply being “the smartest person in the room.” Such people lack complete clarity and focus. They are unable to know when and/or what to say “yes” or “no” to. As such, you are not able to avoid time wasters. Getting caught up in things that are not critical to your goals or aligns with your business plan or life principles would only expose you to consuming useless information—acquiring knowledge that you cannot apply to your life.

For instance, you assume you are planning on establishing an online high-tech home appliances sales platform. What you should be working on is how to acquire and develop the various skills needed to run such business. But when you spend time consuming information on how to manufacture high tech electronics and equipment in home appliances, it would amount to knowledge gained but practically useless, since you will be selling, not manufacturing.

3. Procrastinating

Every Tom, Dick and Harry knows that procrastination is the thief of time. Procrastination is the undesired ‘law enforcement agent that arrests actionable cause in one’s business or professional life. It is akin to mental masturbation, and it’s task with the duty of ensuring you keep wasting precious time shifting goalposts.

Procrastination always gives you a reason to not take action, shifting task to another day. And days will become weeks, weeks become months and months when accumulated, leads to two, three, five, 10 years later. And by the time you realize what you haven’t done, it is already too late, even as you start asking yourself; what have I been doing?

Procrastination causes you to blow many opportunities and failing to take advantage of them when they were there. And what you might not realize is that such or one of those opportunities could have been a life-changing one, for which you might have no second chance. Procrastination is one critical element of mental masturbation that is stopping you from realizing your business goals and general life objectives.

To succeed in this unfair world, you have to take opportunities with both hands. But first, you need to recognize them, and that means, slaying the dragon called procrastination.

4. Fear

Ask yourself; how many times have I been taking the courage to step out of my comfort zone? One might argue that fear is not directly linked to mental masturbation, but you can bet it is tied to one element of mental masturbation—procrastination. Could fear be the reason why you are procrastinating—refusing to take action? Think about that.

Now, fear in itself isn’t a problem. The problem is you succumbing to it. Fear thrives in different ways, and it could be the fear of confronting the situation confronting you, instead of mentally masturbating about it. It could be the fear of being alone in pursuing your dreams. It could be the fear of change—being bold enough to live your dream. The fear of conflict with friends and family members, and also with potential competitors, as you set out to implement and pursue your dreams. It might also be the fear of connection–stepping out of your comfort zone and reaching out to others that will provide practical stuff to help in actualizing your goals.

Whatever it is, fear can be a major reason why you can’t undertake your business and live the life you want to live.

A Word Of Caution

If you wish to succeed in all business and life endeavors, always remember that mental masturbation is just like physical masturbation; pleasurably making sure you get off while being inactive.