What is This Nagging Sense I Can’t Shake?
It’s been with me for a while, and I can’t put my finger on it.
I have this odd, nagging sense that something’s off that I just can’t shake. And it’s been nagging at me for quite some time now.
Maybe it’s the craziness of the big picture elements of the world. As much as I’m careful about how much time I spend on social media and how little I read or watch the news, the madness of the world’s big picture is unavoidable. The insane, utterly unnecessary war with Iran driving up gas prices – and Congress not doing their job – is beyond distressing. How have we fallen so far? Is fleeting power worth obliterating the earned respect they’re destroying? They don’t care; it’s making them obscenely wealthy.
Maybe it’s the drama in my hobby. People getting all bent out of shape over change, DEI, and how things in 2026 can’t be like they were in 1990. Well, no shit, gang. The world has changed, and even though we’re reenacting the past, we can’t use that as an excuse to fall behind the times. Also, to the well-meaning social justice warriors out there: Imperfect allies are still allies. Stop looking for ill will where none exists. Aim the ire at your non-allies.
Maybe it’s my family. Sometimes, even when you’re well-meaning, you have to remember that you can’t live for anyone else. And while poor choices might have been made, those who made them get to live with them. The rest of us can be empathetic, but don’t expect me to bend over backward. I’m not even going to get into the karma of it all.
Maybe, and most likely, it’s me, however.
The imperfect practice of mindfulness
Since I started practicing mindfulness, I’ve been way happier than I ever was before. When I stopped trying to be what others needed me to be, or more often what I thought others needed, I’ve been better centered. Calmer. More balanced. Grounded.
Most of the time. Yes, there’s that nagging sense I can’t shake. It’s like a wild blend of fear, anger, resentment, hurt, inadequacy, uncertainty, and like something is missing – all in utterly unequal measure. It’s like I can sense that I’m missing something, and it’s right there at the edge of my perception. Yet, no matter how hard I try to identify it, it eludes me.
I used to look back to my past and the memories I’m missing from my childhood. But that’s not it. Those missing memories are missing because I removed them. Rather than face the pain or deal with any suffering that might have been, I just nuked them from orbit. I know what they are tied to and why I did it, so that’s a dead end.
What I think the main cause of the issue must be is my challenges being here, now. Practicing practical, applied mindfulness. I still allow ties to the past and hopes and fears for the future to pull me apart. Makes sense, really, why I get this nagging sense I can’t shake.
That nagging sense might be nothing
Maybe it’s something. Maybe it’s nothing. There’s no easy way to tell. Save doing more to work on being actively consciously aware, mindful, in the here and now.
Intellectually, I know that the past has come and gone. Can’t be changed, undone, or otherwise rewritten. Likewise, I know, as Yoda said, “Always in motion is the future.” You can’t predict it, can only do things here and now to impact it, but have zero control over the outcome.
When I get right down to it, more likely than not, that nagging sense I can’t shake is tied to past and present fears, concerns, and uncertainty that arise when I am not practicing mindfulness.
No, nobody can be totally mindful all the time. Human minds don’t work that way. What I wind up getting caught up in is replaying old bits that brought me here, now, and trying to reconcile how to overcome them in the future. Where does that put my mindset/headspace/psyche self? Shunted to the side while my subconscious takes the wheel.
What is this nagging sense I can’t shake? Because it’s many things slammed together, sometimes similar but sometimes disparate, it’s hard to say. Yet I can logic out that it’s almost certainly linking to me talking about active conscious awareness, but not fully practicing mindfulness.
I know that like attracts like, and when I allow worry to creep in, it leads to self-sabotage. Maybe that’s what that nagging sense is – my shadow self, knife drawn, ready to shank me in the back.
The truth of the Law of Attraction
The romanticized, hooky-spooky, create anything you want from the void notion of the Law of Attraction is lacking data. Mainly, it’s impossible to create from the pure void. Thought and feeling alone get you nowhere. Action is imperative.
It’s often indirect, but when worry and fear dominate the subconscious mind, and conscious awareness isn’t fully employed, you attract what you don’t desire. However, you can’t put on rose-colored glasses and ignore negativity. That’s utterly unrealistic. But you can choose to work with it, rather than let it overwhelm and overcome you.
When I get caught up in the doom and gloom, and I worry about money, and I think about my weight rather than my fitness, I create a self-defeating loop. Self-sabotage from the shadows that I’d notice if I gave more energy to active conscious awareness. At least, that’s what I think I’m dealing with when it comes to this nagging sense I can’t shake.
I’ve always been an overthinker. That’s derailed me a few times, caught me off guard other times, and left me questioning what the actual fuck more than once. This nagging sense I can’t shake? It’s all the subconscious bullshit I’m not wringing out of the sponge of my subconscious with more mindfulness.
So, what can I do with this? Where do I go from here? How?
Addressing this nagging sense I can’t shake
The key here is going to require me to practice more active conscious awareness. Take more time and give more energy to practicing mindfulness.
This is all about practical mindfulness. That starts by asking the usual questions to get into my head, heart, and soul. You know them:
- What am I thinking?
- What and how am I feeling?
- What am I currently intending?
- Is my approach to things more positive or negative?
- What am I doing or not doing?
To all of these, there is a follow-up I can add:
- Why?
To really get at this, I need to take more time for checking in with myself. Daily meditation is all well and good. But I need to pause more, do some deep breathing, slow my heart, and take stock, then ask these questions of myself without expectation. Several times a day.
That’s not so hard, especially when that’s time that I’m currently getting lost mindlessly musing about nothing. This almost surely could explain, at least in part, where that nagging sense is coming from.
I know that it’s also tied to not enough. A sense of insufficiency, both tangible and intangible. I think and feel that I should be doing more, maybe literally, maybe figuratively, maybe both. More of this, more that, more of the other things. There’s an unaddressed lack – which is probably utter bullshit – tied directly to that nagging sense.
Who expects this of me? Probably me. I hold onto outmoded beliefs and values that cause me to feel insufficient and lacking.
Most likely, there’s more than one answer (to these questions, pointing me in a crooked line. Sorry. IYKYK). Maybe the key here is that I need to ask them more, and more mindfully.
Food for thought and something new to practice, starting now.
Do you get a nagging sense you can’t shake? And if you do, what do you do about it?
This is the seventh-hundred-forty-seventh (747, but not the airplane) exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – applying mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.
I share my philosophy because I desire to make a difference in the world and help as many people as I can to find their empowerment with conscious reality creation.
Thank you for joining me. Feel free to share and/or repost where it might do good for you and others.
The first year of Pathwalking, including some expanded ideas, is available here.
Also, please check out my author website for the rest of my published fiction and nonfiction works.
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