What you believe to be true can be half-truth or a complete lie.
Thoughts are insanely quick judgements, conclusions you form in your mind. They are so quick, that only a trained, mindful-mind, if you will, is able to catch them. It’s a folly to associate their effect on us based on their short presence. These wily, slippery manifestations of our mind determine who we are and what we do.
From the moment you start having coherent thoughts till now, your brain had ample time to form a perception of yourself and the world.
If for 15 years of your life, like one of my counselling clients, you told yourself “I am a disappointment. I don’t know what I’m doing in my life. My friends are better off without me. They must be speaking behind my back. I am a failure. My family problems will melt away if I disappear”- you start believing it to be a fact. Your brain forms connections which play the song ‘You are a failure, you are lost in life, and your friends hate you’. Don’t blame your brain, it grows on what you feed it.
Our thoughts become so strong that we believe it to be absolute truth. ‘Taj Mahal is situated in Agra’ is an absolute truth. You thinking, “I am ugly” is your personal opinion, your belief. Even if a million people tell you that you are ugly, it is a million people’s opinion- it still doesn’t become a fact.
I’ll give another example. Human eye can’t see the UV rays. Does that mean they don’t exist? Just because our eyes lack the tools to see them, it doesn’t render them imaginary. Now if you only look at your flaws; remind yourself of the times you screwed up, did something embarrassing; you are closing your eyes to all the times you actually did great!
We are big hypocrites- us anxious, depressed lot. We use different measures to judge others and us. We celebrate a friend achieving a win. But if we do something good- “meh.. anyone can do it”. I’m one of the hypocrites too. All this talk of ‘see the glass as half full’ is easier said than done. Come night, I believe that the curtain movement is definitely a ghost.
What sets us different than people who are equally talented to us is the script going on in our heads. I’ve noticed that the confident inflate the importance and celebrate the smallest achievement, telling it to the whole world. They are telling themselves “It was challenging, but I did it. I can do anything I want to.” This sets them on a different path than us, we, who look at their achievements and conclude, "That person is so smart and talented. Here I can’t do a simple task. So useless I am”.
I, being a Mental Health Professional, am not immune to my irrational thoughts. It’s difficult to believe the contrary. Our irrational thoughts, however, wrecking they are, are our own Taj Mahal. Letting go of them means making changes in our life. Our brain and us, we don’t like change. It’s too much work. Our poor overworking brain took so many years to form those neuronal connections. Telling it to drop everything and jump onto the new bandwagon is same as telling me to learn to use an Apple laptop (Yes I called it a laptop not a Macbook).
But the pros of using rational thoughts far outweigh using your old irrational thought system. The one and biggest pro I can think of, is this- It is for your growth. Habits are good. But they are good for things like brushing teeth or crossing road. Habits are not helpful when they support your proof-lacking, apathetic, confidence-killing irrational thoughts. If you want to grow, be happy or be successful, you need to change the song in your head.
How to overcome this huge, mighty mountain? It takes but a small, but determined step.
Being kind to yourself.
As soft and mushy as I sound, we need to be loving towards us as we are to puppies, kittens or babies. At the end of a tiring, bad day tell yourself “you got through it, you awesome person”. Give yourself that piece of cake after you achieve your goal. When you play rewind on your day when you go to bed at night, pause and revel at the moments when your colleagues said “oh that’s a great idea you suggested”, or when you are few short from reaching your documentation goal, or when your client quietly introspects the knowledge that what she has been telling herself is not absolute.
You are capable of much more.
And it all depends on what you tell yourself.
