If you are reading this and haven’t had a negative thought or experienced a negative person or media experience through this time, you may be a cartoon character – disconnected from real life! 😊
I call BS if you haven’t travelled down the dark hole. It’s inevitable; in fact, it is normal. At moments my own dark thoughts have taken hold; I’ve found myself spinning down when overwhelmed with my current life situation.
This is a normal reaction. We’re born with a negativity bias, we tend to pay more attention to negative experiences than we do to positive experiences (you can research the negativity bias if you’re interested in finding out more}.
What’s less normal – because most of us weren’t taught this – is to look at things with a different perspective and lean toward the positive.
There’s a difference between sharing someone’s experience of sadness or struggle and judging or criticizing. We need to be there for our friends and families and allow them to share their experiences without telling them how they should feel or what should worry them. We have to allow them their emotions and avoid judging their experiences; we don’t get to choose which emotions they are allowed to experience. Many people have wanted to bring me down in my personal life and in my work. I work hard not to listen to the naysayers. It’s something that takes a conscious and steady reframing of my thoughts; and I choose whose opinion I allow in my life.
I’m borrowing this concept, ‘Who gets to be the CEO of your life?’, from Kris Carr, New York Times best selling author, wellness activist and cancer thriver. If you are running a company and there are individuals who are toxic to the work environment, who aren’t productive and don’t work well with others, you’d fire them – wouldn’t you? It’s the same with your life: you get to decide who you’re going to have on your team. Who is going to help support your well-being, your mental health. You get to decide whose opinion matters.
Imagine your thoughts are like an annoying, rosy-faced aunt. Someone who pinches your cheeks, talks over you, doesn’t listen to what you’re saying and is just plain pushy. You may interact with her infrequently or, maybe, more often than you want. However, you get to decide how you’re going to respond to her. You can choose to let her be herself and accept her for who she is. You can choose not to take her behaviour or words personally.
It’s the same thing with your thoughts. You get to choose which thoughts you take personally. I ask myself, “Does this thought support my well-being”? If it doesn’t, I must make the conscious choice to change it. This is hard work; it’s like choosing to train for a marathon. You must make the commitment to train everyday and there will be moments when you’ll want to give up and hibernate in your bed, but you’re going to have to go out in bad weather. It’s all about choosing the hard route and knowing that you will be better for it. You will be a better version of yourself by changing your thoughts and choosing what you want to hear in your head, what you want to believe is true and what you want your present life to feel like.
One way to do this is to write down the positive things that you’d like to hear. Describe your visions for the future. Imagine the good that will come out of this pandemic. You’re not sticking your head in the sand – you’re doing this to nurture your mental health.
Understand this: if you focus on the negative you will bring the negative into reality. If you’re able to focus on the outcomes that you most want, you will be able to create them. Your thoughts create your reality and you get to choose your thoughts. You also get to be kind and patient with yourself when your thoughts are not in alignment with how you want to feel. Take a deep breath, don’t criticize yourself and pull up the thoughts you’ve been cultivating. It will feel awkward and maybe even like you’re faking it. What you’re doing is learning to run a marathon, you’re learning resiliency; eventually, this will take less effort.
It’s the same thing with the news. It’s important to stay informed but watch your temptation to get sucked into the negative replay of someone else’s perspective. We’re aware that the news is meant to captivate us, and it does so by fixating on things that bring us fear to keep us believing we need to tune in. Our fear tries to convince us that if we don’t listen we will miss something important. That’s not the case. It’s important to stay informed, but if being informed sends you into panic, anxiety and worst-case scenarios, than it’s not serving you.
Choose what serves you. Choose what thoughts you want to listen to, whose perspectives you want to chime in your ear. Allow yourself to use this challenging time to help grow into whom you’re ready to become. Remember, every time we are faced with challenge, we get to choose whether it break us down or break us open.
With love
Noelle
I am sharing meditations and talks on my Facebook & Instagram page, however, Instagram & YouTube seem to be the easiest place for uploading. If you can, subscribe to my IG page @bovonnoelle to get regular mindful offerings. I am also uploading content to my YouTube page.
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