My brain always goes to the darkest conclusions first. I assume we're all guilty of that on occasion, but man, mine does it every time. Even on the smallest things. Let me give you an example. Last week, I opened my main door, looked outside, and saw that my garbage can was gone. I only have one garbage can, so I was instantly upset. What should've been a minor inconvenience turned into my inner-macabre being unleashed. Where was I going to put my garbage now? What if the neighborhood animals got into the bags and made a mess? Who would steal someone's garbage can?
I started wondering if my property wasn't safe anymore. I was going back into my security camera footage to find out who took it, but I couldn't place a culprit. Were people emerging in the middle of the night to steal my stuff? Was anything else missing? Was it someone I knew? As I started furiously logging into Amazon to buy a new can, my ride pulled up. When I went outside to leave, I saw my garbage can, twenty feet away. The wind had blown it down the steps and off the landing.
This type of quick, dark, doom-thinking applies to me in many areas. How long will I have to wait for my rides? Am I going to be on the phone all day with the gas company for their billing error? I have a client deadline that I'll never make on time. We often sensationalize things to be worse than they are. Sometimes, that thing you've put off for six months actually only took ten minutes to do. Maybe that hangout that you had been dreading going to was actually quite fun. Maybe that billing error will end in your favor. But human nature says that we tend to bellyache over the simplest things, and allow our anxieties to make those molehills into mountains that cause us self-loathing.
We (myself included) need to work more to train our brains upon the potential positive outcomes. Sometimes, simply attacking things head on will save us time and heartache if we simply start doing them. So the next time that something relatively minor happens, pause. Breathe deeply. Take a second to assess and start gathering the information you need. Ask yourself how much time it'll take. Maybe it's only one night of your life. Maybe it's only ten minutes. Maybe you can knock out one piece at a time, making the task into easily attainable, smaller goals. Training our brains in this way will save us anxiety, and getting these tasks done will give us a sense of pride and accomplishment. Now I'm going to check on my garbage can.
Love yourselves, and each other,
Jason Burke
