Like sweat in our eyes, water in our ears, oil on our skin.
How much of what we think and perceive about ourselves internally and the external world are beneficial vs detrimental?
This was something I asked myself a lot last year. At the time I was using the terms productive vs counter productive. I found myself asking how much of my thoughts, perceptions, feelings, and actions were/are productive vs counter productive?
It’s a question we all need to ask ourselves. The data on depression, anxiety, stress, negativity, mental health, etc all keeps going in the wrong direction. I personally believe much of that has to do with late stage capitalism and being forced to participate regardless of our physical, mental, or emotional health.
That is an external reason. Internally however, we do need to take responsibility for our the way we think, perceive, feel, and act. At least at a 51/49 split.
I’m still doing the work of changing myself for the better based on my own standards, my own goals, and what works for me. It came as a surprise, whether it should have or not, that I was not doing what works for me in multiple areas of my life.
We all have our issues. We all have experienced trauma. The world breaks everybody. But I found myself day after day, noticing detrimental habits of thought, perception, and action. And when I would think; “why am I like this” or “why do I do this?” The answer has yet to be one of external blame. The answer has also yet to be a singular thing.
It’s layers of emotional reactivity to events, situations, and challenges that I developed unconscious responses to. A stimulus happened and I reacted unconsciously and built layers of detrimental thoughts, perceptions, feelings, and actions as my response(s).
I dug a hole for myself. I fell underwater. I got lost in darkness.
Meditation, journaling, philosophy have all helped me little by little to dig out, swim to the shore, and walk towards the light.
Little by little, day by day, one choice at a time.
Then a slip up happens. A mistake repeated. Then comes the challenge of not beating myself further down into the hole underwater in the darkness. The habit of making a bad situation worse with negative emotional reactivity.
The habit of having a detrimental perception of myself. That for me has been maybe the most consistent challenge. That was the eye opener. How much of my self talk was negative. How I was my own worst enemy and critic.
And why? For doing what? I wasn’t hurting anyone else. I wasn’t causing harm or misfortune to bystanders or people in my life. But I would berate myself like I was being paid handsomely to do it. Why?
The habit of negative emotional reactivity. Unconscious negative reactions to minor situations. Making a mountain out of a molehill. Detrimental perceptions.
Cultivating the space between stimulus and response with meditation, journaling, philosophy, and spirituality practices has been the yin to the aforementioned yang. The white to the black. The silence to the sound. The beneficial to the detrimental.
