If you hold a stone close to your eye it appears to be the size of a boulder, but if you toss it far from you it’s nearly imperceptible.
Have you ever had negative emotions and false perceptions throw you into a depressed mood out of nowhere? BAM! Just like that.
Even after following a healthy regime for months and making progress, it can still happen. Here’s how I deal with these little bumps in the road that can potentially throw you off your upward momentum, or worse, discourage you from following your regime altogether.
This morning I went over to a friends to help him with his computer. I’m experienced at building computers and I do a pretty good job of staying up to date on the current tech for the purposes of photo/video editing. My friend produces content with his computer and I was feeling the pressure to not mess things up leaving him without one of the main tools to do his work. As with many computer related projects, there was a roadblock that kept us from achieving our desired outcome. The outcome we wanted was a serious performance improvement, but what we got was no noticeable improvement at all! I was completely focused on the project at hand and wasn’t paying close attention to my own feelings and emotions. Once we’d done all we could, I left to go home. Then it all caught up with me. The dread of a sudden depressed mood hit me hard.
On the way home I found my thoughts overrun with negativity. I felt like a failure, like my friend was angry with me, like I had total responsibility for things not working out quite right. I drove right passed my turn and took a detour down by the bay to sort out my thoughts and see if I could salvage the day. After taking a calming drive around town I parked up at the local coffee spot. While sitting there in my car I sent an apologetic text for leading my friend in the wrong direction. After thinking it through it struck me that I was listening to the voice of depression. Depression always lies
So here are the simple steps I took to change the direction of my thoughts and all those negative feelings.
1) Question every thought that enters your consciousness. Are your thoughts based on the facts? Are they positive? Are they dead end thoughts like (“I’m a failure”, or “I can’t make good decisions”)?
2) Sort through those thoughts and actively reject the ones that are not logical in the real world. If a thought is telling you that “it’s all your fault” reject it by asking yourself if that fault even matters. So what if “it’s” your fault. Does “it” actually matter? Is there a major penalty for making a mistake? Probably not, so move on and learn from “it”. Negative thoughts should be easy to recognize. They are the ones that are entirely blind to a bright side. They see only negative. There is a bright side or positive to nearly every possible outcome, or at the very least there should be an alternate route to bypass the dread the thoughts are giving you, so if you see only darkness in the situation reject it. And dead end thoughts are the kind that always lead deeper into the darkness. They tell you there is no fix or alternate outcome. Reject them all until you can see through to reality.
3) Once you’ve sorted through the fog, forgive yourself if there is a legitimate failure and move on with your day.
4) Now get out of your own head and get around the people that love and support you!
The take-away
After following these steps, I recognize that I was taking it all to seriously to start with. I’m competent and unlikely to make a major error, so I was putting undue stress on myself from the beginning.
The thoughts that were telling me that “I never do anything right” were easy to reject because I have a history of successes doing similar things. And friends are notoriously forgiving, and often times see a very different narrative than you do to start with. The narrative your friends see seldom includes you as the villain.
I’m sure you understand what I’m saying. It’s important to assess your thought life and the garbage in your head to sort through it to discern between reality and distorted perception. Depression and depressed thoughts don’t work in reality; they are distorted. They melt when held to the light. If you hold a stone close to your eye it appears to be the size of a boulder, but if you toss it far from you it’s nearly imperceptible. That’s how we can be deceived by negative thoughts if we let them cover our vision of the rest of the world around us. I hope this helps. Take care!
-David