So I've recently decided to join the Toastmasters. There are a couple reasons for this. One is that, even though I'm considered fairly accomplished in my career and academic pursuits throughout my life, my ADHD throughout my childhood and teen years have caused me to develop a complex with regards to public speaking (and speaking around people I don't know well). Another reason for joining is that I want to learn more about leadership, improve my professional vocabulary, learn how to be more concise, and better explain complicated topics to people not in my field of expertise.
So on to the reason for this post. What do you tell yourself when you wake up each morning? Do you tell yourself lies? Do you lie to yourself on purpose? Are the lies positive or negative? Are you saying to yourself "man, today is going to be rough, I don't even want to get out of bed" or are do you find yourself saying "It's hopeless and I'm not sure if I can do it"?
If you do, I'd say there's a fair amount of lying that occurs frequently. While you may not often consider yourself to be an untruthful person with others (and likely you really are very caring and compassionate!) I find that too many of us get stuck mistreating and not being truthful with ourselves. When we are telling ourselves that life is hopeless from the time we wake up in the morning, we are already painting our narrative on the day's canvas and never even give ourselves the opportunity to perceive the day objectively in order to take in the wonders that the world brings within each moment.
While it's normal for humans, with our wonderful brains, to remember past events and apply learned lessons to future events, there does become a separation from living with fear bread from detrimental anticipations about the narrative we *think* might become our reality. The irony behind this is that the more time we spend anticipating, the more the narrative becomes our reality.
I'm not a major in psychology and I'd love to have further discussion in the comments from folks who have a great depth on the topic. My wife is in school for human services and had mentioned to me once during one of her psychology classes that there's a weird phenomenon in human behavior whereby when someone is told something enough times they will begin to believe it. Now, aside from the obvious sources of this occurring each day (like memes and political discussions on Facebook, for instance), I've found this true in my own life when I lie to myself about each day being hopeless or myself being worthless.
No bullshit, I literally used to wake up with my inattentive ADHD going absolutely psycho. I'd tell myself this very thing: "Oh god, you've got to go to 8 hours of work today and you didn't get enough sleep. You can't do it. Your coworkers think you're stupid. You're never going to have your own business because you don't communicate like everyone else and you are a bad listener. You aren't raising your kids right- they won't be going to college or getting anywhere in life because of you. It's only a matter of time before your life falls apart completely. You know you aren't happy in your marriage, why bother? Everybody thinks your stupid...." This would circle around my head with ADHD speeds and would cripple me. I'd end up going to work sour with everyone, assuming my thoughts were true. As a result, my narrative really would begin to become my reality.
So if we can lie to ourselves about such negative things; things that don't carry even the slightest bit of truth, but eventually convince ourselves of their truth, then wouldn't flipping the lies to positive ones also flip the end result as well?
To test this, I've been waking up every morning telling myself I'm going to change the world. What does that mean?!?! I don't know. I'm not sure what the scope of the "world" is and I'm definitely not sure how to quantify what "change" even means. In fact, both of these are strong words that could vary quite extensively in both direction AND magnitude. But I tell myself these things each morning. I say to myself
"You have two beautiful children that love you. They are smart and they love books. Your beautiful wife has backed you 100% in your journey thus far and you have a happy marriage. You are lucky to own a beautiful house with her. You have a job. Thus far, everyone in the house is healthy and they all woke up this morning! It's sunny out, what a beautiful day! You are GOING to change the WORLD!"
I wanted to write this post because I've found that the impact this new sequel to my old narrative has had on my life as of the past few months has been absolutely immense. I've been finding that with the proper self-confidence my mistakes no longer matter because I believe in myself and I've given myself a purpose. My positivity radiates around me much stronger than my mistakes. We're all human after all and mistakes are a necessary step in the process of learning.
I've found that this narrative I tell myself not only gives me positivity and purpose, but it also makes it easier to handle pain and setback. When we lie to ourselves and telling ourselves we're hopeless, any slight step backward may appear to validate these lies and further paint dark colors on the canvas of our reality. When we're glowing with purpose, taking care of ourselves and, most importantly, being kind ourselves and accepting our humanity, setbacks are embraced as a necessary step to becoming greater!
I hope that someday I DO change the world. Given that this statement implies nothing about direction or magnitude, I know achieving my PhD will validate this little lie. I also know that raising successful children, celebrating my 50th anniversary, and helping my community will also validate this lie. By giving myself such an open goal and accepting my purpose to strive for it, I have managed to fill most, if not all my days with joy and a much more positive (and healthy) anticipation of my future.
Cheers!
"I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself." ~ Aldous Huxley
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