I’m afraid of the process.
More specifically, afraid of the editing process. I try to ‘fight’ my own standards of good enough, but I cringe hard to the point of almost vomiting.
The writing is bad enough, but then add voice and video? Or how about live speaking?
MORTIFIED!
The avocado turns ripe, and the opportunities fade; the momentum slows down; the competition goes nuts, growing fast and popular.
I’m then left behind. Invisible.
That’s the cloud of negativity talking, by the way.
The cloud grows big, heavy at times.
The thoughts become dark. The paranoia alarm goes off, and it’s all downhill from there.
It’s a nasty feeling that leads me to create huge bottlenecks. If I’m not paying attention to unhealthy patterns, then I’m more likely to self-sabotage.
When there’s no trust or hope in my language, I start doubting my abilities, so it becomes a difficult journey to find a focus.
Today, I play the game of switching back to okay as fast as possible.
After years of mindfulness practice, I can feel how the dark cloud eclipses my heart. I’m able to literally sense the heavyweight and lack of brightness of it.
Mark Divine, former Navy SEAL Commander, gives us a 4 step key to winning the battle. He calls it WIRM.
I love me some white male power realness sometimes.
“Negativity destroys performance, so it is crucial to train to move from witnessing negative thoughts to starving them and feeding the positive.” – Mark Divine
First, we must Witness negativity:
You can train this ability with meditation and practice with the little the small things that trigger you.
Meditation is NOT about getting rid of thoughts, as Emily Fletcher says: “Thinking during meditation is actually an indicator that some stress is leaving the body. This is where the healing happens. Better out than in, right? When you feel those thoughts coming up and out, know that it is stress exiting your nervous system.”
This means that potentially the best mediation sessions are the ones in which there’s a stream of thoughts. We are digesting and releasing the thoughts; otherwise, they just get locked up inside our bodies.
“The mind THINKS involuntarily just like the heart BEATS involuntarily.” – Emily Fletcher
Secondly, Interdict (or stop) those thoughts with a power statement.
Third, Redirect and shift your language to something positive. Bring good vibes with positive self-talk and positive visualizations.
Finally, Maintain that mental state with a mantra or tagline.
How do I kill the negativity by doing the WIRM?
When I feel my anxiety symptoms kicking in, or I start to hear nasty thoughts, I take a deep breath through the nose.
By the way, a deep breath doesn’t mean bigger, it means deeper into you. Take 30% of your breath and send it to your belly, hold it for a second and exhale a little longer than the inhale. After a few of those, I usually feel a better sense of calm and okayness.
When I’m meditating, I try to see thoughts like if I’m looking at the cinema. It’s how the brain processes our experiences.
The darker the thoughts, the more I have to stay still, let those thoughts go by without any kind of rumination.
When I start doubting my abilities, like when I doubt my writing skills, I calm down by reminding myself that art is never done, only abandoned.
I witness it and stop it a power statement.
I start remembering that all I can do is serve you, my reader. You don’t really care if this idea is new or not, you only care if this is useful.
Then I go for an optimist journaling run with this prompt: “If everything turned out the way I wanted, what would my ideal self look like any time in the future?”
The idea is to journal about the future with optimism for 20 minutes, it doesn’t really matter if it’s in 5 years, 3 or 1 year, or tomorrow, whenever; the goal is to journal with optimism.
Slowly, the sun comes out. The dark cloud is almost gone, and I get to work.
This exercise reminds me to Go forward with hope, a mantra I’ve been using for the past few months and keeps me feeling curious.
How could you identify your dark negativity clouds?
