A Spotlight

Regardless of how well I might be doing overall, negativity can still sneak in.  Thoughts come and go, with or without my approval.  I could be doing great in 99.9% of everything I'm trying to accomplish, yet if I'm struggling mentally for any reason, my mind fills with negative thoughts because of that little 0.1% of struggle.  And unfortunately, the negative thoughts don't just confine themselves to just the 0.1%, but rather they spread until I convince myself they apply to everything right across the board.

I've always done my best to just ignore these thoughts.  I felt that ignoring them was the right way to address them.  Yet those are two totally different things. And so when many of these old thoughts flooded my mind after last nights class, I found myself wondering if by pushing these thoughts down, and trying to brush them under a rug, I was inadvertently giving them a place to grow, which only enabled them to come back easier and stronger at the first sign of adversity.  And so I decided to try something.  I decided to put them all down in writing and stare at them head on.  By putting a spotlight directly on them, I hope to make the recurrences both less frequent and hopefully weaker.  So here we go.

I'm too old to be doing this.

I'm too weak and slow compared to my classmates.

It's not that complicated.  I must be a complete moron for not being able to do [this].

I will never be quick enough in mind or in body to spar or grapple or even defend myself.

I look like an idiot when I try to do [this].

I don't belong here amongst these other, much better, martial artists.

I'm not nearly in good enough shape to think I could be good at this.

I don't belong in the front row.

I don't deserve this belt (or stripe).

Why haven't I earned [this] stripe, when everyone else has?  I'm obviously not as good as I wish I was.

I'm a fraud for posing as a leader when I'm so brutal at most of this.

If I can't do [this], then why bother with any of it.

I am the absolute worst at [this].

I've been doing this for [this long] and still suck at [this].

Everyone else is so much better.

What makes me think I can teach anyone else when I can't even do some of this stuff myself.

I'm never going to get any better.

Much of my "skill" is both laughable and embarrassing.

I'm so far behind that I may as well just give up.

Why is everyone else progressing and I am not?

Why does this seem to come so naturally to others but not to me?

What is the point of working so hard for such small steps of progress?

Now I've paraphrased most of these thoughts in the interest of simplicity.  But I think you more or less get the gist of the many negative thoughts I will find in my mind at times.  Some of these thoughts are mere flashes that barely register.  Some might gain traction and last for days or more.  Some are ego-based.  Some might make me look not so great.  But they are all thoughts that have been in my mind at some point.  And I'm sure they will come again at some point in the future.  As I said, my hope is that this exercise will prove to make them less frequent and less substantial.  But that will remain to be seen for now.

What WAS interesting with this exercise, and what was apparent very quickly, was that when I put them down in writing and actually looked at them and acknowledged them, I realized I had a response, or refutation, for every single one.  EVERY. SINGLE. ONE.  Not only that, but once I pulled them out of the shadows in the darkest corners of my mind, they became less scary, and more absurd.  And suddenly, they already had less power.

What's important is not that I try to never have these thoughts.  That would be impossible.  What's important is that I don't just let them sit there unchecked with the potential to do real harm.  That I, instead, acknowledge them, respond to them and recognize them for what they are.  And what they are is lies.