One of the hardest places to see where things could be different is in our own head. Our thoughts. The story we tell ourselves. Sometimes there’s an uninvited narrator or commentator in there who we can disagree with if we like. The trick is to see that commentator. When someone suggested that I consider taking a break from grad school because I seemed stressed, I heard an almost audible voice in my head say, “You can’t do that—then you’d fall a year behind.” It didn’t really seem like my thought even though it got in my head somehow. “A year behind in what?” I asked it. In grad school, sure, but not in life. If I spent a happy healthy year somewhere breathing in and out, how would I be behind?
I landed in tropical Hawaii for a year, ran my first marathon, tended a bar, got laid off, surfed, and saw a rainbow made with moonlight instead of sunlight, a “moonbow” they call it. I didn’t feel behind in anything.
Catch your thoughts, and put them in their place.
(Attribution Note: I first saw “DON’T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU THINK” on a bumper sticker and I’m not sure where it came from originally. It looks like Allan Lokos wrote “Don’t believe everything you think. Thoughts are just that—thoughts.” in his book Pocket Peace: Effective Practices for Enlightened Living in 2010. If someone said it before that, I’m sorry but I can’t find the source.)