Enguasada Pero Motivada: Epi 4 The Rabbit Whole
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On new years I took a steaming hot shower like I always do. It’s in the shower that I do much of my reflecting and have full and complete thoughts. Or so I thought.
During this shower I was listening to a spotify curated radio station. I wasn’t really feeling the station, specifically because of two songs by separate artists. The first artists typically sings in spanish but recently put out an album with songs in english, one of which played during my shower. I gravitate towards lyrics that show me a landscape, that make me feel all the emotions and feed my obsession for fantasy and escapism. These lyrics however were very plain. Not plain, no, they were very stripped down. The other artist song I was listening to was a song off of a second volume of folkloric covers. This particular artist has for some years moved to singing covers in her style of singing. These are all great songs, but I was missing songs they constructed from scratch. All of this to say I did not like these songs.
And that’s where the thought would have ended, but my brain is funny. When it thinks something is wrong, it won’t let me continue on with my life. It thrives from complexity. So down the rabbit hole I went.
After my shower I wrapped myself in my towel, sat on the edge of the shower tub and went back to those two songs. This time I really listened to the lyrics, the style in which they sang, I thought of the arrangements. I came to the conclusion that while I did not prefer the songs, I did appreciate them and could understand them and that frankly, I did not make a thorough assessment of their music.
When I understood that my heart and brain did that simultaneous little excited kick they do when they *get it*. It had been so easy just to accept their new songs as boring. Instead of understanding why I did not actually like the songs, I was dismissive initially. However, In giving myself the opportunity to unpack, I was allowed to arrive at a full and complete thought.
What I learned from this shower was essentially that not all my thoughts or opinions are complete. And that brought on a deeper question.
If my general thoughts are incomplete, how much of my opinions of myself are also incomplete?
Well, shit.
When I first started El Arte del Anhelo, I was so motivated. But once I started to post and share, thoughts about how others would react to my work really began infiltrating my brain. Was this playlist full of mainstream songs? Did I really want to put my heart out like that? Was I just full of shit? I began to chip away at myself and the confidence I started with began diminishing. I viewed these thoughts as facts about my life and saw them as accurate predictors of my future. I didn’t explore why I was having those thoughts. I just let them come and take home in my mind, and worse, I let them make decisions for me.
I don’t like to dwell on the what ifs, but what would have happened if I had pushed past those intrusive thoughts? Perhaps I would have been able to name the emotion. I would have seen it was fear and feelings of inadequacy reappearing in my life again. I would have been able to workout then that this was another instance where my confidence was down but not broken. During those times I allowed those initial thoughts to be fact. I didn’t challenge these thoughts and instead I accepted them so easily.
That shower epiphany showed me that moving forward, I needed to allow myself the space and time for introspection before providing a response either to myself or others. It also reminded me that I needed to have a plan for when I would spiral into a negative self-talk loop as those left a long-lasting impact on my self-confidence.
Since this shower, I have had quite a few moments where I have had to challenge myself. In these moments I found myself asking questions in an effort to push myself to not stay stuck on a negative thought. While these questions may not work for all situations or people, I hope that these questions become tools in your toolbox.
Here are a few of the questions that have helped me in those moments:
Is this thought/opinion coming from a place of hurt?
For me, some of my wounds are so obvious to me and I can name them pretty quickly. I like to ask this question because these are the wounds that typically get activated easily and in that same way they are much more easy to pinpoint. When I explore this question in these moments I find myself on the other side pretty quicky and feel like I *won*. These little wins allow me to keep asking questions if necessary.
When else have you experienced this thought/opinion?
Similarly to the first question, but a little more intense for me, is the when else question. It’s a little hard to explore this one, but it is helpful to me to identify another situation in which I experienced something similar to see how I handled it then and what I can take away from that situation and apply to the situation at hand.
Is this thought/opinion taking everything into account or is it skewed?
In moments where it is very difficult to think positively or see the future, I am essentially attempting to bring myself into a place of neutrality. In this question I am trying to gently nudge myself to consider all the facts, but if I can’t, I can at least come back to a base level.
Is this thought/opinion a rough draft or is it the final version?
This is a bit silly but I have been using this question the most. If this thought was a persuasive essay would it be a rough draft or would you be comfortable turning this in for a grade? Did you research all positions? Did you consider all arguments? Did you use wikipedia or use google scholar? Did you cite your sources? Are your sources credible? It’s a bit funny but it let’s me understand the difference between an incomplete and complete thought as well as understanding why an argument makes no sense at all.
While I am still in the unpacking phase for much of this, I wanted to share this with you early in the year. Those of us who struggle with confidence can find ourselves stuck in a loop that really limits us from doing the things we aspire to. Life is really complicated.Experiences can really chip at us and bruise our hearts and minds. In turn, negative experiences can co-opt of mindset and self-confidence. And sometimes we need to be stubborn and try in our own way to see past the first thoughts that appear in our brains. Sometimes we need to ask all the questions before allowing thoughts to fully take place in our brain.
My hope in writing this is more so to show others that many of our negative thoughts/opinions about ourselves are incomplete thoughts and negative thoughts/opinions interrupt our flow. Hopefully in sharing this early in the year, those of us still struggling can use this as a tool.
As always, I wish you all the best. Happy new year!
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