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Arete Warriors – spirit, mind, body strong
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It’s not what you swallow that matters most.
Dear Reader,
I never thought I could walk myself to a state of worry.
Years ago, before children, I lived about 2 miles from DU where I worked. It was an exceptionally busy time for me as we’d just moved & I had recently acquired 3 new clients (about 6-8 hours/week more work).
I was walking to & from work for my morning clients (about an hour round trip) & then again in the afternoon for the evening group.
Two hours a day of walking would normally be a really great thing. I didn’t even have earphones in. I was not listening to anything. Just enjoying the beauty around me.
At first it was lovely. As a personal trainer you have to be “on” the entire hour, every hour, so I relished the silence & reason to just practice my RBF for a while.
But after a few weeks of this, my mind started to spiral into negativity & worry.
I found myself on these walks worrying incessantly about my nieces & nephews.
My mind created all sorts of things that could go wrong with my family back home, I worried about my husband, what my friends thought of me, nuclear war… whatever!
An idle mind is the devil’s workshop. (Proverbs 16:27)
Essentially, when we are not actively engaged in something productive, our minds tend to wander into the land of negativity. It’s called negativity bias.
I’m NOT suggesting we need to be busy thinking & productive all the time! For so MANY reasons, down time & rest & even boredom are GOOD for us! In fact, most of us could use more of it.
What I am saying, is that if you find yourself ruminating in negative thought patterns, it’s time to put something positive in to break up that spiral.
I think this is where my obsessions with self-improvement books started. I started listening to positive, uplifting ideas, & lo & behold, my mind started to float in more positive directions. I felt like I had control over my thinking again.
What a GIFT!
Let’s Prepare – the warm up
A few months after this experience we lost my husband’s 20 year old sister Nadia in a plane crash.
Three day’s later, while one of her best friends was holed up with us grieving, she got the news that her sister who was home from college had just passed away unexpectedly.
It was a double whammy that had us all frozen in fear.
No one move. Don’t even breathe.
It was such a slap of realization that we have NO control over much of anything.
In the months that followed my personal grief was laced with worry & sadness for my husband & his family.
Then, I started to cough uncontrollably. This is when my 7 year sickness began.
Sometimes in life it’s hard to have a good attitude. But when you add a chronic physical sickness to devastating grief, it becomes even more challenging.
It was a dark time.
When I did go back to work, I was driving because I had to leave the house before sunrise & it was winter. We had an unattached garage, so I had to walk out our sliding glass doors, across the patio & into the garage before getting into my car.
In the dark. Alone.
My mental state was fragile so I was susceptible to that negative bias. Each morning, as I sprinted from the house to the car, I was certain a bad guy was going to be waiting for me somewhere in between.
The relief I would feel when I was in the car with the doors locked, was profound.
It was a horrible experience. Every morning.
I finally confessed this embarrassingly silly routine to a client who was exceptionally wise & sweet. She listened to me with the most compassionate eyes then explained the urgent need to fix this.
She had me picture a freshly cut tree stump. See all the rings? She then held an imaginary rock in her hand & drug it in a circle on that imaginary stump, “This is the first time you have that thought.”
There was barely a line visible from that circle drawn, but then she did it again. And again.
Pretty soon there’s a noticeable dent where those “thoughts” have accumulated.
And after many repeats, there’s an actual groove that makes it harder for the rock (my thoughts) to get out of the rut I am making.
I also remember her saying that my fear, specifically that panic that a bad guy is going to get me, “Those thoughts are not of God.”
I remember exactly where we were when we had this conversation. It obviously had a profound impact on me to be telling it to you all these years later.
But I cannot remember her name. 🙈
Let’s Work – the exercise
We all have thoughts that are not serving us.
Some of us are so deep in that groove we can’t even see a way to climb out to where the world is smooth up there.
If you think you have fat thighs, for example, you’ve probably searched for evidence to validate this.
When struggling to get into a pair of too tight jeans, you’ve probably thought to yourself, “See! These dang thunder thighs.”
Meanwhile, no fewer than 3 friends have thought to themselves, “Dang, I wish I had her legs.” Maybe one of them even said it out loud, but you didn’t hear her because that’s not the evidence you were looking for.
How many times would she have to say it before you’d start to believe that maybe SHE is right & you are delusional?
How deep is your rut?
Let’s say, you DO have thick thighs! Does your focusing on it help you in any way?
Can you see how it would serve you better in 1000 ways to instead think thoughts about how lucky you are to HAVE those thighs!? How beautiful, healthy & capable your body really is!?
Pick a thought you’ve allowed to live so long, it’s been engrained into you so deep, that now it’s a belief.
How would it feel if God, or whoever’s opinion you trust most, broke the news to you that you’re wrong?
This thought you’ve decided was true, is in fact a lie.
How light do you feel shedding the weight of that burden?
Is it worth your time to do some work uncovering a few of those thought patterns & inserting some substitutes?
It’s really none of my business, but I promise if you reply to me with it, you wouldn’t be the only one to think such things of yourself. Perhaps the act of typing it out to me would make you realize how ridiculous it is.
Perhaps not.
But I’m here to “listen” if you care to share.
In the meantime, your assignment is to come up with some positive, believable, TRUE statements that you can insert in place of the ones that aren’t serving you.
