Negative Mental Thought Patterns

I'll be honest, deciding on the subject for this first post was challenging because I didn't know where to start. A struggle of mine is wanting things to be perfect the first time, leading me to overthink and hesitate starting projects because I am unable to conceptualize a "perfect" result. Through writing more consistently and working through this mental pattern, I have come to slowly realize that the process of doing an activity regularly improves your ability over time. On top of that, the repetition can spark creativity and the flaws in your work provide opportunities for growth.

The unreasonable thought pattern of only starting something if I can envision and achieve a perfect outcome the first time has been a limiting belief of mine for some time. I have never written in this form before so how could I possibly conceptualize a perfect result? It's not feasible. To make matters even worse, I would mentally beat myself up for not being able to achieve that unreachable goal. Cognitively, I understand that it is irrational because if someone else were to tell me that they were having similar thoughts, I would be inclined to explain that it is an irrational thought pattern but I struggle with it too.

Reflecting back to try and find the root of this negative thought pattern has been tricky because of how far back I can recall thinking similar thoughts. I can recall as early as young childhood hesitating to color in a coloring book because I wanted every single page in the book to be colored perfectly with the accurate color schemes. My next thought would be "Well, I can't make that happen so I might as well not even try". When I would try to color the page, I would get upset if I made a mistake like coloring outside of the lines since it could no longer be "perfect" in my mind. It wasn't until years later that I even questioned this idea until I saw someone else coloring using an array of colors that weren't even close to an accurate color scheme. When I asked why she wasn't trying for more accurate colors of the picture, she said she just felt like coloring it differently.

I hadn't thought about that anecdote at all until just recently when I was at the store and passed by some coloring books. I saw one that caught my eye and started looking through it. I'm gonna be real, it was a Pokémon coloring book. I think Pokémon are awesome and I am OK now with putting that out there. Anyways, I was able to just look at the pictures, enjoy the nostalgia, and think about coloring with my kids. I didn't think about how it would need to be colored in perfectly and the thought of my child coloring, outside the lines and all, did not evoke any negative emotions.

Since I mentioned Pokémon, I have to mention another struggle of mine which is not being open about the things I like if I think others will negatively judge me for liking it. I would never admit that I liked Pokémon before because I didn't want to be judged for it. Similarly, I have always wanted to play Dungeons and Dragons but never actively pursued it because I believed other people would make fun of me or not perceive me as "cool". I was obsessed with what others thought of me and did not want to judged negatively. My biggest faux pas from this negative mental thought pattern in high school was not attending or participating in school activities like football games. In my mind, going to school activities like dances and games was not "cool". Ok, honestly I convinced myself that I was too cool for them. Reflecting back on that, I definitely was not cool and I missed out on a lot of socialization and growth. The point is my negative mental thought patterns had definitely prevented me from pursuing areas of interest and experiencing things in life.

These examples for me at their core are fear. Fear of failure and fear of others opinions of me. Neither one of these things should have defined me or my opinion of myself but I let these negative thought patterns have power of me and my choices. If anyone reading this can relate, I would encourage you to read The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins. This book and her concept has been very helpful for me on my journey. Mel Robbins' Let Them Theory is very simple: when you question what someone else will think about something you want to do like a social media post, just say to yourself "Let Them". Let them say or do whatever they want. We have no control over other people's thoughts and opinions so why should it have any power over what we do. If you want to share something and it's not outright hurting you or someone else, let others say what they want. They will show you who they are at that point which is valuable information so you can make the choice of what you do next. I would also encourage anyone interested in more to check out her podcast titled "The Mel Robbins Podcast". On her podcast, Mel Robbins shares her perspective on several different ways of thinking that limit our potential such as overthinking and promotes positive ways to approach life. I will leave links to her book and podcast below.

I would like to end this post with a small truth. This blog was not the original idea I had for my first post. For the last two weeks I had been thinking about and planning my first post. With my self imposed deadline coming up in a week, I had not figured out an opening paragraph so I just started writing. This is the product of that writing session, which I was able to complete, edit and post within two days. A small win for overcoming my self defeating belief of overthinking.

Make it a great day!!

https://www.melrobbins.com/letthemtheory