Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habit. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
-Laozi
Every winter, I am reminded of how much more time it takes to get the family out of the house due to weather conditions. To begin, we have to wake up when it is still dark outside, and get ready with little to no natural light! We have to put coats, snow pants, boots, mittens, hats, and scarves on each individual. Then we have to ensure that we can safely leave the house; which generally involves shovelling snow, chipping away at ice and salting. Next we dig out the car, warm it up, and head out, driving slowly and carefully. Or we trek it to public transportation, dressed in our bulky clothes, and navigate paths that are often not completely cleared. We trudge along through snow, ice, sludge, and my favourite, yucky grey puddles of ice cold water at sidewalk ramps, and then join the many who have done the same.
Winter slows us down and arguably makes us less productive. The same route that takes us 45 minutes from home, to dropping off kids, to work in the summer, now takes 1 hour and 15 minutes at least in the winter! And we do this cheerlessly until spring pops up! How many of you can relate to this?
Now, what if I told you that negative thinking does the same to us as winter weather often does? It slows us down, it makes us less productive, and it makes us unhappier. Basically, it eats up our valuable time and energy.
Negative thinking makes us question our abilities, search for answers outside of ourselves when we already have them within, and makes us feel we have to get more prepared to do things in fear that our outcomes will not be good enough.
Starting your day without sunlight → Starting your tasks with low energy
Just like waking up in the dark in the winter, when you think negatively you are in the dark when approaching a task. This gives you less energy and motivation to move forward with the task.
One way to combat this is to visualize success. Spend a minute before doing something and picture a positive outcome. Picture yourself getting the job, making your target, finishing your ‘To Do’ list. Put that positive energy out there, and that might add light to your project, at least it would add light to the end of the tunnel.
Putting on all the snow gear → Bracing yourself for possible obstacles
When you are bracing yourself, you are spending a lot of time preparing, sometimes “over-preparing” for your tasks instead of just doing them, because you are not sure you are enough without them. The longer you do this, the more worry and anxiety you build up about doing the task. This likely can be a form of procrastination, which is a sign of unhealthy perfectionism.
While it is helpful to pep yourself up beforehand, the messages you say can affect how your task goes. You can reasonably prep yourself, and plan, but then you must at some point JUMP IN to your task. Instead, try not to focus on planning but focus on doing. Sound difficult? Break the task down into steps, and do a step or two at a time. Then, celebrate your accomplishments.
Cleaning off sidewalks → Focusing on removing perceived obstacles and not the task
These obstacles cost energy when you work to to remove them and could likely be placed by your negative thinking, or might not even be there at all. Since your negative thinking has caused you to second-guess yourself, you spend more time working against the external pressures or messages that you have received than you feel match your concerns.
If you focus on why you are completing the task, instead of why it is hard to do, you will get further. Maybe not all of your tasks have a deep intrinsic purpose, but it might be worth your time to play the “Why?” game. This is where you keep asking yourself why you are engaging in a behaviour/task/chore until you come to the core reason for doing it. You may even come up with a profound reason you lost in your negative thinking.
Cheerlessly trekking through difficult conditions → Unhappily going through your experiences
Have you ever felt like you were dragging yourself through a task that you really didn’t want to do? Did the work come out stellar? If you aren’t enjoying what you are doing, then you aren’t producing efficiently or effectively.
A friend of mine learned a brilliant strategy called CYT (Check Your Thoughts). In this strategy you put 10 notes with the words CYT in the places you often frequent. Then, each time you see the note, you have to reflect on your thought, and determine whether it is positive or negative. After doing this for a while, you notice patterns, figure out what makes you happy, what brings you down, and figure out how to change the situations that bring you down (potentially adding an inspiring quote, or a funny comic with the CYT note). Furthermore, you will find yourself working towards thinking positive thoughts on your way to the notes, because well, that’s the goal.
Riding public transportation with other grumpy people → Sharing negative energy with people around you
We’ve all been there. You feed into and feed off of the negative energy in and around you. It is very easy to both give and receive negative energy.
It is hard to try to be the only person thinking positively in a crowd. So, don’t be! Instead, seek out other positive thinkers and feed each other’s off positive energy. You cannot avoid all negative thinkers all the time, but you can work towards balancing the energies out a bit more.
You might think that negative thinking just like winter weather is inevitable. But it doesn’t have to be. If you really dreaded winter morning routines you could make the effort to work from home, take turns with your neighbour to shovel your sidewalks, or even relocate yourself to a warmer climate. This would take more work initially, but it would pay off in the long run. Similarly, you can reprogram your brain to think more positively, instead of negatively. Again, this would take some effort to get started, but think of how much you’ll benefit from the change. Need an incentive? Imagine your days feeling brighter and warmer, instead of gloomy and overcast. So while you cannot control the weather, you can control how you think and feel about the weather, and more importantly, your life. And that positive attitude will help you weather any changes in the forecast.
