Can you feel competing emotions & still do what you want?
And how?
Hello fellow readers and personal development enthusiasts! Welcome back to a new round of Making mental health simpler.
Every time I approach this subject, it’s almost always a surprise for others.
Can you feel competing emotions at the same time and still function? Can you have negative thoughts about a topic and still do it?
Just take a moment and think about this. What is your experience?
Picture this situation:
You are about to do something new. You embark on a new project that is both exciting, challenging, and sometimes scary.
You want to do this. It’s important to you and you have dreamed about this for a long time.
And as you are picturing yourself doing this, how you are acing the job - the challenge - the whatever - your mind starts talking to you:
“Mhm, but what if you will freeze and can’t say a word?”
“Mhm, how about you say something stupid.”
“How about if you just suck at it? You’ve sucked before at tasks.”
And now you start to feel a bump in your throat. And nauseous. And anxiety hits. And panic.
Then frustration and anger.
“Why do I keep doing this? How am I going to do this when I can’t even picture myself doing it?”
Sounds familiar?
What do you feel like doing when you get stuck to those thoughts? Give up? Distract yourself? Postpone the beginning of the project? Secretly hope that it will get canceled.
Me too. I think that too.
It’s so common.
What if I told you that you don’t need to be stuck in just one thought?
This is like listening to just one instrument in a symphony. Or a rock concert. Whichever you prefer.
Imagine you are listening to Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. There are a lot of instruments there - a couple of electric guitars, a bass, drums, piano, some violins, the voice of course.
How would you imagine the song would sound like if one instrument were missing? Probably it will still sound like Bohemian Rhapsody, but not quite.
It’s the same as buying into one thought in this situation - you only see the anxiety, the negative thinking, the criticism & self-doubt. And while you are stuck in them, trying to figure them out and eliminate them, you lose sight of the concert or the song.
But you want to do this. The new challenge, job, or task is important to you.
It takes you towards what matters to you. It gives you purpose.
That’s the concert. That’s the whole song. That is how important things work.
With all the instruments going together - you cannot eliminate some of them and it doesn’t make sense just to focus on just one of them.
You will have self-doubt and criticism and anxiety and enthusiasm and curiosity and responsibility. They are all there.
At some point, you might hear the voice more - at other times the piano - at other times the bass, maybe the drums. But you welcome them all and all of them form what is the song - or your experience.
So next time you are faced with a challenging situation and your mind starts to get flooded with thoughts emotions & all, just try to sit back and enjoy the concert.
Then do what you want to do.
Good luck!