Smaller Steps

Hey Mark... Think Fast!!!


Please forgive me. I’m still reeling from the movie “Tick… Tick… BOOM!” my husband and I just watched about how precious time is. I made a whole other post that got away from me. I didn’t know how to end it, and I feel like it might need to be its own series rather than what I wanted to say New Year’s Eve/Day. I wanted to talk about the power of small steps. I’m sure you’ve heard the laughability of it, but did you try it, and if you did, are you laughing now?

The popularity of the New Year’s resolution seems to have died off around the crowd I hang around… and my circle has gotten a lot smaller on Facebook. What do you want to change about yourself in the next year? Where do you see yourself in five years? Where do you see yourself in ten years? I hear these questions mostly in seminars that want you to think what they want you to think. But I want you to think about what YOU want to think about. 

I’m a list person. In Partial Hospitalization, they had a list of a lot of things they asked every day, so I started writing them down, and now I have a notebook where I’ve continued writing down those things every day. I’ve expanded and changed them based on how I could use it, but it’s the same basic premise. I’ve expanded the “plan” section from two things I could do after 3pm to what I do between the time I wake up and the time my husband gets home, not putting a time next to anything unless there is an appointment time necessary. Then I literally off the list as I do it to get that rush the brain sends the body when good things happen. That was a change I made to my day when my entire meaning of a day shifted to get myself more organized and to keep the depression at bay. 

I mostly talk about mental health and therapy, so I’m going to focus on those types of changes. You aren’t going to wake up one day positive when you’ve been negative your whole life. Sorry, it’s just not going to happen. Your brain is wired a certain way, with neurons that fire patterns that think different thoughts. The more you think a thought, the faster the thought gets. Literally. The neurons fire faster and create shortcuts when you create thought patterns. That’s why when you’re used to thinking ABCDEFG, then have a panic attack, your body starts having a panic attack at A. It jumps to G faster and faster, and your body reacts to it quicker and quicker! 

So changes are slow, but not impossible. One thing that I need held accountable on is affirmations. I’m going to start trying an affirmation for myself. I just haven’t chosen it yet. It needs to be a few sentences, but something that can stretch my thinking that I can believe. The more I repeat this to myself, and the more I myself BELIEVE it, because I think the research says it has to be in the comfort zone where it can’t be too uncomfortable for your brain to flat-out reject the thought, then I can receive it.

OMG, I just sounded like one of the men I despise the most.

Going beyond that. I’m going to take a small step to think optimistically and to purposefully try to start thinking positively instead of negatively. Will you join me?

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