I can tell when something is off with me, I can tell when I am sliding down into the abyss of viewing everything around me in a negative way. I can tell because I start to see things differently I start to see problems and issues more than I see solutions.
A funny thing happens when I look at myself in the mirror in the morning, all I can see are things that I perceive or think are not attractive about the features staring back at me. I see a round fat face and a couple of double chins. I see eyes too big for my face and I see skinny thin mean lips. That’s just a warning sign to me that my style of thinking has become rotten. I don’t normally think of myself as ugly but when I do I know that I have got to get back to thinking properly.
I can tell when things are off with me when I start to lose patience very quickly with situations and people that would not normally bother me too much. They suddenly become big pains in the ass, and I focus on them, making them even bigger pains in the ass. I know things are really going off piste when I start to doubt what I am doing, the way I am doing it . I start to doubt what I am saying and feeling. Now I know for certain that I have wandered into a place I call STINKING THINKING LAND.
This place has no greenery and no plants or trees flourishing. There is no colour here either, its all either black or white. There’s a bad smell of apathy here, a bad sense of “what’s the freaking point anyway?”. There’s a feeling of depression and hopelessness hanging in the foggy air. There is a saying that goes something like this ” you will never solve a problem with the same level of thinking that created it”. Now if I wander into this place in my head that I call stinking thinking land and stay here and expect things to majically turn themselves around then I know I am doomed and totally lost. I am doomed to have the same unhealthy perceptions and the same anxiety, the same old same old.
I cannot stay here, now that I have realised where I am. I know I cannot afford to stay here for the sake of mental health. If I stay here in this Godforsaken place, I will stay in bed and shut the world out. I will find problem after problem to dwell on because that’s what stinking thinking land does to you. I will start to care less and less about things which are normally really important to me. I will become someone I have no respect for.
I have been in this stinking thinking land more times than I care to remember. The first couple of times I was not even aware of being there. I would say to myself ” why does life single me out for all the slings and arrows, why can’t I just be happy like everyone else?”. This used to go on and on, the more proof I could find that life is a bitch the more it allowed me to wallow in my own misery. A while back I found myself wandering into that stinking thinking land again. The signs were there, looking at my face in the mirror and finding flaws everywhere, putting off stuff that I used to enjoy. I started the old habit of doubting myself and my abilities, what I was saying and what I was doing and destroying my confidence along with it. A realisation came to me after a couple of days, I could see the same old pattern that used to get it’s grip into me, I had wandered into stinking thinking land.
I now know and recognise the signs that things are not right with me and from experience I have found that the best ticket out of stinking thinking land is the ticket of gratitude. Now hold on a second and hear me out. It might not fit with what you have been doing but trust me it does work. It works with anxiety, it works with stress and it is a habit you should get yourself into. The habit of being grateful. Try listing at least 3 things you honestly can say you feel grateful for, the simple the things the better.
Here are a couple of things I am grateful for at the moment.
- A roof over my head and a warm bed to sleep in at night.
- Food in my belly to keep the hunger pangs away.
- The hug that I get from my loved one and the smelly wet kisses I get from my two dogs.
See… it does not have to be complicated and all you need to do is call into your mind the images of the things you listed as being grateful for. Make an effort to really feel and see the gratitude. Get into the habit of reminding yourself of things you are grateful for.
