Who Do You Think You Are?

Do you court disappointment?

I mean subconsciously, through automatic thought patterns you often don’t realize you even have.

These thoughts are a bit insidious. We don’t really know they are there, because they’ve become such a part of our thinking, silently building up and insinuating themselves into our expectations, our lives and our success.

As I writer I find myself guilty of them far more often than I would like. Usually the first occurs half to three-quarters of the way through a novel. I start doubting myself, my abilities, my talent and my experience. “Wow, you’re writing garbage,” the first thought might go. “Yes, indeedy, you are,” comes the second. Then every word on the page suddenly looks just plain wrong, every scene silly or ineffectual.

The next comes after I finish the book. Creepy little thought gnomes tell me I’ve got a few hundred pieces of paper that could be put to better use building a clambake fire. “That book’ll never sell,” says Creepy Little Thought Gnome One. “You killed a tree for this???” Creepy Little Thought Gnome Two chimes in. And on it goes.

Do you inadvertently do this in your daily life? Subvert your success? Unconsciously look at things from a standpoint of failure? “Oh, I can’t do that,” you might think. “I’ll never got that job because I’m not qualified enough. I’m not as pretty as her or as muscular as him. I never win anything. All that happens to me are bad things.”

Yes, some of that is true, because bad things do happen. Sometimes strings of bad things and they can debilitating—if you don’t laugh in their face. If you let them take hold and become the norm of your thinking pattern.

Too many times these negative thoughts end up becoming self-fulfilling prophesies. We are what we think we are, if we think it often and intensely enough. We achieve what we expect to achieve (discarding uncontrollable factors). Or not achieve.

So the trick becomes catching the Creepy Little Thought Gnomes. Blasting them with double barrels until there’s green creepy gnome guts all over the place. Once you catch those negatives thoughts, you can then set about changing them. Write them down in one column on a piece of paper. In the next column discover why that thought is negative and quite often a lie. Then put the lie in its place and write down a positive thought. Think that thought. Intensely. Believe it. Start seeding “can do” instead of can’t. It’s not easy, but anything good and lasting rarely is.

There’s a cliché that goes Look on the Bright side. Kitschy and simplistic but it works. Personally, I say kick the crap out of your Creepy Thought Gnomes.

Starting today.