We all have different types of negative thinking that is either frequent, or comes on from time to time. I’m here to tell you, however, that no matter what you are going through, it is completely normal. We all have times where we deal with hardships in life, yet we can either let it control us, or instead let it grow us.
To be frankly honest, there have been times where I have really struggled with anxiety, times where I didn’t have any energy or any motivation to push myself along. I was always in this constant state of worry. This anxiousness controlled every aspect in my life and still to this day is a huge obstacle for me yet to overcome.
With me, I tend to over analyze certain events in my life. What I mean by this is I will put myself back into a situation and think of different ways on how it could have been different, what could I have changed to have a better outcome? I then, worry about “why didn’t I do this “ or ”why didn’t I say this”? I then regret the decisions and beat myself up about them to the point where it’s just a constant nag and stress in my life I can’t seem to take away. This type of thinking is a term called Rumination in psychology: the constant revision of past events over and over again. I also tend to worry about things that haven’t even happened and just over think constantly.
But because of my anxiety, I have learned a lot in my struggles, the first being that no matter what, we must have some type of mentor in our lives. We need someone to always fall back on, someone that has the knowledge and answers to our questions in life that we have no idea about. Most importantly, we need a mentor or many to help us get through our struggles and exceed our obstacles in life, because at times, we may feel lost, yet they are the light that guides us through the darkness of our deepest struggles. An absolute hands down influential and extremely helpful mentor of mine would be Jim Anastasi. Jim has been the Yoda in my life, someone whose knowledge, motivation, and wisdom have really helped me cope with my anxiety and help improve my life overall. He had taught me that anxiety is the enthusiasm to do well and instead of making it a problem, make it a drive to succeed in anything you put your mind to. I have also learned from him that the things that make me anxious, are actually my instincts telling me that what I’m about to do or doing is completely out of my comfort zone. It is then, a motivator to push myself out of it in order to improve.
When knowing the fact that you have a struggle in life, you have a choice. You can either let that thing that challenges you define yourself, or you can simply label it as an obstacle that you will overcome on your journey to success that will overall produce growth in your life. The more you think of something as a problem, you will give more life to the negative thinking that is stressing you out. However we must have faith in ourselves, and trust our own intuition that we will self consciously, most of the time, do the right thing in any given situation. We need to also trust the timing of our lives, worrying not about the past or future, but to live in the present and simply enjoy the “now”, because life is a gift and therefore should be cherished not by our worries, anxieties, or struggles, but by our blessings and successes instead.