Galvanize yourself into taking positive action.
Your conscious/intuition/better judgement, whatever you want to call it, generally knows what’s best for you and what it takes to get there, but is often overpowered by the pessimist in us. Here are two techniques you can use to confront that pessimistic voice;
1. Retroactive self-reflection. Here’s a confronting visualisation activity to motivate you into taking action; When faced with a daunting decision or challenge (one that you want to take but are hampered by your negative thoughts or anxiety), quickly visualize yourself as an old man or woman – Zimmer frame, toothless, baby food, incontinent, lonely, family only drop in once a month if you’re lucky – and you’re propped in front of the TV…but you’re not watching daytime talk shows or lawn bowl championships, rather you’re viewing a montage of all the opportunities you’ve passed up in your younger life, and you’re writhing with regret because you’ll never know what could have been.
Attach this scenario to a word or phrase you can mutter so you’re not actually trying to imagine an old man shitting himself when you’re at a critical moment.
Remember two adages; If you try you risk failure, if you back out you assure it…and…rejection stings for a minute (perhaps even a month), but regret will haunt you for a lifetime.
2. Explicitly stating negative behaviors before or whilst you’re engaging in them. For instance “I’m going to procrastinate on reddit for the rest of the evening, and most likely tomorrow morning, then panic tomorrow afternoon when I realize the assignment Is due in a few hours and I haven’t even started”, “I’m going to allow a spiteful comment to ruin my entire day because my self-worth is completely dependent on what a stranger thinks of me” “I’m now going to go masturbate to some unrealistic BS for 40 seconds of mild pleasure then feel utterly awful afterwards, and ruin one of my socks in the process.”
Make sure to articulate it in a silly dopey voice so it highlights how ridiculous that line of thinking is, and separates it from the self that wants to improve i.e. the true self. If you’re anything like me, you’ll actually struggle to even get the full thing out before you’re launching a counterattack.
