Tranquility is nothing less than the good ordering of the mind
Marcus Aurelius
Thoughts like to be believed
You’re staring at a computer screen. There’s an important task you need to do, but you’ve been avoiding it. It needs to get done. And you should have finished it yesterday.
Thoughts, images and sounds, rush through your head.
This is just like the last time I did something like this, you think, remembering something you’d rather forget.
It’s normal to think about the future. But it’s a shame that doing so can makes us feel bad.
Many of the thoughts we have can be negative and self-referential. “I can’t do this” or “I always do badly when I do things like this.” These might feel like truths, but usually are vague, black and white generalizations. The words always, nobody, never are good tells someone is generalizing.
And if you believe these thoughts, ta-da, you’ve magically created a belief.
If you start to look out for them, you’ll hear this sort of thing everywhere. Here are a couple I overheard at my local triathlon club:
- I can’t run that fast anymore.
- That’s it, I’ve done my hour.
- I can’t go fast, it’s all moderate.
- I couldn’t help but swim butterfly, now I’m dead.
- I’m done.
Beliefs drive behavior
If you know the belief, it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to figure out what the behavior will be.
For example, if you’re absolutely certain you’re bad at public speaking, you might decline invitations to speak or present. You’ll make up all sorts of intelligent excuses and stories to avoid doing it. You might speak less in meetings, even if you have good ideas. You might depend more on notes. If there’s no way out of this ‘unpleasant’ task, you might get stressed, sad, angry. Hours before the presentation you get more and more irritated until you need to ‘take a walk and clear your head’.
Now there’s nothing inherently wrong with preparation, organization, or de-stressing. And maybe you really do need more time. But these sorts of thoughts tend to get whisked into the foamy, fearful feeling of dread that has been generated by an unconscious, negative belief: ‘this is not going to go well.’
In comparison, someone without that belief, might approach the same task calmly, cooly and confidently. They might not be smarter, or any better at doing the job, they’re simply not talking to themselves in such a negative way.
A task is easier if you’re not thinking ‘this is going to be a pain’ or ‘I have no time to do this.’
- There’s no rushing around, because who’s telling them to rush?
- There’s no endless revisions and re-work, because who’s telling them it’s not good enough?
- There’s no impatience when they are interrupted, because who’s telling them they ‘can’t stop working’?
If belief does seem to drive our behavior, should we all try to be more positive? It likely doesn’t hurt. And since it was popularized by Norman Vincent Peale in the 50’s, positive thinking has been claimed to solve everything from shyness to world peace.
We can also practice challenging beliefs. Pronouncing that you’re ‘ugly’, might sound and feel like a truth, but with some light challenges we can uncover that it’s just a transient opinion.
- Are you always ugly?
- Who says? According to whom?
- Compared to who?
- How do you know?
- What do you mean by that?
But to do a good job, we don’t need to be filled with positivity. We just need to stop telling ourselves it’s going to be bad.
Buddha Bike 