Choices, we talked about making choices before. Yet this time I want to talk about the choices and how they reflect upon you. Often we are faced with choices and we completely disregard them. Sort of a toss away some that can make the difference between you being happy and you being anxiety-ridden, losing friends and being left behind while those you know and love enjoy a day in the sun and fresh air.
We all have choices to make. Many are easy, for example, is this pair of underwear clean or dirty? You can easily ascertain the answer to that particular quandary. Then there are choices you can make that are a matter of comfort or exhilaration.
You already know my thoughts on comfort. It is good to have but we have gotten so good at being comfortable that we choose it overgrowth and becoming more dynamic. When we are out of our comfort zone we develop more and are such a more interesting person. Yet so many people are now so dedicated to being comfortable that they can’t stand the thought of even choosing to go outside. They avoid the anxiety as if it is a bad thing in an effort to stay in their soft safe place. They then wonder why people leave them behind.
So yes today we are talking choices and what do you choose to do with your emotional health.
The vast majority of folks are alright
So many people avoid responsibilities. Often these people make a choice to be a victim. They are a victim of their emotional problems. They lie to themselves and make excuses about how it isn’t their fault that they have such horrible anxiety and depression. Does Now is there clinical depression? Where there are people who can’t find something to be happy about? Yes, Good chance that there is a “Chemical” imbalance or some other physiological reason that their body isn’t producing enough of the proper hormone neural transmitter so they end up being south of Droopy at best and not even able to get out of bed at the worst.
Is that the vast majority of people? My honest to opinion of the matter, No, Most of the people who are anxiety bound, are normal they are just the product of the internet.
So, most people who are anxious about going outside or afraid of what people may think of them. Their thoughts are just fine, they haven’t been stretched nor pushed enough to grow. Not to mention we have had a rash of fad diseases running rampant through our society for the past 40 years.
In the 80’s it was the lactose intolerance. All of a sudden people couldn’t drink milk anymore
In the 90’s it was the peanut allergy and then it spread to all nuts. So much so that now you can’t give your kids a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to take to school. Because some kids may run off with it and poison the school with peanuts. You even went as far as having moms demand that trees be removed because their kids had allergies to some type of nut.
In 2000 it was the dawn of the Gluten scare. All of a sudden people who had been eating wheat-based products now can’t eat anything. Now there is a real allergy tied to this but most people don’t know the allergy and do it because their good friend who has a friend who read a book told them that gluten will kill them. It has reached the fevered pitch that now you see that Potatoes are now advertising that they are gluten-free. Well duh, you have to know what gluten is to understand why.
Now we are into the 2010s and the in illness appears to be anxiety. It is possible but I feel that this is like the others and the next decade will be forgotten for something “worse”. The problem I see though is not that so many people are faking anxiety and panic attacks. No, I believe they believe they have this affliction, but I believe the majority of the people who suffer from anxiety have it because they chose to have it. May not have been a continuous thought but it was with all emotions started by a thought.
Own Your dirt
Now I say the previous for two reasons. First is because I see evidence to that thought. Is it 100% accurate? No, but I also see it to not be 100% inaccurate either. I have seen people drink chocolate milk because they claim to be Lactose intolerant. I have also seen people who claim they have a peanut allergy but will get Kung POW chicken and pick the peanuts out. The key here is that we lie to ourselves so much. We want the attention that having a “disability” brings that we are willing to go through insane inconveniences so that we can say we have something wrong with us.
There are people reading this now screaming at their device saying, “Why would I choose to be locked in my room all day scared to even say hello to a person if it was a choice!” The same reason that there are people in the world who purposely make their kids sick so that they can get attention.
The second reason I am saying this is, notice how you feel. You are worked up and fighting against a thought. You hand might be cramping right now you are holding on to your tablet so tight. What are you fighting against? Is it the truth that I am getting just a little too close to? If it is the actual truth why are you fighting it so much? What is the worst that could happen if you did make the choice? Could it be because your Cognitive biased is being threatened? It does get uncomfortable. Yet, you react by getting mad to the point that I am suggesting that your happiness is just a mindset change away. Which tells me that I might be closer to the truth than you want to admit. You would think that if the possibility of getting better was just understanding how you think and you can change it all through a little work. For me that would be awesome, I would think finally there is hope for me to not have a meltdown while crossing the street.
Maybe I am going at this all wrong but I am one who believes in owning your own dirt. There is a point to being resistant to a thought. Yet at the same time when we avoid our own actions, the person you are hurting isn’t those around you. The person you are putting at a disadvantage is you. Going off and trying to say you are triggered is one of the biggest cries of Not accepting responsibility there is. Because saying you are being triggered is a passive way of saying it’s not my fault. I can’t control my actions because of someone else. We all know that is a load of bull. You have full control of your actions at all times and to say you can’t be held responsible for yours just shows me how immature a grown person can be. So yeah own your dirt and control your actions.
You are not a victim
If you read any of my posts here you see that I am no fan of victims. I see there is the very rare real victim, such as someone who comes down with Parkinson’s or Multiple Sclerosis. While there is the more common self-imposed victim, these are the people who cry victim for living in a flood plain. They think they are a victim because they were burned by the hot coffee. These people do their own thing and then don’t want to take responsibility for their actions. People as a society see the flaw in their logic and reject it. They may help once but when they keep getting in the same situation the public will turn their back and walk away.
Why have such a hard time?
Many people would ask, why would they want such a horrible life? Be that life plagued by anxiety or just what appears to be hard luck. Often we bring the results we get on ourselves. I am no different I am going through some financial troubles right now. Why? Well, it is from my doing. I chose to stick with a path when I first saw evidence of the employment tide turning. The wash is rough and I don’t have the internet as a result, yet I am not going to do a poor me in public. I did that InPrivate and my wife very well gave me a much-needed attitude adjustment.
You wanted that result
Yeah, that sounds a bit harsh and it can be but in reality if you really step back and look at it objectively and as I said before “own your dirt” you see that yeah you were aiming for that particular result.
You knew that people would react to your actions in a particular way. You knew that if you said you were scared of going to the zoo because you may have an anxiety attack while at the Ape house. You knew that your family would eventually stop inviting you. You knew they would act in a certain way.
For example, when I was in my youth during Christmas time at my house we made Peanut patties. Now if you haven’t ever made patties before I can tell you it is easy till it is stirring time. Then you have to stir and stir and stir and stir and then you have to keep stirring. That is until the candy is the right consistency. I hated this job. I would be stuck with the stirring it seemed each night leading up to Christmas Eve. Each of those nights I would be told that if I broke the wooden spoon I was going to get walloped and then expected to keep going. Now I make it sound worse than it really was but at that time I was a teenager so yeah I was a bit dramatic. Either way, it never failed I would end up breaking a couple of spoons.
How was I breaking the spoons? I would stir in a way that would cause the spoon to break. I would do it knowing that I would get into trouble. I would often get yelled at and then handed another spoon and told to get back to work. I knew the outcome yet I still did it. I wanted to play the victim and say it wasn’t fair but in all reality, it was totally fair.
Act of self-sabotage
Another action that is completely based upon your choices is the act of self-sabotage. This act is very sneaky too, that’s because if you aren’t really paying attention you won’t notice what you are doing. Many times people self-sabotage when they exceed their level of value. Say, for example, an entrepreneur makes his first 100k month. Well if he doesn’t believe he is valued at that amount he will either float till his reserve get down to the point that he knows he’s got to get back to work or he may go on a spending spree and buy stuff till his bank account is back down to a level that he thinks he is worth.
That self-sabotage is what causes lottery winners to blow their winnings in just a couple of years. They haven’t earned what they feel they are worth and have to get to a comfortable level as fast as possible. Gay Hendricks talks about this in his book The Big Leap. He calls it the upper limit Challenge.
Another reason we self-sabotage is that our minds want to prove ourselves wrong. An example of that is a home where there is spousal abuse. The abused, be it a man or woman, are often got elements of mental abuse along with physical abuse. So though they try to leave from time to time they are drawn back into the hurt and chaos because they tell themselves that they are able to make it without the abuser. But the abuser in their mind tells them that they can’t and eventually out of fear and anxiety they return to what they are familiar with. Often to the consternation of the abused’s family. The abused’s mindset is that of proving they are wrong
There are always choices
How many times have you heard someone say, “They have no choice in the matter”? Often, I have said it several times when in reality what we are actually saying is that we don’t have many choices that we like. The choices could be a rough row to hoe or an even tougher row to hoe. We end up saying there’s no choice because we don’t want either option presented to us. Then there are the sub-options of that we take without even noticing. Why are you always late to work or family functions? Well, that is because of the choices you made. Often the choices are not ideal but they are there.
Deep down we know that. We know we should be getting ready an hour earlier than we do. We just choose to not do so. We are always late because we choose to start late. We choose to not listen to the traffic report. We choose to not listen to Waze and went our own way. We decided that it was too much effort to pay attention to the thought loop about what could happen and decided to let out thoughts run free. Now the consequence is that you are having an anxiety attack. That was the choice and the consequences of making that choice. Instead of choosing to take the time to do a thought download see what thoughts are actually rattling around in our skulls and work through the problem. We choose to let the thoughts jam up and have an anxiety attack.
So you now know I cringe when I hear that people say that there is no choice. There are choices we just have to decide to actually make the choice. There are options at our disposal and they can make our life easier or harder. The easier one just may take a bit more effort while the harder one causes you to effortlessly slide back to the comfortable zone. So do you choose to get stronger and a more positive oriented life, or do you choose to stay in where you are at? If you want help getting out of that hole please feel free to contact me and let’s work together.
