MissOwl's Journal

Still chugging along.  I am getting things done...but I'm so far behind right now that I don't feel very accomplished.  Oh well.

There is something I learned this weekend.  It's called, "Doing the dishes."  Doing the dishes is a simple thing.  You turn on the water and you just do it.  It doesn't require a lot of focus, it doesn't have a stigma attached to it (at least not for me)  It just is.  Dirty dishes.  And I wash them because they are dirty.  That's it.  Simple, right?

Well, I learned that I need to apply that to everything else I need to do.  Because what happens is I focus on the stigma or the thoughts or the consequences instead of the simple task. 

Instead of making the phone call.  My mind says, "Make the phone call.  Well, make the phone call after you've settled in, besides, the people I'm calling don't want to hear from me this early.  Wait a while.  Oh but it's too close to lunch time, they will get mad if I call them now.  Well, I'm going to do these other things first.  Blah blah blah...so I end up not calling.

So what happened?  Well, I have a task.  It is reality, this task.  Then I start to assign thoughts to it.  And that is where I start to go wrong.  I start to say, They won't like me if I do it this way, I should do this, they should do that.  The reality is I can't know what people should or shouldn't do.  I don't know what people think or thought or will think.  All of these things are a fabrication of my mind and have actually nothing to do with the reality of the situation: I have to make a phone call.

It's not the task that is the problem, it is the thoughts attached to it that create the anxiety, the depression, the OCDness.  What whould happen if I stopped thinking those thoughts?  I would probably just make the phone call.  Right?

And the word, "But" is a huge red flag.  Whenever my mind says, make the call.  And I return with "I want to, but..." at that point I am imposing my thoughts onto the task.  And because I know it is happening, I can stop the train of thought.

So whenever I find that a task is starting to get me anxious, I stop and say, "Do the dishes."  Each task is no more harder or easier than the next.  It is just the thoughts we attach to them that make them harder or easier, stressful or not stressful, even right or wrong.

This technique, in it's early stages, has done wonders for stop (or at least slow) my cyclical thinking.    Maybe it will work for the rest of you too.

Hearts,

Owl