We're Getting There

This past Monday, I spoke with a professor and they gave me positive constructive criticism. I am in college, this is normal. What wasn't normal was how after the meeting, I caught myself participating in a self-flagellating mood of pitying and shitting on myself for no reason. After the conversation, I just started to feel bad about myself and subsequently sad about myself. It was like I had taken this constructive criticism and twisted it into a damning character indictment of myself. I was borderline expecting myself to feel bad and was waiting for the self shit-talking to begin. Catching myself descending into this spiral of negativity, I said out loud, alone in my living room " why am I making myself sad?", almost as if this realization didn't register I asked myself again " why am I making myself sad ?".

To start the fact that I even caught myself doing this is a testament to literal months of " doing the work". I'm incredibly proud of myself for even being able to see that I was about to enter a spiral.

And thank God I did. I had taken a small and completely forgettable event, and became JK Rowling, writing a story about how that event supported the belief that I was a bad person, a bad student, a lazy student, and a series of stuff that was not true. Ali Abdaal spoke about this self-destructive storytelling on his channel. He described how often the negative emotions that we feel come as the result of creating fiction out of a bad event. We internalize and start making negative attributions about ourselves from these stories. Honestly, realizing and s immediately stopping myself from getting into that mindset has been one of my greatest achievements this year. Followed by me also truly understanding the idea that no one truly cares and thinks about me. I am a cell under a global microscope of 7 ( soon to be 8) billion.

Often after a major realization, I find myself looking back and seeing the past through a newfound lens. And that's exactly what happened. I think about myself in high school, being overweight and refusing to run around the track, ardent in my belief that everyone would both notice and judge me. I'm thankful for that moment on Monday. Moving forward I will keep the lessons of that day with me forever. For one, that negative self-talk and making a story about an event is completely unnecessary. Secondly, no one is thinking about me. It took me 20 years to understand and internalize these lessons. But then again, that's part of " doing the work". The process doesn't come all at once. Rather, it is a slow and enjoyable journey of realizing more about yourself and also making sure to improve who you are. I won't wake up tomorrow being the person I want to be or know I can be. But I know that tomorrow as the sun rises it will be over a day where I am just a little bit better than I was the day before.