Friday Things // 02.19.2021

The one about the thoughts in your head.

Hey, hey. 

How are you doing on this Friday? If you’re somewhere with the wild winter storms that hit this week in Texas and on the east coast, I sure hope you’re safe and well. Well, I hope you’re safe and well even if you don’t live in those places, but you know what I mean.

Wednesday night, as I was washing dishes in the kitchen, I finished cleaning my glass measuring cup (you know, the one you use when you’re baking, to measure liquids?) and as I moved to place it in the drying rack next to the sink, it somehow slipped out of my hands. When I tell you it shattered, it SHATTERED. 😬 Glass everywhere, including straight into my hands.  I must have instinctively tried to stop it from falling, because I sliced open my ring finger — like straight down the middle of my fingertip — and got little cuts on the palm of my opposite hand. The palm was okay, but my finger would not. stop. bleeding. Blood all over, despite it not even being that deep of a gash. 

Now, this measuring cup I’d had since probably college (and I’ve been out of college for over a decade…), and it’s supposed to be unbreakable. (I’m pretty sure that’s the brand’s whole schtick — that it won’t break into a million shards if dropped, and will last forever.) Granted it was literally made out of glass, so a wise person would probably have assumed it would break at * some * point, but still — it had survived years of use, multiple cross-country moves, and a whole lot of hapless cooking adventures. Til a random, completely unexpected slip while doing the dishes. 

When it happened, I froze for a few seconds, as if I couldn’t believe what I’d just done (with blood pouring down my hand). Luckily my husband swooped in and pulled the pieces of glass off me and grabbed some paper towels to wrap my finger. Anyways, long story short-ish, and all is fine (and I feel very lucky I didn’t get a deeper cut — no one needs to go hang out at an Emergency Room for something that ridiculous these days). But it reminded me of something else that had been on my mind lately: that the things that knock you off your feet or take your breath away are rarely the ones you’ve worried about.

In other words, many of us (🙋) spend countless hours every single day/week/month worrying about things and stewing in anxiety about those monsters under our beds, but those things are (generally) the ones that don’t end up happening after all… or don’t end up happening the way we’d mentally prepared for or feared. 

I know I talk about losing my mom a lot, but honestly, that’s a perfect example here. I never expected my mom to be the one who’d get cancer, and even still, I never expected that if she got it, she’d die of such a random and unexpected complication (and definitely not so fast).

On a similar note, I’ve received some updates related to my own health recently that I didn’t expect — a left turn down a path I would prefer to not be on and had hoped to never land on — and it’s really sucked the wind out of my sails. I’m OK, but it’s all made the monster under my bed feel a lot more real, and reminded me of the things I’m the most scared of. In other words, hello, my old pal anxiety! So nice to have you back! (Not.😑)

That anxiety consumed me this past weekend, letting my mind go to that dark and lonely place called “assuming the worst,” with a little detour in the town of “jumping ahead.” Both are terrible places to visit, and even worse to take residence in. 

I had to remind myself that while there is a lot (a LOT) of stuff in this life that I’m not in control of, including aforementioned health stuff, I can still control how I react to things, and what I allow my mind to focus on. As my lovely therapist told me (because, reminder, I am not a therapist or really anything licensed beyond a now-retired yoga teacher), it’s fine to acknowledge something is scary, but you don’t have to sit with that fear for the rest of your day. You can choose what your next five minutes look like, or your next hour, day, etc.

Along those lines, I have also realized that worrying about something negative happening, or getting worse, does not mean it’s going to happen — no matter how inevitable it may seem in the middle of your fear tornado — nor will it stop anything bad from happening. And the inverse is also true — not worrying about something won’t necessarily “backfire” and cause it to happen. Your thoughts are powerful, but they are not the guards at Buckingham Palace, nor are they magicians. 

The internet is littered with people who preach manifestation and vision boards, as if that’s all you need to be successful and happy and achieve the life of your dreams. Not hating on them at all — whatever gets you to an optimistic outlook and feeling strong enough to tackle your goals, go for it — but my point is more that life is going to be tough regardless, and that you can’t plan for everything. 

To be clear, I do think your mindset is very important, and I do not at all advise sticking your head into the sand or just giving up as if you’re powerless; you are powerful. I believe that positive thoughts and self-talk are critical to hype yourself up for the challenges life brings with it, and that (as my mom used to remind me constantly) positive thoughts yield positive results. But, I think those positive results are not always going to happen perfectly or easily. Like it may be a real bumpy road to get to that positive result, you know? So thinking positive is more a tool to help you feel confident that you are strong enough to handle the hard things. 

Choosing to trust the universe (and not pour your energy into anxious thoughts about what’s next, or what could go wrong) does not mean you’ve given up. I think it means you have done hard things before, and you’re trusting that you will overcome any additional hard things that end up on your path. As one of my favorite fitness instructors says often, “You can do hard things. How do I know? Because you’re doing them right now.” Believing that you are strong enough to fight forward, even without knowing what happens next? That’s powerful, and that’s a form of action.

We can and should absolutely control the controllables (in a health example: get your annual check-ups, take care of your body, etc.), but we will never be able to will all the things to fall into place, avert crisis, etc. So…… maybe we can instead choose to let go of control over how things pan out. We can still hope for the best, but we don’t have to overanalyze the worst case scenario in advance. We don’t have to assume the monster is ready and waiting.

Anyways, I’m telling myself this as much as you. Anxiety isn’t fun for anyone, you know? And worrying about tomorrow clearly doesn’t stop you from, say, nearly cutting off your finger. (Me, dramatic? Never. 🙃)

Sending you all the YAYs,

Joelle