Many of our problems are caused when we attach our identity to emotions and thereby, accept their conflating thoughts as fact. Emotions are meant to be felt and released, not identified with. The more we build limiting identities around ephemeral responses to external factors, the more we lose the true self by painting a limiting narrative we relegate ourselves to adhere to. Our emotions become moods, which become attitudes, which become our personality. It is possible to break free from the self-limiting narratives we paint by ending our over-identification with fleeting emotions. You are not your negative thoughts, you are your values, laughter, warmth you give others, and dreams you are capable of.
Emotion is defined as an affective state of consciousness deriving from one’s circumstances, mood, or relationships with others. Emotions are subconscious, and neurodivergent people experience difficulty in recognizing, reacting to, and managing strong emotions. Managing these feelings requires the help of experienced, licensed mental health professionals. What is important to remember is that we can choose to not identify with negative emotions.
Anxiety and depression are in fact lying, unreliable narrators. You are not anxiety, you are not depression. You are not even your justified negative emotional responses to certain circumstances.
Identifying with negative emotions creates a spiral of negative thoughts, which creates a false identity, which leads to negative actions and self-sabotage — a self-fulfilling prophecy/negative feedback loop. You are not feelings or labels from years ago others’ false perceptions of you that you absorbed. We are constantly becoming.
Labels become our self-identity and become ingrained in our psyche. To identify with emotions or personality labels that are not the truth, is an act of self-sabotage and road to eternal dissatisfaction. The self you created out of circumstances doesn’t have to be your identity when those circumstances have changed. Stop saying, “I’m too shy/introverted/lazy/weak/lame” or any other prerogative to do the positive things you are called to do. It isn’t until you try something new that you can grow. I can’t count how many times I’ve found negative labels I assigned to myself to be disproven by putting myself out of my comfort zone. It isn’t until you challenge yourself that you can discover your true self and unlimited potential. Out of vulnerability comes growth.
If you protect yourself from the possibility of failure, you protect yourself from success. This is why the growth mindset — backed by neuroscientific research — is the number one determinant of success. Accepting that a learning curve and failure is part of the journey towards mastery and success, not innate ability, is what makes people achieve. Thoughts are everything.
Some people will withdraw in the face of failure, shy away from challenges, while others no more talented than them embrace challenges and thrive in the face of failure. This dichotomy on outcomes stemming from people’s attitudes towards failure, was studied over 30 years ago by Dr. Carol Dwec. Dr Dweck and her colleagues studied thousands of students and noticed some students rebounded while others gave up by the smallest of setbacks.
In Dweck’s studies, students’ underlying beliefs about effort and abilities created self-fulfilling prophecies. Those who persevere after failures, understanding that effort made them stronger, put in extra time and work and achieved higher results. Neuroscience research on brain plasticity lends credence to these observations. With practice, connectivity between neurons strengthens and grows new connections, and “builds insulation that speeds transmission of impulses.” Humans increase their neural growth through actions we take such as practice, good nutrition and sleep habits.
Thus, while fixed mindsets ran from errors and challenges and underachieved despite having the same mental capacity for growth, growth mindset subjects formed stronger neural connections by preserving through practice.
“Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt,” once wrote William Shakespeare. Fear of the outcome leads to automatic rejection from every opportunity we want. Years, decades will pass and you will look back and torturously wonder “what if.” The culprit? Anxiety — it rejects yourself before people, opportunities, and life does. Living in self-doubt is often the only thing blocking you from reaching your goals and leading a satisfying life. Because the only certainty in life is that if you live in fear and don’t shamelessly seek goals by having the courage to be vulnerable, to be fearful and do it anyway, you will always end up dissatisfied.
Only when can you start achieving goals when you separate yourself from the outcome and focus all your energy on putting in your best effort. All the time spent doubting outcomes and worthiness is 100% better served harnessing it towards goal. It’s the only way you even have a chance. Don’t let doubt reject you before opportunities do. You’re not an imposter. Success, skills, achievements come through self-love, practice and learning, no one is born being able to lift two-hundred pounds.
Whether you think you can or can’t, you are right. Our thoughts create a self-fulfilling prophecy; negative thoughts prevent us from trying and achieving the good we would if we just believed we could. Those negative results caused from negative actions only reinforce our negative thoughts. We can break this loop by taking positive action that challenges and unexpectedly disproves our negative thoughts. This positive feedback only creates more confidence to take bigger leaps of growth.
You are constantly in the process of becoming, don’t identify with ephemeral emotions, lying negative thoughts or labels. Challenge and question them — think, “Is this objectively true? Are there people who have been through this that I can reach out for help to?” You can’t stress your way out of a problem, and you can’t hate yourself into the person you want to be. No monetary, career, social, image, or other carnal thing in this world is worth more than life itself — you are priceless. Feel it, think it, and carry yourself with with compassion.
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