This is Good Because…

I’ve been re-reading You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero and in talking about gratitude she suggests that no matter what happens, no matter how great something is, or how much it sucks, or hurts my feelings, or inconveniences me it will benefit me to say to myself “This is good because _________”.   Easy enough when things are going well, but gets harder when I spill an entire glass of water on the floor in my rush to leave the house, or hear something about myself that I don’t want to believe. In those moments I have a tendency to get caught up in a loop, going over and over conversations, actual and imagined and it sure doesn’t feel like this is good because… it feels terrible. I was going to title this post Fruitless Loops, because when I am in the middle of one of one of these events I engage in the fruitless pastime of perseverating.

Perseverate is one of my favorite words. I learned it a few years ago after watching a TED talk by Kathryn Schulz about regret. My method of perseveration is to wake up around 2:30 a.m. with a particular unpleasant conversation going through my head, and replay it until I:

1. Finally fall back to sleep out of sheer exhaustion
2. Have to get up for work, spending the rest of the day in misery
3. Find a way to STOP the loop, change the story, or change the subject, and go back to sleep

I don’t recommend getting into the loop at all, but I’m pretty sure I’m not the only person who does this, and it doesn’t feel like a choice. Clearly #3 is the optimal solution, though it requires practice and doesn’t always stick. Sadly, if something is really bugging me this can go on for many nights, and I am perfectly capable of fruitless looping day or night. This is one of the worst things about living alone, no one to process things with and get them out of my head, or get off the hamster wheel in my head. Which brings me back to gratitude.

Gratitude is a lovely state of mind, and like any good, reflective, self-actualized person I try to cultivate it, but it can be fragile, when up against my feelings of self doubt. Which is what got me here, so this is good because.. here I am standing naked, under a bright light face to face with my least favorite state the one that makes me act like an ass, scarcity.

Scarcity is a hungry dog chasing me; it brings out he worst in me, the sarcastic, snarky, anxious side of me, and I can’t blame people for steering clear of me, I wish I could. It is a hole I tripped and fell into, and fighting it just makes the hole deeper. The only way out is a change of heart. If I can fill this hole, or feed the dog with gratitude things will get better, and there’s not much more difficult than creating a state of gratitude in the middle of a scarcity episode. I lie in bed ticking off a list of things I am grateful for, and though I am truly grateful, I’m not really feeling it. What I am feeling is scared, lonely, broke and hopeless; cue the loop.

I am trying to be a good badass, and do all the things Ms. Sincero is encouraging me to do. I know this is temporary, but like those endlessly looping conversations in my head this feeling too seems endless.  In college a friend did a tarot card reading for me, and he told me that I would be lonely and destitute. My (then) boyfriend would tease me saying L&D in a doomsday voice, and I’d respond by laughing, crying, or throwing something at him depending on my mood. That reading, those taunts haunt me whenever I feel like this. L&D is what scarcity is all about, and scarcity is a choice I need to stop making. But I remind myself: this is good, because… it feels so good when I stop.