As I’ve said before, “You focus on what you focus on”. Meaning, that as we go through life, we accumulate different worries or fears, joy or love, and the more we focus on those things, the larger they become, so we tend to focus on them even more. If we do this with a negative tilt, then we enlarge our perceived problems. The goal then is to stop magnifying our problems and start magnifying those things in our lives that we enjoy and aspire to.
Speaking from experience, this was one of my main issues when struggling through my 20+ year stint with depression and anxiety.
My Problems Always Seemed Larger Than Life
Without fail, almost every day, I would focus on all the things that I perceived to be problems. I would get so involved with them they became more real than the present moment. Past problems, and future problems, drowned me in my everyday life.
Magnifying them became a way of life. It wasn’t always like this, but over time I essentially trained my brain to focus on the things I had no control over. I didn’t just train myself to focus on them, I trained myself to get so involved, mind and body, that I began to live in a separate reality.
I was completely cognizant of my surroundings and the situations I was in, but my mind was somewhere else. I could shift back and forth between mindless activities in the present, to circumstances from the past or potentially future events that I considered problems, and my entire being would get involved.
Eventually, it became a sick loop that I became trapped in. An inescapable thinking and feeling nightmare that I became addicted to.
I’ve mentioned the thinking and feeling loop several times in past newsletters HERE and HERE, but let’s explore this concept a little more.
Initially, I got this idea from Dr. Joe Dispenza, and he does a great job at breaking this pattern down into its core elements. He describes it this way; thoughts are the language of the brain, and feelings are the language of the body.
Being intimately entwined with each other, these two pieces are in constant communication. They are what make up this experience we call life. We cannot have the full experience of life without some degree of thought, and we cannot have a full experience without some level of feeling.
Life would be pointless without either of these processes available to us. Even animals rely on them in their day-to-day activities. So, first of all, this isn’t to diminish either of these attributes, it’s to help us understand how they play a role in our lives.
Did you know,
You Can Trick Your Body Into Experiencing Something That Is Not Currently Happening, Through Thought Alone
Imagine getting into an argument with someone you dislike. You’re having a good day when you start to think about the person and some little thing they do that drives you crazy. Then you ruminate on it for a bit before moving into how stupid they are, or ignorant, or whatever little pet peeves you have about them.
Then you think of a situation where they did something that made you angry, so you dive into that narrative, until eventually, you’re having a full-blown conversation with them in your head.
You’re telling them off just like you want, just like you’ve always dreamed and nobody can do anything about it. You feel good. You’re finally in charge. They have a little rebuttal and you wipe the floor with it.
You smack them around with wordplay, running circles around their incompetence. You might even envision yourself physically attacking them, and if not physically, then definitely emotionally and mentally.
After a while, lost in your fantasy, your kid, or somebody else walks up to you and asks a question. You snap out of your daydream and respond with an aggravated “What?”. They look a little taken aback and ask if you’re okay. You mutter something in response trying to figure out how you went from a good day to feeling frustrated. If you just didn’t have to deal with that person, maybe you wouldn’t feel like this.
Maybe that specific situation hasn’t happened to you, but I’m willing to bet something similar has.
The point of all this is to say that your thoughts created a false reality that felt so real, that you forgot you were making it up in your head.
If you’ve ever found yourself in a situation like this, and if you pay close attention, you’ll see that not only are you thinking through this scenario in your mind, but you’re also feeling the experience in a very visceral way. Your blood pressure is up. Your adrenaline has spiked. Your palms might be sweaty. You may be experiencing shallow breathing.
OR
You find yourself in flight mode instead of fight mode. You have an intense sense of fear or foreboding. You feel nervous and worried. There’s a tightness in your chest or a deep feeling of dread in the pit of your stomach. There’s a sense that you need to escape from your current location and get to a quiet comfortable place where you can relax.
Little did you know you were hijacking your system to feed yourself a chemical smorgasbord because you’re addicted to how it makes you feel.
Thoughts create a chemical that tells the body how to respond to various situations. These responses are almost instantaneous. In small doses, normal doses, they’re just a part of our biology. Similar to a deer being chased by a wolf.
The Deer and the Wolf
The wolf shows up, and the adrenaline kicks in for both animals, they chase each other around for a bit, the deer gets away, and they both go back to a state of homeostasis.
However, many times, the thoughts we think are triggered by a hunger within ourselves to “feel” a certain way. Humans have the ability to think, whether consciously or unconsciously, which can cause the wolf to chase the deer in our minds on repeat. Sometimes for hours, days, weeks, and even years.
Instead of returning to homeostasis, we just keep replaying the same thoughts over and over, which triggers a chemical response that gets released into our bodies, and without knowing it, we are addicted to our thinking.
Usually, these thought patterns were developed over time. We run programs in the background each moment of our lives. Some of the programs are beneficial, they tell us when to eat, sleep, or comfort someone who needs comfort. They tell us to be happy or sad. To let down our guard, or brace ourselves for something difficult, to fight when needed.
When hijacked, they tell us to be sad indefinitely. They tell us to be angry indefinitely. They tell us to be depressed, or resentful and bitter because our bodies are saying, “Hey, remember that one time when we felt this way? Can we do that again?”.
So, the body sends a signal up to the brain to think some thoughts that will release the hormone it craves. And round and round you go. You don’t necessarily know what started the domino effect, because, for most people, it happened slowly throughout their life.
This is a long way to say, the problems you think you have, really aren’t as big as you make them out to be. Sure, you may have some actual problems or issues you have to deal with.
I’ve had problems I’ve had to deal with, but when I look back, the majority of my depression, anxiety, unhappiness, anger, bitterness, resentment, sadness, grief, etc. stemmed from problems I was magnifying in my own mind.
Under magnification, an ant looks large and potentially scary. Remove the magnification and you realize how small the ant really is. The same goes for our problems.
Most of the time, our problems are larger than they seem because we are magnifying them. We are so focused on them that they seem insurmountable. The truth is if we can stay conscious and take a step back, most of those problems will look like a tiny ant.
Worrying about your problems does nothing to help you in the long run, or your day-to-day. Most of the problems we have are in the past or we project them into the future. If you focus on the present moment, how many of those problems actually exist?
“Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength.”
Corrie Ten Boom
The hard part of changing your thinking is that we have conditioned ourselves to think a certain way. As a result, whenever we try to think differently, it feels off. We can keep up with the charade for only so long before we start to waiver and fall back into our old thought patterns.
Focusing our thoughts on a new line of thinking takes a lot of energy. You have to be aware constantly in order to go from one pattern of thoughts and behavior to another. If you want the long-term effects of freedom from whatever thinking/feeling loop you’re stuck in, you’ll have to do the work of learning how to be present.
Most people will give up on this endeavor. Similar to how most people give up on working out to lose weight. It’s difficult.
Sugarcoating this would only be a disservice, so I’m going to be completely honest. It can be extremely difficult.
Successfully overcoming yourself takes dedication, consistency, and a true desire to change. Wishing you’ll change, or hoping you’ll change isn’t enough. Waiting for something else to come along and change you won’t be enough.
If you really want to change, if you really want to stop magnifying your problems and start focusing on all the good in your life, all the solutions, all the peace and joy available to you, then you’ll have to make a decision.
Decide You Want to Change
The first step you’ll need to take is to decide if you really want to change. I think for some people, the work it takes won’t seem worth it. They’ve got too much going on to try and stay consistent with the daily upkeep of watching and managing their thoughts.
Change doesn’t happen overnight, so you’ll need to be in it for the long haul. That’s why you have to come to a place within yourself where you say enough is enough.
Nobody can force you to change. Nobody can require you to change. Even if they tried, you could put on a fake face and pretend to be better when you’re around that person, but deep inside you know you’re still the same.
The second step is to consistently guard your thoughts. Stop allowing the thoughts you don’t want to have to run rampant in your mind. In the beginning, this may be tough to do, but over time you’ll start to see headway if you are consistent.
When you catch yourself thinking a thought you don’t want to think, you’ll need to replace it with a thought you do want to think.
This can take time, so don’t beat yourself up over it if you don’t get it at first. The more you learn to catch your thoughts as they are happening, the better you’ll be at catching the thoughts before they have a chance to take hold and effect.
The third step is to make sure you’re ready to play the long game. If you can’t give yourself 6 months, 1 year, 3 years, 5 years, 10 years, etc. then you’ll give up and go back to life as you know it. I talked about this in my newsletter “Are You Willing to Pay the Price” a few weeks ago.
Undoubtedly, 10 years is a long time. But it’s about how long it took me on my journey of overcoming depression once I realized what I was dealing with. It was a slow process for me. I don’t think it has to take nearly this long, but it depends on how you go about it.
I felt like I was floundering most of the time. I didn’t have a clear guide on how to move forward. There were some books that helped make sense of things, but I failed to put some of the necessary pieces into action to speed up the process.
Nevertheless, I continued to power through. I started reading more books, listening to podcasts, and curating my social feed to show me positive, uplifting, and inspiring things. I went to therapy, took cold showers, and exercised. I did psychedelics, and meditation, and eventually got to a place where getting free was all I could think about.
I was way more focused at the end than I was at the beginning. The first few years of my journey were still heavily shrouded in magnified problems and everything being someone else’s or something else’s fault. If I could have gotten through that mentality quicker, I would have found freedom quicker.
Despite the setbacks and length of time it took me to get to where I am today, writing a newsletter about how to overcome depression, was worth it.
It was worth it because the time spent trying all the different things I tried and learning all the different things I learned culminated into a deeper understanding of who I am and how I operate. How I think and feel.
Don’t let the idea of it being a lot of work or taking a long time scare you off. The way I look at it, you’re either going to suffer with what you are currently suffering with and hope, pray, dream, and wish it gets better. Or you’re going to work hard to fight for change.
Either way, you’re going to have to sacrifice something. You either sacrifice your time and energy to find freedom, or you will sacrifice your peace, joy, and energy to continue suffering.
The choice is yours.
Be sure to share this with someone who might need to hear it. Keep reading each week and continue to empower yourself to make the changes within yourself that will lead to your ultimate freedom.
Much love to you all.
Josiah
