I was staring at my book shelf for I don’t know how long. Maybe 10 minutes. My mind was numb and I couldn’t get myself back on task. The shelf looked like it wanted to sit on me. Really. I felt like it wanted to grow legs, crawl on top of me and just sit on me.
Ok, maybe it was my brain giving up. Too tired to actually fight off my inner “arch nemesis”.
I wasn’t very happy. I had all these expectations of what owning a business would be like. I would have more freedom, money, and success.
All I had was a head full of mush, scared to actually write something, scared to call anyone, scared to take the tiniest action.
I stepped away from my desk and took a walk. I looked at the trees reaching for the sun, heard dogs bark at me as I walked by and let the warm breeze wash over me. These things just happened. There was no try. There is just right now.
I’m right here. What is one thing I can enjoy?
Repeating this thought a few dozen times really helped ground my thoughts. I stopped freaking out.
You are right here too.
Try repeating this phrase when your inner arch nemesis is attacking you.
So why do you think we make life so difficult? (Just leave a comment so we can have a conversation in the comment section.)
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The immediate simplistic answer is that my mother was a worrier and also very critical of me no matter what I did.
But I'm not the only person who has an "arch nemesis", and I don't know if everyone who gets scared or worried or self-critical has/had the same kind of mother that I had. So I haven't bet the farm that it's all my mother's fault.
So, I'm thinking there's something more ingrained into the human experience, not just what happens/happened in one or a few families. And my personal belief is that in times past when the prefrontal cortex developed so that not every reaction was fight or flight, we gained the ability to reflect on what went wrong, especially when members of our clan died.
The ability to analyze a bad situation and as a result come up with solutions to avoid bad outcomes in the future was a trait that enabled people to protect themselves and their loved ones.
The ability to reflect on what others or that we did ourselves, and to learn from it and strive to learn more and more and do better the next time may have actually been instrumental to our survival as a species.
We're no longer faced with the proverbial saber-tooth tiger, but I believe the process of self-reflection and striving to do better may be hard-wired, and is not a result of parental influence but may be traced back to Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest.
As such, our "arch nemesis" of self doubt, worry, etc, etc is very real because of our neurology and psychology. So, our challenge is to calm it down and reassure that part of ourself that it's not probably that a saber-tooth tiger is lurking around the corner to eat us. We are probably going to survive most things most days. It's good to strive for better, but we also need to acknowledge the blessings of being safe, right here and right now.
my 2 cents...(or maybe 10 cents, since this was kind of long)
Hi Cheryl! There are a lot of layers to this issue. Fear will always play a role in our lives. I find that simplifying everything really helps. Instead of focusing on why I feel the way I do, I try to focus on what is one small thing I can enjoy about the situation. By narrowing my focus I can usually get back to an emotionally balanced state.
Thank you for the in-depth comment. I really enjoy reading how you break things down.
I think that we are programmed from birth to think that life is hard, it's not fair and we have to fight for everything we get. So, when something does work out well, by happenstance or not, we don't feel as though it's earned or deserved, so we find ways to sabotage it. Fear is a big thing, but I think it's also a societal issue in how we are "programmed" to see the life and the world.