If you’re dealing with a bad habit of dwelling on negative thoughts, or distorted memories, or some particular instance that you’ve blown out of proportion and turned into a recurring loop, understand you are certainly NOT the only person to ever fall into this mental trap… Here is some perspective and insight on countering negative thought patterns.
Here is why you do not need to be bothered by them….
If…. You have gone through everything logically, addressed your thoughts up and down with brutal honesty in a conscious way….
Then… You do not need to worry about your thoughts or negative perceptions in a way that effects you, your mood, your feeling, and most importantly your beliefs about yourself…
But i have the negative thoughts… Its me who has them, and since i am a thinking being, it must be my fault!?
“It’s me alone who’s going through this, i must be screwed up, it must mean im a bad person…“
Your thoughts are not always true. They are not always rational. They are not real.
Surely, you can understand that?
The fact is that your brain is the most incredibly powerful thing on this planet… This negative thought pattern can happen for a number of reasons… It doesn’t really matter why, and it is pretty much a fruitless exercise trying to figure out the exact cause, you may never know. Perhaps you bumped your head on the headboard one night while you were asleep and that effected the part of the brain that doesn’t allow you to let go of these thoughts… Who knows. What matters is what you can and will do about it.
Sometimes you have to be active with your mind, and control your consciousness, but know that you can control them. Especially understand, that you are not the only person who has ever gone through this kind of a battle in your mind.
There is nothing wrong with you.
I’ll save any long drawn out step by step “process,” or any psycho babble…
EIther replace the negative thought with some other thought so that every-time you think of it, you can automatically think of something else, or get to the core of how stupid the thought actually is… Laugh at it, and let it go.
You’ll be fine. Let it go. Enjoy your life again. You deserve it. I promise.
Hey Jamie, and others!
I have been dealing with this EXACT issue for 20 plus years now. I was
raised by a very religious man who founded a church and gives sermons there. He told me at a very young age, over and over, that music was the work of Satan and inherently evil, as it leads to sex, drugs, overdoses, life in Hell, etc. I know he didn’t mean it maliciously, he is just very conservative in his thought processes and thought he was steering his son in the right direction.
I have been working this one out for 20 years now, and I still get panic
attacks when I play in front of others and even great resistance to recording in my own home studio. It’s like this deep dark resistance that’s totally scary overcomes me and it’s really a trip, because what I love to do is constantly stormed by inner negative talk and crippling fear/body pain. It’s been constant inner work for me, and all due respect to Jamie, but for some people this belief-changing inner work takes more than an instant of immediate recognition. I envy people who can change a belief in a moment and I’m sure I’ve done it on a few occasions, but there is still a lot of pain inside and it really hurts to have that pain come up everytime I pick up the guitar or think about recording a song. I have made serious progress and I will never give up, and perhaps it adds an edge of authentic pain/emotion to the songs I create that may resonate with the audience in a more profound way than bubble-gum Pop. Who knows? I’m just sharing this so that anyone dealing with similar issues of resistance around their creativity will hopefully not feel so alone and see that there is a
light at the end of the tunnel. I recently played alone with my guitar on stage in front of 1700 people at the Grove, in Orange County, California, and although I received a great round of applause and accolades, I still feel like nothing’s really shifted inside, in terms of my
confidence/pain/wanting to hide, which is really a trip, because you think it would, right!!? Maybe it’s just a matter of ‘Dreading and Doing’, Dreading and Doing, until the pain gets less and less and the confidence and excitement get more and more. I don’t know. All I know is that I have to keep going and hoping this pain will turn to joy and enthusiasm, or at least peace of mind and serenity, so I can do what I’ve been put here to do.
Love,
Jamil Hai
Hope this helps someone!
Jamil
Thank you for your honesty. that’s an incredible story. I’ll reply to you via email.