Controlling My Life Back From Negative Thinking

It’s a learned skill, and I’m learning as I go.

We’re so busy in the moment that we fail to see the bigger picture. We constantly go, go, go without any reflection or time for it.

I wake up and the first thing I see is all my notifications. I immediately present myself various information without even taking a moment to breathe. Then the information is in my head, whether I’m conscious of it or not.

It took a toll on my mental health. When I was making and drinking coffee, I haven’t been as relaxed as I was in the past. I wasn’t enjoying the moment.

Constant news about the virus. Constant reminders that it’s here and growing. Constant updates on another black person being shot. Emails and texts. Medium notifications. It’s all too much to see when I only woke up 60 seconds ago!

I was too busy stressing about the future. This trickled down from the moment I got up to the moment I went to bed.

In addition, living with my Florida family during the pandemic has been a challenge. While I love them, they have not been as careful about the virus as I have. It’s constantly stressing me out. Florida is one of the worst places to be in right now, and this virus kills people indiscriminate of age. Knowing that I could go like that, that my life could end sooner than I want it to, is something that’s on my mind more frequently.

That’s another lesson I’ve learned: you can only plan life to a certain extent. You can plan with your own means but there are things you can’t control. You can’t plan that there’ll be a deadly virus in our daily lives, and you can’t plan how people behave. The only thing you can plan is whatever’s in your range of control.

For me, thinking this has forced me to take a hard look at where I stand in my life.

The pandemic has been a solid time productivity-wise. I’m getting a lot done and I need to give myself more credit for that. I started seriously writing on Medium and I got over my writer’s block. I started gaining traction here (I love you, reader!). I’ve read a lot of books. I made new friends on the Internet. We’ve made progress in our startup. My tutoring business is growing. Things are looking positive.

If that’s the case, why have I been so stressed out? The reason is simple: I did not give myself the space to think, and consequently I let negative thoughts control me instead of taking control of my own life. If life is a car, you have to constantly be at the steering wheel. You can’t let it go, or you’ll crash. And that’s exactly what’s happening. I have a lot of good — and momentum to make more good — in my life, I can’t let negative thoughts stop the momentum.

I can’t let them prevent me from enjoying the momentum. That would be the worst thing I can do for my trajectory. On Medium, my writing has been slacking over the past few weeks. I haven’t written enough stories like this one, and these kinds of reflective essays are my favorite pieces to write. I think they’re the most beneficial to my readers. People learn from my stories — and I learn from them. I become a better person while writing these stories. Over the past few weeks, I let that go.

It’s my responsibility to control my reactions to actions I can’t control.

In this case, I can’t lose the momentum for writing. I need to maintain my writing as a craft. I need to maintain my readers, and that comes from consistency.

My friend Anne Bonfert writes the best articles I read on Medium. She only started here less than two months ago and she gets a ton of readers, many of whom are the same. I’m one of them. We consistently read her content because she consistently posts good articles. It’s amazing that she’s so capable of posting so many good pieces and do so almost every day. She hasn’t sacrificed quality for quantity, she’s excelling at both.

Yet this is not rocket science: she works her ass off to do this. If I want to be more like Anne, I need to do the same.

I need to write more pieces like this. I need to read more writers’ stories. I need to engage more in the writing community. I need to engage more with my readers.

Another thing Anne has going for her is vision. She does not overtly say it, but she is one of the best travel and life writers on Medium. Her action is to write a travel blog or a daily reflection, my expectation is to read that writing. Her action of writing and my expectation to read her writing is all part of this grander vision.

How is Anne able to write with such vision? Unlike me, she doesn’t let the bad news of today and negative thinking get in her way. She doesn’t have to point this out, just check out her Medium profile. She’s not only consistent, she is consistently good. She has her vision and she had to work to make it happen.

And she lives her life to maintain that vision. Her stories are good because they are reflections of her living. As readers, we just live her experiences vicariously.

How can we expect Anne to write well if her mind was constantly interrupted by negative thoughts?

She maintains her vision by living her life.

I have a vision about writing more of my musical journey. I want to write blogs of the things I learn while I’m learning to play guitar. I want the reader to get fully immersed in my experiences, the way Ann’s writing does with her readers.

Yesterday I learned how to read a guitar chord diagram. It became much easier for me to learn how to play new songs. I can’t wait to write more about such experiences.

And this time, I am going to maintain the momentum. Just watch me.

P.S. If you liked my story, here are some of my favorite personal essays I’ve written!