Often, You Are Your Own Worst Enemy

Don’t let your mind conspire against you.

Three years ago I was living in Barcelona and miserable. I didn’t like the city and I was counting down the days until I left. This was despite having a great bunch of friends, a job that I enjoyed which gave me a lot of freedom and living in a vibrant city.

However, I was adamant that I was unhappy. No matter what I did, or where I went with my friends, I kept telling myself this wasn’t for me.

When I get back to England everything will be better. That’s what I kept repeating over and over in my head until it became one of the first things I thought about when I woke up.

Today, I am back in England, but I want to leave. Before the Coronavirus outbreak, I was planning on moving to the Netherlands, but those plans have been put on hold.

The funny thing is, those same thoughts I had when I was living in Barcelona are the same ones I’m having now.

I desperately wanted to return to England for reasons that I can’t explain, probably because I just wanted to leave Barcelona. Now that I’m back, the itch to leave has returned again.

When I look back on my time in Barcelona, it’s with fondness. Whatever I told myself, I did enjoy living there. It’s a fun place to live, there’s a lot going on and there’s always something to do. It’s nowhere near as bad as I made it out to be.

The same thing happened when I lived in New Zealand for a year. I lived in Christchurch, which had been hit by a devastating earthquake in 2011, the city resembled a war zone when I arrived. This is no exaggeration.

I had a lot of fun there, but again, I kept telling myself this wasn’t the place for me. I couldn't wait to get out of there. If you gave me the opportunity to go back now, I’d jump at the chance.

The common denominator in all of this is me. It wasn’t the places that were bad, it was my view towards them. I had convinced myself I was unhappy because of where I was and not because of the real problem: my mindset.

Without realising it, I had become my own worst enemy.

Headspace

Our thoughts are what govern our decisions. It was the Roman philosopher Seneca who said that

‘A man is as unhappy as he has convinced himself he is.’

If the majority of your thoughts are negative, your actions are going to be negative as well. Input equals output. It’s vital that you control what goes inside your head, otherwise it can overpower you.

I know this from personal experience. My negativity towards living in Barcelona manifested itself in many ways.

I declined to hang out with my friends on lots of occasions because I was miserable and wanted to leave the city. Instead of going to the beach or a bar for a few drinks, I sat inside alone with my thoughts and stewed over my situation.

I didn’t realise it at the time, but going out and interacting with the world would have been beneficial and provided me with a better state of mind.

Instead, I became a recluse and worked on my travel blog non-stop. After all those negative thoughts, the culmination came at the end of June when I had a huge panic attack.

I had never experienced one before and it shook me up. Bad. My chest tightened, I struggled to breathe and an impending feeling of doom came over me. A lot of people liken a panic attack to a heart attack — and that’s what I thought I was having.

Thankfully, I didn’t, but I still went to the hospital anyway since I wasn’t thinking straight. Once I got back to England, these attacks persisted as my mind remained my worst enemy.

I was afraid of having more attacks and, whenever I felt the slightest twinge, my mind would go into overdrive and I’d convince myself I was having a heart attack or that there was something else wrong with me.

This persisted for six months until I went to a talk which explained the reasons for my attacks and it all made sense. I realised my line of thinking was what was causing these issues and to resolve them I would have to change my thought patterns.

Think Positively

Life is shorter than most of us think. It can be over in a flash. The problem with life is that we think we have all the time in the world, but we have no inclination as to when our time is up.

This leads us to postpone what we want to do the most or fester in the recesses of our minds. Instead of living in the world we see around us, we live in our mind instead.

It’s easy to do, but it has dangerous consequences. Negative thoughts can gather momentum and turn into an unstoppable juggernaut if you’re not careful. It’s easy to convince yourself all is not well, despite the evidence being to the contrary.

This is what I did in Barcelona. Compared to a lot of people on the planet, my living conditions were nothing to become miserable about.

I lived in a nice flat with great people. I was living in one of the most diverse and interesting cities on the planet with a fantastic climate and beaches on my doorstep. I had no reason to be miserable, yet I was.

I had fallen prey to Seneca’s maxim. I had convinced myself I was unhappy. Looking back, I would love to tell my younger self to inject some positivity into his life.

My circumstances were a lot better than I thought they were at the time. Indeed, with Brexit now official, I may not get the chance to live abroad again with the loss of freedom of movement.

Those thoughts are still recurring today, but I am in a better place now to deal with them. I would love to live in the Netherlands. I have wanted to live there for a few years now. But I’m content if that’s not the case.

For years, I thought to live in my hometown was boring, now I see it differently. I have my friends from childhood here, my family is close by and there is plenty of stuff to do.

Sure, it may not be Barcelona or New Zealand, but it’s not bad. There are worse places to live. It would be easy to focus on the negatives of the situation, but there are plenty of positives too.

It’s by focusing on these that you can regain control of your mind and stop yourself from being held hostage by your negative thoughts.