Tag: negative self talk

judgement

As I work through a newly subscribed system, attempting to purge myself of ill will, I realize I have a lot of hang-ups for someone who’s ostensibly adapted the catch-phrase “everyone is doing their best.”

Even to take a tired old expression into consideration – There’s a fox in the henhouse – I’m compelled to acknowledge that, although I’m taking a metaphor literally, the fox is doing what he knows to do. My proclivity toward peaceful living and understanding that I am not a carnivore does not stop the fox from being a fox anymore than it stops the hen from being a hen. There are a number of things I can do to protect the hens from the fox, but changing the motivation of the fox isn’t really one of them.

So, too, I must allow cops to be cops, and robbers to be robbers, Donald Trump be Donald Trump, artists to be artists… and so forth. I can never say that “If I were that person, I’d do things differently” because if my life was there’s, and I made all the same decisions up to this point, I can’t rationally say I would do anything differently now. I realize I’m getting into the concept of free will being an illusion and I’ll stop short of that because I’m not really knowledgeable enough to speak on that, other than to say: If I was Jeff Bezos, I’d be Jeff Bezos… and notion of making decisions like Dave Johnston would be out the window.

So when I find myself in a place of judgement, I really have to cool my jets. I can’t rightfully pass judgement on anyone… and yet I do. Whether it’s ‘this band sucks’ or ‘that person is a junkie’ or ‘so & so is a jerk’ I must first acknowledge that I am out of my depth. Not only are these people doing their best – because we all are – but there is redemption for them – redemption being a thing I’ve spoken on before (and will again: spoiler alert) – because if there’s no opportunity for redemption, then there is no point in living.

The one I’m the most critical and harsh with… is me. I can berate myself to the ends of the earth about the 10 lbs I want to lose, or the struggles I have in my life. But if I heard my kid talk like that about herself it would break my heart. A friend showed me that fact recently when I shared my negative self-talk and it’s really stuck with me. If I’d want to intervene in someone else’s negative self talk, then why wouldn’t I want to stop myself from doing the same?

Food for thought… every day.

I’m not big on new years resolutions so much as I try to make changes when hey need to be made rather than waiting for a specific day… but since the new year is upon us, it really would serve us all well to be a bit kinder to ourselves. The kindness to others is sure to follow.

I haven’t been posting much about fitness lately, but I’ve been working my old half-marathon program at the running track at my gym that will carry me through until the thaw, which I hope comes early. Hopefully you’ve found something constructive and sweat-inducing to get you through the shitty months.

Much love.

sabotage

I can’t stand it, I know ya’ planned it…

For someone who’s spent more than his fair share of time sabotaging himself, I certainly had a smug and mired view of the people around me doing the same. My lack of experience (something I can’t blame myself for) and lack of self awareness (something I can blame myself for) allowed me to hear people say things like “I just need a drink to calm my nerves” and think “that’s so cliche – they’re just doing that because they heard somewhere that they should” without ever realizing that I was; in fact wrong, and that really what they were doing was giving themselves an excuse to drink that had nothing to do with the calming of the nerves at all, and everything to do with justifying the remedy.

I’m not here to pick on drinkers so much as I am here to expose my lack of awareness.

I come from a community; a scene, if you will, that was largely populated with GenX’ers and although I am technically not one, I was certainly born during a strange time between the GenXer’s and Millennials that allowed me to plant one foot in each camp – both fairly nihilistic for different reasons. This scene was special in many ways, but it was not unique in it’s collective attitude towards commercial success. The idea of ‘selling out’ was ultimately tantamount to treason, and I believe that my need to belong prevented me from pursuing a level of success that I believe I always had the chops to achieve. Many of us did, but many of us talked ourselves out of it. Now, at 41 years old I am chasing my teenage dreams once again… but that’s probably a topic for another day.

A stronger version of myself might have told all of those people to kick rocks, but I wasn’t that. I was me, for better or worse. And honestly I’ve been sabotaging myself for decades – this is just the most friendly, and possibly pivotal example of it.

This all does lend itself to a fear I developed, or maybe always had. Hell, maybe all of us had it – the fear of success. We’re all aware of the concept of fear of failure and the workoholism that tends to follow suit, but fear of success is much, much stronger and far less often acknowledged.

What if I succeed and I have to keep doing this?
What if I become known for the wrong thing?
Imposter syndrome often follows, with “what if they find out I’m actually not remarkable?”

As a musician, the thought of both alienating my old-school, cool fans while simultaneously not being able to sell what I’m doing to a larger part of the populous meant living in “insincere loser purgatory” for what could be the rest of my life. My personal concerns included:

  • not being punk enough for punk rock fans
  • not being pop enough for the pop crowd
  • not being heavy enough for the rock/metal crowd
  • not being a good enough guitar player for the guitar geeks
  • not being interesting enough to be interviewed… or handsome
  • What if I never write another song?
  • What if I actually suck, and nobody is telling me?

It devolves into an embarrassing series of notions from there, I assure you. This line of resistant thought kept me starting and cratering bands every few years for a couple decades… except for the ‘what if I never write another song?’ which kept me pen-in-hand and riffing constantly for my whole life.

I’ve released over 125 songs in 8 different bands, have co-written singles, and have composed music for commissioned works, as well as writing my own parts for a couple hundred songs on other people’s recordings and/or performances… and wondered if I had what it takes to be a consistent, solid, good musician pretty much the whole time.

In the end, I tend to think that these types of failures of self; for lack of a better term, come down to manifestation. We speak hard things over ourselves, and we receive them. We also say enough contrarian shit about ourselves and we’ll inevitably start to believe it – and we do that because it’s EASIER to say “I could have accomplished ______” than it is to actually set our sights on something and go for it.

If I have anything to bestow on anyone who read all the way to the end of this, it’s that (a) it’s okay to daydream, and you should do it without remorse or embarrassment, and (b) be kind to yourself, even when you don’t want to.