A Million Little Things

I have been feeling really anxious, agitated and frustrated lately.

Anyone else?

It seems like every little thing turns into a big deal. It’s left me feeling confused, angry and searching for answers.

I think this is something that a lot of us do to ourselves. With a lot of meditation, prayer, and conversations with some great people, I have started to learn a few things about myself. I’ve got a few ideas on how to make it stop.

I internalize all the little annoying things that happen throughout my day and turn them into personal failures. I write these moments off as “annoying” or “stressful” but what I am really saying internally is “I’m a failure. I screwed up again. If I was better, that wouldn’t have happened. What’s wrong with me?

I’ve already done it while writing this blog post. When I opened up my Chrome browser, I got a notification. You know those annoying notifications you get at the top of your screen from Facebook or YouTube or whatever. I thought I had turned this off. Matter of fact I know I did, but yet here we are. It’s still happening. Instantly I get pissed at myself. What is wrong with me? Why can’t I figure out how to turn off my notifications? I did what google told me to do. Why isn’t it working?

Frustrating yes. Personal failure no.

Sometimes it’s true that something is missing. I don’t have all the information yet. But is that my fault? Does that make me a bad person? Is that a failure?

No. Not at all. It just means that I haven’t learned everything in the world yet. I have a little more studying to do. But how am I supposed to make myself accountable to know things that I don’t even know about yet? That’s a battle I can never win. But placing these impossible expectations on myself, I set myself up for failure. It is the only possible outcome.

I need to learn that if I don’t know something, then it’s not a failure. It’s just something I still need to learn. That really is all there is to it.

It happened another time while writing this post. I used some incorrect grammar (which I do a lot) while typing that first paragraph. Instantly I judged myself. Anger. Frustration. What is wrong with me? Why am I not smarter? If I was smarter I wouldn’t be messing up grammatically and having to spend time fixing all my mistakes. Isn’t it ok to make mistakes? Do I have to have perfect grammar to be ok? No. And besides, they make awesome apps for that now. Grammarly anyone?! :)

A million little frustrations become a million big failures

I take these super small annoying things that happen throughout my day and turn them into big failures. I do this a million times a day and it all adds up to a million failures. And by mid-afternoon, I am emotionally exhausted and trying to figure out why. Maybe it’s because I just spent the first half of my day railing on myself for every little thing I could find wrong. This leads to anger. Depression. Anxiety. Frustration. Agitation. And generally just feeling like an absolute loser.

Here are just a few examples of the way I do this every day. Do any of these sound familiar?

Dropping something in the kitchen, bumping into some furniture, my computer freezing up, when I misread my GPS app and take a wrong turn while driving, when a client questions me, when a student quits their lessons, when someone doesn’t call me back, when I forget the words to a song, when I play a wrong note on the piano, when I fumble on my words when talking to someone. And on and on it goes. A million little things turning into a million huge failures. Every day. Day after day.

Make it stop!

The good news is now that I am aware of this, there is something I can do about it. I need to practice catching these little things as they happen. Acknowledge the frustration and then speak the truth. These are not personal failures. These are just a part of life. I am a human being who makes mistakes. I am a human being who is still learning new things. I am a human being who needs to practice being kinder to myself.

The keyword here is “practice” This is not going to happen overnight. But if I can start making this a daily practice, I can start catching more and more of these little frustrations before they become huge self-deprecating moments.

So my new practice is to acknowledge these little things and to be kinder to myself. If I can do this a million times a day then everything changes. And right now, a change sounds pretty good to me.

How To Overcome Fear

Fear is a powerful force. It’s also incredibly sneaky the way it can work itself into our lives, quickly take hold, and destroy our hopes and dreams. Fear can be paralyzing, keeping us from making decisions and moving on with our lives.

Fear can keep us isolated. So often we spend way too much time worrying about what others think of us. It can make us push people away when all they want to do is love us. Fear can make us believe that we don’t belong. It can make us feel like we are not good enough or cool enough, which can lead to self-loathing and a feeling of worthlessness. It can lead us down a path to where we don’t even want to live anymore.

Fear can fester and destroy our lives. It’s so important that we call out our fears and face them head on. We need to look at them logically, find the false information we base them on, and replace them with truth.

The truth is we were created to be here and we are here for a purpose. We do belong and we are worthy of love. We are perfectly imperfect just the way we are, even with all our flaws. We are meant to be happy and successful.

Fear can work it’s way into our lives quickly, so we need to choose to see the truth over our fears everyday. A great exercise is this: every night before we go to bed, we need to take a few minutes and ask ourself “Was I afraid today?” If the answer is yes, we need to call out those fears. Look at them logically and see if they really make sense. Then replace those thoughts of fear with the truth.

If we do this consistently every day, we can destroy fear. It won’t disappear forever, but we can keep it from ruining our lives. We can gain strength in reminding ourselves of what the truth really is. And then we can live the lives we were truly meant to live.

Don’t let fear steal your joy away from you. Let the truth ring free and give you the peace you have been looking for your whole life.