Life is a long series of plot twists, and life can be difficult if you meander about letting life happen to you with no awareness of potential plot twists headed your way. The challenges relationships, careers, and education present can cause anxiety and stress, which can lead to depression, lack of motivation, not to mention a series of therapies and medications that often don’t provide substantial lasting solutions. We all need some hope. It's the one thing that provides humans with the capacity to do better and feel better and be better. I, like so many others, find hope in stories. Not just the typical stories of struggle and survival, but in the stories that made me feel all the things. If I feel anger towards a character or get frustrated by the absurdity of a situation, I know I’m not alone. Not feeling alone makes me feel hopeful. Hopeful that because someone else survived it and got better, maybe I can too. It’s not just hope that I find in stories, I also find life lessons mixed with compassion, not to mentions a whole host of things I should definitely not do. For instance, want to prevent or resolve conflict? Think through what to say, or in my case, what I should definitely not say. Of course, I can still ruminate over all the things I wish I said, but more than likely, I will just put it in a story. Then someone else can see that they aren’t the only ones who think of all the best comebacks and one-liners long after the fact and often at 2am. This is the beauty of storytelling. I have a relative who just doesn’t see the reason for fiction. This person has some serious challenges with people in general, including me. Yes, I have my own challenges too. I know it’s not as one sided as I may like to believe. This person is missing a great opportunity to get along better in life. I'm totally judging here. What they don’t know is that reading stories is a great way to learn about yourself and other people and how the whole social thing works. Being a human, having feelings, thoughts, beliefs, and opinions is so complex. A thousand books can be read, and there will still be more to learn. Millions of books have been written and still there are more stories to tell. Over and over, I keep learning. How do I learn, by reading, engaging and a whole hell of a lot of wrangling thoughts. That’s what writing is, Thought Wrangling. Honestly, I do it to make sense of the world, and to share that making sense process with others. Like I said, life is hard, but we will have a much easier go of it, if we think our thoughts and wrangle them up until they make sense. That's what I do here. That's the Thought Wrangler Blog.
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Walter Mitty wasn’t paying attention. He simply wasn’t engaged in the real world. He didn’t hear (or notice) much of what was going on around him.
The problem was the story in his head was better than real life. Or so he thought. When he finally wakes up, he realizes he missed so much. If only he had been paying attention… listening. As someone who tends to go off on thinking tangents ala Walter Mitty, I have missed my fair share of connections, opportunities, and warning signs. I once had a friend; we'll call her Sharon. Sharon was telling me how she regretted Social media minimalism is a movement that encourages people to take a more mindful and intentional approach to their use of social media. Sounds nice, huh? Well, I don't know about you, but once I'm in the rabbit hole watching my favorite actor being his fabulous self, I'm in for at least an hour... or two. Basically, until my vision gets blurry, and I realize I'm late for something.
Okay, maybe it's not quite that bad, but it's not so hard to while away my time with nothing to show for it. And that's really my point. All the things I want to do, achieve, and create in life, just swirl down the social media drain. AND, while it did feel good to just 'check out' of life for a while, it didn't really lower my stress or help me relax, because when I'm Life can be overwhelming and exhausting. In this overconnected and overinformed misinformed world our brains are running at max speed. So it's not surprise that so many of us are crashing and burning.
What's the payoff for living like this? A much greater tendency towards anxiety and overwhelm. Thank you very much. Like I needed help with that? Below you will find a short (50 is short right?) list of things to think about and work on to reduce stress, anxiety and depression. I'm mean really, if we were to work hard on every one of these, everything in our lives would improve. So why not give one or two a try? 1. Respect yourself 2. Remove prejudices often 3. Know your own responsibility I'm wired for anxiety. In other words, I'm really good at worrying and coming up with WCS's (worst case scenarios). Not only was I blessed with an amazing ability to feel anxiety, but I also have a very vivid and creative imagination. Not always a good combo. The problem with anxiety and fear is it can make you very difficult to be around. Have you seen the old commercial with the tattoo artist eating a candy bar while working on a big guy who looks down at his brand-new tattoo with shock and asks, “NO REGERTS?”.
The tattoo artist, looks at the guy a bit puzzled, then casually apologizes for being in a daze whilst eating her delicious snack, like she was oblivious to the whole thing. I’m sure what happens next is pretty interesting. Parenting is kinda the same experience. We have a baby and begin parenting under the daze of the shiny new experience. Sure, we may bring along some unhelpful parenting techniques that were used on us, but our intentions are good. So, with glazed eyes we run to buy the baby rearing books, go to the classes, call the moms and friends for advice and everything is just wonderful… until it isn’t. I want to present a different and controversial point of view on suicide, but before I do, I want to explain why I feel like I may have some honest justification for my feelings of frustration on the topic.
Like too many others, I was a neglected and abused kid who had some “undiagnosed differences”. I struggled to connect and relate to other kids, I missed a lot of social cues, which left me with few friends, and in spite of being “gifted,” I got completely lost in school and didn’t do well. As a result, I was isolated, misunderstood, and depressed. By the time I was 19, I was spiraling into a deep, dark, all-consuming depression. This combined with drug and alcohol use sent me into hopeless bleak places in my mind, places that I would revisit several times before I finally broke free, and all this was made more challenging because I didn’t have a foundation of understanding in my home life. Okay, so the title is a bit salacious, but sincere, nevertheless.
But I am completely serious when I talk about the “Sneaky Beast” that is growing within and around us. It’s keeping us from the kind of connection and contentedness that could only come from being fully present and engaged. Although this may be especially challenging for those who are already struggling with socializing, anxiety or depression, it really applies to us all. The figurative beast that I am referring to is media, all media in its full obsequious glory. Not just social media, all forms of disconnected nonliving interaction, like gaming, dating apps, YouTube or even Netflix. Remember, they were all designed to keep you engaged and entertained and coming back for more, and that is exactly where the beast lies in wait. |