When You Know, You Grow
Identify exactly what you don't want in your life and then flip the narrative. Dig deep to figure out what you do want instead, specifically related to what you know you don't.
Dwelling on what you don’t want in your life is important – as long as it’s in moderation and under specific conditions, with a hard stop and a next step in place for the sake of your stress levels and mental health.
Investigating what you don’t want in your life is a legitimate part of the verb I just made up: know thyselfing. It’s the process part of to know thyself, or the action that comes before the knowing. I’m sure there are much better ways to say this, but it popped into my brainy place this way and now I’m stuck with it and so are you.
If you want to bring a thing into your life, it’s pretty widely understood that focusing on what you don’t want is counterproductive; you will just end up with more of it. Your subconscious pays attention to the noun that’s front and center in your mind and looks for ways to give you more. Your subconscious hears I don’t want headaches but focuses on headaches and, being compelled to give you what you want, it gives you a bunch more headaches.
The key is to know you don’t want headaches but to then make sure you immediately rephrase this knowledge in terms of what you do want instead: I want a clear head and peaceful mornings where I wake up happy and feeling good in my body. Or words to that effect.
But for this exercise, I insist you think about what you don’t want. More precisely, I insist you write it down. Write it down and look at it on the page, in all its loathsome glory. Sink into the angst and frustration and unwantedness of it all. Really own how much you hate it. And then, immediately figure out the opposite and dig even harder into that.
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