MindWorks

Springing Forth this Spring
Renita C. Gabriel, Psy.D., contributing editor
http://www.breakthroughspsycservices.com

What images come to mind during this time of year? Most of us think of budding trees, blossoms of muted hues, and mild sunny days foreshadowing the warmer weather ahead. For many of us spring represents a time for new beginnings and fresh starts. It is a time to shed the “heaviness” of the winter in order to expose a newer and revitalized self. Spring is a season of activity. Life is “springing forth”; are you? Or are you still caught in the hibernating inactivity of winter? If so, then I would encourage you to awake from your slumber and become an active participant in your own life as opposed to a passive recipient of whatever comes your way. It is the difference between living and merely existing. What’s stopping you?

As I pose the above question to you, I can’t help but reflect on my own life and the obstacles that have prevented my advancement in some way. Perhaps the most prominent hindrances for me were fear and doubt. Like many of you, I had fears of failing at the thing I was setting out to achieve and I doubted myself and my ability to accomplish the tasks before me. How did I overcome these obstacles you might ask? Well, if I were to be entirely honest, I am a work in progress but I am certainly not where I used to be. One of the things I had to do was work on my thought life. I had to put the idea of “failure” in perspective. I had many distortions in my mind about what it means to be a failure. I tended to catastrophize a situation until it became the worst possible thing in the world that could happen to me, when in reality it wasn’t. For example, the world was not going come to an end if I got tongue tied while making a presentation, and I wasn’t going to absolutely die if someone did not care for me or hold me in high regard. The truth of the matter is that life goes on and so must we when confronted with fear and doubt.

Fear and doubt can be paralyzing emotions. It is up to us to challenge the thoughts that promote these feelings with more realistic appraisals of our situations. Additionally, we must learn to accept ourselves and where we are at any given point in life. Consider the following TIP:

Disclaimer — Please note that the monthly “TIP” does not constitute a therapeutic relationship with the readership nor substitute for a professional consultation with a licensed mental health professional.