The first thing I thought of was this: my tendency to mentally get out of the moment and into the future.
Is that a behavior?
It’s kind of more a mental habit, but I guess it could fall under the “behavior” heading.
Anyway, the reason this is a problem is that I end up borrowing trouble.
If I was just imagining all the wonderful things that could happen in the future, that would be fine.
But when I forecast stressful, unhappy events or circumstances (or other people’s behavior!), that’s not helpful because then I expend mental energy worrying about or trying to solve things that may not even happen.
It’s probably good, to some extent, to anticipate the future so that you can prepare for it.
But I know my tendency is to overdo it in this department to a point where it’s not serving me.
You know how the Bible says, “Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life?”
Well, that’s good for me to remember. I need to stay in the moment and focus on what I can control (me!)
Even if I could accurately predict someone else’s behavior or responses to me, there is literally nothing I can do to control the other person. The only part of the equation I can control is me.
And when I focus on that, it helps to put the worry at bay, because we tend to worry about what we can’t control, not about what we can control.
I definitely do the same thing. Particularly at 2 a.m.
3:30 am for me. On the dot!
I procrastinate on everything! That means I tend to be more reactive than proactive in most situations. This behavior causes problems in my household and at work.
I rehearse how I will handle tragedies. I have imagined and rehearsed my husband’s death, my dog’s death, hitting someone with my car, the death of my closest sibling, having our house burn down…but most often, how I will behave when the police come to my door and tell me my husband has been killed. The problem is that my rehearsal reaction is not the same as what I really did one time when my husband was on a cross country motorcycle trip. One afternoon the door bell rand and two police were standing there. Before they could say a word, I started crying hysterically and one of them said, with some urgency, “Why are you crying? Is someone hurting you?” while the other cop kept trying to see over my shoulder. Turns out they were looking for the old guy across the street and were asking all the neighbors if anyone had seen him (he had dementia and had wandered off) In my rehearsals I had calmly let them in and handled the bad news without a sniffle and a lot of dignity, but when I thought my husband had really died I turned into a mad woman. You would think that once I had proof-positive that all the rehearsing had been pointlessly robbing me of sleep, that I’d wise up. Nope, I still rehearse all possible horrible scenarios, always when I should be sleeping.
Lindsey, you always have the best stories!
Mine feels mild in comparison.
I like things my way. Doesn’t everyone? But it’s totally unnecessary and I need to just let it go.