About a week ago, I was crawling into bed just after midnight. I had been home alone with the kids for several days and was utterly exhausted (respect to all you single parents out there!). My son had been waking up at 5 am every morning, and as I was trying to fall asleep I started thinking about how horrible I was going to feel after less than five hours of sleep. omg I am going to be so tired tomorrow, it is going to be impossible to focus or do anything at work, I am going to be so grumpy, and impatient with the children, and now I am so anxious that it is going to take me forever to fall asleep...yada yada yada....then very suddenly all this negativity stopped and this thought popped into my head: but who knows, maybe this time he will sleep until 7, maybe everything will be perfect. And after that nice positive thought, I immediately fell asleep. Funnily enough that is exactly what my dear little boy decided to do the next morning. He slept until 7:00 am!
So here is my lesson. I tend to focus way too much on worst case scenarios. Partly to protect myself from disappointment, and partly to prepare myself to deal with that hypothetical situation. However this can really get me depressed, anxious, stressed etc. And often about something that never becomes reality anyway. It is not necessarily the answer to always assume everything will be perfect, but if I am allowing the possibility of worst case scenarios to enter my mind, I should make sure to consider that the possibility of a best case scenario, the possibility of perfect, is also out there. So I have found myself repeating this "mantra" in the last few days, when I feel like I am worrying too much: who knows....maybe it will be perfect.
No comments:
Post a Comment