Lately, I’ve been a little discouraged. I’m not sure if it’s because I lost my outside job during the COVID quarantine or because I’m at a stage in life where things normally change. I’m entering retirement, and the word itself has both positive and negative associations with it. To most people, it means you’re getting old.
So to get out of my funk, I try to use positive words to create affirmations for myself. I am capable and productive, is maybe the first thing I say. We all want to feel useful in the world, as if we’re getting something done, moving life along, accomplishing something. The something I’m doing may be as insignificant as washing the dishes or sending a sympathy card to a bereaved friend. It may make a difference to me: I might feel better about myself with a clean kitchen, as if life is somehow more orderly and I can think clearly. Subconsciously, I still know life is still chaotic and unpredictable, but for this moment, having a clean kitchen lifts my spirits. Or the action of sending a thoughtful card and note to someone else who, like me, may be feeling down, can lift up the other, and the other is also part of me. We’re all united in this one, big human race, and what benefits others also benefits me.
Okay. So momentarily after cleaning the kitchen and letter writing, I feel better. Maybe that feeling even lasts awhile. But ultimately my brain is likely to run back along the same negative channels. Recent brain research tells us that our thoughts follow neural pathways, and the more frequently used that pathway is, the more often our thoughts travel down it.
This seems like the chicken or egg problem. Which comes first? Is that neural pathway well worn because my thoughts often go that way? Or do my thoughts often go that way because that neural pathway is wide and well traveled? I guess ultimately it doesn’t matter, because if I have established those negative neural pathways over the course of a lifetime, then I have them. And whenever I’m down or in a funk or even just bored, my thoughts immediately jump onto that negative superhighway.
But they don’t have to. That’s where positive affirmations come in. They’re like road signs pointing to a new road, one I don’t often take. I am accomplishing things that are important to me, is another way my thoughts can travel.
Recently, someone commented to me that he didn’t know why I practice the piano because I’m really not very good at it. I was hurt, of course, and right away my thoughts started down that negative neural pathway that I’ve traveled so often before. He’s right. I’m not any good. Why am I doing this? I started learning too late in life. I might as well give this up because it’s just a waste of time. I was sailing down that superhighway of discouragement.
But I stopped and said, Hey, I don’t have to take this road, even though it’s one I usually travel. I deliberately decided to try another less traveled road. The sign to this road says: Playing the piano keeps my brain active. Or the sign that says, Even if you’re not particularly good, playing lets you hear great classical music. Bach, Beethoven and Clementi are all reaching forward in time towards me, allowing me to hear their thoughts and feel their emotions from so many centuries ago. And there’s another sign that says, You’ve learned to read music, something that seemed so mysterious most of your life. All those little dots and squiggles and lines now have meaning, and I can translate them from the page, through my eyes, and down into my fingers as they strike the keys. What kind of miracle is that?
I think that much of the time I’m unhappy, it’s because my thoughts are on the wrong road. Affirmations can put me onto another road, the road less traveled (to use the title of Scott Peck’s 1978 book on what makes for a contented life). I just have to remember to look at the signs.