Fighting Your Negative Thoughts, Like Evelyn Did

Last night I had this thought: “I could probably write a book about the power of negative thoughts.”

Then this thought: “No, I couldn’t.”

And then finally this: “Oh, well I guess that proves my point.”

I’ve been told a few times over the years that I’m a negative person, often without even any prompting. And I understand that; I have a certain sarcastic tone to my voice that I attribute to being a fan of Bea Arthur. My go-to book series from childhood will always be A Series of Unfortunate Events over that wizard shit. I refer to the little voice in my head as “Charlie Brown” (more on him later). So I see where they’re coming from.

There are two recent pieces of media that really touched me on this subject: Matt Haig’s novel, The Midnight Library, and the fantastic film Everything Everywhere All at Once (which just received some well-deserved Oscars). Both stories feature a protagonist who is unsatisfied with her life and, through the increasingly overused plot device of metaverses (multiple universes), she samples other lives she could have lived instead. In the end [thematic spoiler alert] they come to appreciate the lives they have, having realized the attitude we have as we go through life is more important than what we actually do.

I cried in the movie theater when I watched EEAAO, both times (yup). It felt like a movie made for me, not just because of the fun science-fiction plot and the over-the-top martial arts scenes. It hit me right in the chest because I deeply understood what the main character, Evelyn, was going through. I’ve had the thoughts expressed by Evelyn many times before. “Would I have been happier if I had done [xyz]?” “Would I be happier if I did this instead of that?” After eight years in Pittsburgh I felt unsatisfied and asked myself, “Would I be happier in Chicago?” After two years in Chicago, I had my answer: “Nope.” I had tried to jump into another life, hoping I would like it better, and the results were not what I was hoping for. (That’s not to say Chicago was all bad or that I regret doing it, but another time for another blog).

This post is about the negative voice (Charlie Brown) and the power it can have over us. The negative voice gains power when it makes us stop Trying (did I name my blog well or what?). I struggle with writing and taking the steps to publish a book because the voice says that it will suck and no one will read it. I’ve had coworkers who all but say they don’t like their jobs, but when asked about leaving they just say, “And do what? There’s nothing better out there.” It happens to both the protagonist and antagonist of EEAAO; they have become so nihilistic they don’t even care if the world literally ends. We tell ourselves that the results will be negative and then we don’t do anything. We prove ourselves right by not Trying, instead falling into a heinous cycle of doing nothing and then complaining that our lives sucks.

The negative thoughts start shaping how we interact with people too. I’ve talked shit and judged others very critically because I was jealous or bitter or unhappy. Being mean to or about other people makes you feel better, just for a few moments, until your thoughts find you again. As the saying goes, “Hurt People Hurt People”. The negative thoughts LOVE when you compare your life to someone else’s, so you can spend hours feeling bad about what they’ve done and what you haven’t.

Both Midnight Library and EEAAO show us that in every life, there is something to be negative about. There is no “perfect life” where the credits roll and you live happily in your little house with a washer, drier, ironing machine. If I were the characters in those stories, maybe in another life I would see an Isaac who stuck with standup comedy and moved to New York City and one nig6ht the right person saw me perform at the right time. In that life, Isaac makes a cute little living as a touring comic. Is he “happier” in that life than I am in my current one?

What good does it do to compare my life to multiverse Isaac? Doesn’t matter if he’s happy pursuing standup as a career; the real me here knows I would find that kind of lifestyle suffocating and way too unstable. There are an infinite number of lives we aren’t living, an endless supply of made-up scenarios we can compare ourselves to. What we need to do is take those hard steps in the lives we’ve got. Ask yourself, “What do I want to do that would make me happy?” If the answer seems impossibly large, like “Be a rock star”, get to the root of it. Do you play an instrument? No? Go learn. That’s step one. If you like it, great, if you don’t, then now you know you don’t really want that, and you can look at something else now. It may not instantly make you happy, and it may take a while to feel the results. But staying still and moping only makes the negative voice stronger.

Some negative thoughts have their place. If you go to the casino and play roulette and put $20 on red, the negative voice may say “It’s going to hit black and you’re going to lose $20”. Negative, yes, but it has a point. And if losing the $20 is a very bad thought, maybe leave the casino. If your negative voice says, “You may have a drinking problem”, it’s worth listening to for that moment.

I’m being more active on my journey to turn my negative thoughts into motivation (you say things like “on a journey” after so many weeks of therapy). My goal is to hear those negative thoughts that plague me, tell myself how wrong they are, and then take steps towards proving them wrong. By doing this, I take their power and it becomes my power. [Side note, I was going to title this The Power of Negative Thought, but some basketball coach already wrote a book with that title. My negative voice said, This title seems stupid now, and this is another time the negative voice has a point.]

Once you start proving your inner Charlie Brown wrong, even in little ways, you get momentum going. Everything feels possible, because most things actually are. If your negative thoughts are things like, “You’re lazy, you don’t do anything”, make a weekly To-Do list. Check off everything you do that week, and then look back at it. If you didn’t do anything, Try again the next week. If you did some or half of them, great. If you did all of them, great. Wasn’t so hard was it? Do more stuff next week. And so on.

There are more things I think I could say about this subject. Negative thoughts may not seem obviously negative. Methods of dealing with them might feel healthy but they really aren’t. Then there’s the dangers of being a Pollyanna and choosing to “ignore” all those thoughts, which doesn’t really help you in the long run. But I’ll save that for another time. Maybe this is just some half-baked rambling, but I do know that it counts as the reflective journaling that my therapist told me to do. See? Checked something off my list. It’s that easy. Go. Get out. Try. Live.

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