A recurring sentiment that often punctuates my pursuits is “Why bother. I’m not good enough. This is pointless.” It’s not really a surprise to me that this usually seems to happen right before the descent into The Valley of the Forgotten.
This kind of thought is an example of “catastrophic thinking” or “pessimistic determinism”, and it is truly vile and poisonous. Negative thinking like this erodes my willpower, my creativity, and my very potential; in both my personal and professional pursuits.
Now, I can choose to wallow in these thoughts, ruminating on how “I’ve lost so much time” or “It’s too late, this is where I will be forever” or “I’m never going to get good at x, i should just let it go,” or I can choose to fight against that feeling and do something about it.
I didn’t say it was going to be easy
It essentially boils down to “If I expect the worst, then anything else is a win”. And damn it if that’s not completely defeatist. Maybe even fatalistic.
The real issue with just “snapping out of it” is that this catastrophic thinking is usually a result of some sort of learned behavior or protective adaptation.
I think I can even identify the original source of this protective system in myself — I won’t go into too much detail, but It was a series of events that started when I was about 12 and built up and compounded until I was 18 or 19. Even now, thinking about this, I want to blame others, but the important thing to remember is that placing blame is ultimately just holding a grudge; it serves no purpose, doesn’t fix the issue, and only gives me excuses for why I’m not doing my best anyway.
It makes sense. Failure sucks. If don’t really try, if I don’t invest the thousands of hours, If I don’t give something everything I have, then the (incorrect) logic says that since I haven’t really tried then I haven’t really failed. This isn’t true, of course; the failure just happened before I tried, not after.
There’s also a belief that somewhere out there exists that perfect unicorn skill set for me that I just need to find and then I won’t have to try. Of course, this is absurd, and it’s going to cost me a lot of happiness, energy, mental health, and self-esteem if I continue on this hunt.
Truly working at a skill, task, or career path with the understanding that failure is a legitimate potential outcome also requires a degree of vulnerability and ego exposure that just isn’t fun.
While understanding the root of these thoughts is important, it’s equally important to find tangible ways to counteract them, and this is where the simple but transformative power of one little word comes into play for me.
The Power of One Little Word
The biggest issue with these pessimistic, deterministic thoughts is just how final they are.
- “I’m not good enough”
- “I can’t understand how this works”
- “I don’t have the capital for this”
There’s no flexibility to win there. Done. Kaput. It’s over. The future is already determined and I can’t win.
But one little word can fix most of these thoughts:
“yet”
(and with a little creativity we can handle the others)
Just slapping a “yet” on the end completely changes the tone, takes these thoughts, and lets me turn them into a hopeful, future facing challenge; a source of motivation:
- “I’m not good enough, yet”
- “I can’t understand how this works, yet”
- “I don’t have the capital for this, yet”
This simple shift in perspective even works for more catastrophic thoughts like:
“It’s too late” becomes “It’s not yet too late”
“I will never be good at this” becomes “I am not yet good at this”
But remember to keep it real
If I suddenly decided that I was going to invent a new form of digital currency, or that I would become the greatest cubist painter that ever lived, no amount of “yetting” is going to make that happen; if decentralized coin becomes a real thing (here’s hoping), Satoshi and Vatalik have that locked down, and I’m pretty sure that Picasso can’t be beat.
It’s important to remember that this isn’t just the “power of positive thinking”; it’s using my own defeatist thoughts as weapons against themselves, to shift my perspective and counter (and hopefully permanently change) my propensity to fail before I’ve even really begun.
If you’re curious, here’s some more examples of catastrophic thoughts, some which can be defeated with the all powerful yet or it’s cousin not yet, and some that require a bit more creativity. Do you have any unique instant counters to the others? Share them in the comments below!
- “It’s too late”
- “I’ve already committed to this” (sunk cost)
- “I’m not smart enough to achieve my goals”
- “I’ll never get out of debt”
- “I can’t be / I am not healthy”
- “I’m not successful”
- “I can’t handle this stress; it will destroy me”
- “I’ll never find a job I’ll enjoy”
