feeding the right dynamo

Things looked really daunting before. I find that life is really like climbing a mountain. When you see a mountain in front of you, it seems like it would be impossible to get over it, but when you're actually on the mountain, the reality of it is not as daunting as it looked. 

For some reason, I always think of obstacles as being insurmountable. Like say if I'm applying for something - a course or something like that - and I have to fill in and submit a number of forms and maybe scan documents and that kind of thing. When there's some minor complication, I always think it's fatal. Everything can be going ahead. Like, I might have even started the course and there's just some administrative thing that needs to be clarified, but I will think - that's it. I've been thwarted by this obstacle. And then invariably things do work out. What I thought was a decisive obstacle wasn't even really an issue. 

But in those moments, I'm hyper-aware of the obstacle and I think that I can't proceed until this issue is resolved, even though there's really nothing I can do about it. I just need to go and talk to someone or submit or form or whatever. Until it's resolved, I can't relax. And you can never do these things right now. You have to wait a day, a couple of days, sometimes longer. I want to get it sorted now, but I have to wait and work things out and rely on other people to do what they need to do.  

I'm getting better with this. I'm more resourceful and persistent in dealing with obstacles, and I'm able to manage the stress of uncertainty better. Even though I still obsess over processes I have to complete, I can see now that the debilitating worry and rumination that used to plague me - the laser-like focus on things that are actually pretty minor but also that I can't really do anything about in the moment - is a choice. It still doesn't really seem like it because it's such a deeply ingrained thought pattern, but it is, and it's one of the things that I'm changing. My new self is not defeated by a form I need to fill in or something that needs to be clarified. 

Part of the change is that I'm learning not to be absorbed by the black hole of maladaptive thinking and instead to be absorbed by meaningful thinking and activities: learning, creating, reading, writing, interacting, exercising, etc.