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#[Twitter thread]: Just met husband’s mom. In the last few months she lost 30lbs, practiced yoga daily without a single miss, quit carbs, started learning English, and is now on her way to quitting smoking. Her secret? Every day on commute she imagines her ideal future in vivid detail.
This is exactly why I’m drawing my ideal city for the solarpunk contest even though I don’t have much experience drawing.
Because if I want my kid to grow up in a beautiful, green and friendly neighborhood, then someone will need to design it in vivid detail first. [
This is also why I deleted “I’m not very good at drawing” in my previous tweet, and replaced it with “I don’t have much experience drawing”. Having more experience is something I can realistically control.
In the last few weeks, I asked a few people to imagine their ideal future, and they said something like “I want to be free from depression and anxiety”. That’s still talking about the thing you don’t want. How does your life without depression and anxiety look like?
When I kept pushing like this, people would respond with panic and overwhelm. I can’t think of anything right now, the thought itself is giving me anxiety, only when I get rid of it I’ll be able to think about the future properly, etc, etc.
And then it dawned on me: what if these panic attacks are a defense mechanism, trying to protect your idea of yourself as a logical, reasonable person? ((https://twitter.com/qiaochuyuan/status/1453805911072329732 ))
FWIW I think panic attacks when thinking about the future are a pretty common feature of depression, regardless of what future you try to think about. It's plausible that they're protective, but if so it's probably a more general mechanism than that.
If losing 30lbs was as simple as imagining yourself as a fit, healthy person who does yoga every day, then what would it mean about me if I haven’t still done it yet? Would that mean that I’m a complete idiot?
Without a reasonable narrative about what was blocking you from changing in the past, the only explanation your unconscious is able to come up with is “I’m a complete idiot”, and so it will trigger a panic attack so that you avoid this line of thought. ((https://twitter.com/made_in_cosmos/status/1454008691049500675 ))
A big part of the value delivered by teachers, gurus, therapists or retreats is providing a convincing narrative about why their clients couldn't have changed before, but they're finally able to do it now.
So here is my reasonable narrative: I wasn’t an idiot before, I was just unaware of this defense mechanism trying to protect me.
Now that I’m aware of it, I can let down my guard and start imagining the most beautiful future I can think of in the most vivid detail. If that resonates, feel free to adopt it as your narrative too 🌞
There are sometimes when I just need to sing. And thinking about it feels very similar to crying surprisingly. The tension before and feeling of release/relief afterwards
{{DONE}} look around for NYC stuff this Friday November 2nd, 2021 November 3rd, 2021