Am I a Loser?

Changing the Script of my Life

I have started writing the morning pages. Every morning I jump straight out of my  bed  to my desk, where I start scribbling in my diary. I have committed to writing three pages every day . My pen furiously captures my stream of consciousness in these pages and I never review anything that I have written. 

I have been appalled at the themes emerging in these pages. One of the issues that came up in the pages was my recent struggle to wake up early in the morning and follow my morning routine like the good old times. And for some time now I had been failing miserably at this endeavor. My mind said that I should not make a big issue out of something so insignificant. However, the reality was that since it had been appearing prominently and consistently in my morning pages, it must have been a big deal for me somehow.

I wrote in my morning pages about how big a loser I was . The voice in my head kept telling me, “You are a lazy fart who will never move beyond these basic struggles in life. Forget about the big things, you will always be bogged down by the baggage of these un-necessary things.”. The voices would start a vicious cycle  in my head that would pull me down further and further during the day.

A few days back I came across an excellent piece of writing. I decided to follow the wisdom carried within that piece and take a reality check on my life. I discovered that I was anything but lazy. I was sincere to my work, I  was working out regularly in the evenings, I was involved in community service, I was fulfilling my responsibilities at home, I was catering to my own self expression needs, I was taking care of my pets, and so forth –  I was anything but lazy. This was reality substantiated by hard evidence. 

My feelings had been giving me a false signal, far separated from reality. I decided to take corrective action by changing the script in my head. I decided to confront the voice of doom with the voice of reality. The script changed from  “I am a lazy loser” to “I am a hard working and industrious person. It is just that I have not been able to wake up early lately.”  And such a small shift in the script has brought immense relief to me. There has been peace in my head and in my life since then. Very soon after going through this process, I have been able to wake up early every morning without any struggle.

The whole process made me realize that these negative voices that go straight for my jugular, are not the reality. They are the critical voices carried and internalized from my childhood. They are the critical voices of my mother, grandmother and other significant people from my childhood. These people continue to live within me through their voices. And it is time that I reclaim myself by changing the script in my head.