I don’t much care for new year’s resolutions. I don’t care for making a bunch of promises to myself that I can’t keep. What I have learned, however, is that if I don’t keep track of my accomplishments and if I don’t set goals, my pessimistic negative brain will consume my motivation. We all have those voices inside our heads that tell us things. Unfortunately, most of the time those voices say shitty things. They tell us we aren’t good enough, how we didn’t accomplish enough, look at that other guy accomplishing more than you, what is wrong with you loser, why don’t you just quit, what you are doing is just stupid anyway. In order to manage mental health, one must manage these voices and learn to train them. You are hearing your own voice, you know. And your voice can be trained.
I’ve never been good at lying to my voice and telling her that things are going to be sunshine and buttercups. She’s too smart for that and knows it’s not true. Instead I give her honest statements that she can’t argue with and cold hard facts. This is where the list of artistic accomplishments come in. I write the list, show her, and she says yea I guess we did accomplish quite a bit. I tell her why being an overnight sensation would be awful and stressful, and she says yea I guess you’re right. I tell her that we are going to accomplish more next year, and she says yea that’s fair. I tell her that we are pretty skilled right now and we will only get better with more time and practice, and she reluctantly says ok.
I get much more accomplished when I’m on my own side. I will talk more extensively about how I use cognitive restructuring to manage unhelpful negative thoughts (that have the potential to sap my motivation) in future blog posts.
This image is available as a mini print in my Society6 shop
Jody Monochrome Art 