Mental Exercise: Take Out the Trash
One of the biggest hurdles to long writing projects is the mental game. I want to spend a few weeks talking about a few of the mental exercises that help me get through longer projects.
A few weeks ago, I experienced two transformational ways of processing negativity. During a singing bootcamp, I was told to list all the negative commentary, fears, and traumatic experiences I had with my singing voice. I read a paragraph the voice coach crafted that negated many of those things (i.e., things people have said are about them and not you, voice health is hard to maintain, and you can’t fault yourself for illness, vocal skills can be learned, etc) Then, I was told to create affirmations. It sounds odd and, to my own ears, a little useless. But, I did it. In the spirit of embracing the bootcamp, I did it. Let me tell you, I could hear what I liked about my voice for the first time. Also, I watched RuPaul’s Drag Race and one of the strongest queens was having a difficult time silencing her inner critic. Another queen told her to write down the things the inner critic was saying, read those things out loud, then rip up the paper and throw the confetti over her shoulder. Given that I don’t want to sweep anything up, I’d much prefer to set fire to it. In a controlled environment, obviously.
Over the years, I have learned that we let a lot of ideas swirl in our heads. Those ideas gain the power of never becoming concrete, so they continue to circulate like smoke. You can’t catch smoke. So, they create fogginess inside our minds as we begin to create. I think that writing the thoughts down, giving them form, allows me to refute them. The often sound much more ridiculous when you read them out loud than they do in your own head. I know it is scary to write them down. I know it can take you to a negative place. It does help to have someone who cares nearby.
Every time I take out the trash, I put a new trash bag back into the bin to catch new trash. I think the affirmations do that work. The affirmations allow you to catch, figuratively speaking, the new mental trash that will accumulate. I use affirmations daily to help me get into the creative space, the writing space. They buoy me. In writing them, I can do what I do best: edit things that don’t make sense. For instance, I consistently must remind myself that the poetry traditions in which I write are valid. It is hard to keep submitting and keep writing after so many rejections. I replay the words of friends and I add my own affirmations to the mix.
For some of you, this may sound silly. It may sound like it couldn’t possibly work. After all, your mind is a powerful entity and it could just refute everything. Maybe. You’ll never know unless you turn the power of your mind toward your own highest, healthiest good.