We can be completely aware that our thoughts are irrational and still get lost inside them. Sometimes awareness isn’t the way out. It’s just another part of the spiral.
I’m a creature of habit, and one of those habits is crafting my daily morning latte with my “yes, I know I’m high-maintenance” espresso machine. My routine is simple. I grind my beans, prep the shot, foam the milk, and slowly come back down from whatever morning delusions or dream state I’m wrapped in. This morning, though, I wasn’t quite awake. I’d had five hours of sleep, my body was tense, and my mind was exhausted from the spiral I’d gone through the night before.
I was robotically performing my espresso routine when a spark shot through my mind. It was Descartes of all things. “I think, therefore I am.” A part of my mind was speaking to me. And, as an only child who lives alone, one-on-one conversations aren’t exactly a rarity. Almost immediately, something in me answered, “I think, therefore I am, thinking.”
Sometimes we become so consumed by our thoughts that we start to blur the lines between ourselves, the thinker, and the thoughts, the objects of our awareness. For Descartes, the act of thinking was evidence that there was a thinker. For me, my thinking mind has a way of convincing me I am my thoughts. And my answer, “I think, therefore I am, thinking,” seemed to be my subconscious mind’s way of telling me I was getting lost in them.
I’d had an epiphany. But to give some context as to why adding a word to a well-known quote felt so important, let’s unpack what happened the night before.
Until that morning, I considered myself a firm believer that a good plan is the answer to almost all of life’s problems.
The saying “proper planning prevents piss-poor performance” not only made me laugh but felt like a solid rubric for my life. If I make a plan, I can follow that plan, and then things will go as planned. Simple!
On a practical level, planning makes sense. Having a rough draft of how to get from A to Z increases the chances you won’t get lost mid-alphabet. Add a few contingency plans in your back pocket and you’ve got all the security you need. But the key here is “rough draft.” And I wasn’t making a rough draft. I had planned my full operational strategy for the next few issues, and I was ready to run my first test.
The test included a detailed research phase to discover how to increase visibility and traffic to my journal. The point of writing this is so someone reads it. I can, and do, scream into the void on my own. But this is something I want to share. So I crafted the workflow, downloaded a new app, began the research, and made some genuinely valuable discoveries.
And that’s the entire point of research, isn’t it? Stepping back to grade five science for a moment: I was taught that we make a hypothesis, do some research to test it, then allow the results to inform our conclusions. What I didn’t realize was that, at some point between grade five and now, I started confusing my hypothesis for something I was committed to proving rather than an idea I wanted to evaluate.
So, what did I find?
I found a writer who was quite literally living my dream. She was creating the exact type of content I wanted to create, for the same audience I’d hoped to reach, all with a much leaner and more effective method. She was becoming enormously successful in a very short period of time, and her work was (is) fantastic.
It’s easy to dismiss someone’s success if we feel like they don’t deserve it. Maybe it’s nepotism, family money, or just someone who has had all the lucky breaks. That wasn’t the case here.
She was clearly putting in the work, wasn’t taking any shortcuts, and somehow made it all look easy. Meanwhile, I’m in the mud, trying to figure out how to put one foot in front of the other.
Yes, I was (am) inspired by her work, but it was a stark contrast to my own. The entire system I’d built around the approach I was deeply committed to was being contradicted by the data in front of me.
I’d arrived at a massive “aha” moment, but the discovery wasn’t anything like I’d pictured. I thought I was going to find something that would show me how I could subtly change my approach so my method would be successful. Instead, I discovered that there was a better method altogether, and it was nothing like what I’d envisioned.
Here comes my evening spiral.
Part of me recognized that my research was, by all accounts, successful. I’d found a new approach that could help me with my content and someone who was modeling how to do it. All the work I had done had led me here, and even if it didn’t turn out the way I planned, it was still part of the process.
But the other part of me, my affectionate inner critic, had a lot more to say and was a lot louder. She was clear that, had I known what I was doing, I would have been able to create work as incredible as the other writer’s, and I wouldn’t have so publicly embarrassed myself.
Fear of failure is real. Fear of judgment is real. Putting yourself out there can be terrifying. And the results are never guaranteed.
I knew this. I know this. And yet, all I could hear was my inner critic asking, “Who do you think you are?” Did I really think I was worthy of someone paying attention to what I had to say? Why would I think that?
Make no mistake, I see the flawed logic. I know it’s okay to dive into the deep end, not know what you’re doing, and turn out to be wrong. But, in those moments, logic can start to give way to emotions. And emotions are a fantastic fuel for even more irrational thinking.
I blew right past incessant thinking and dove into the open waters of mistaking every thought and feeling for me. I wasn’t thinking. I was the thinking. I wasn’t feeling. I was the feeling. I couldn’t look at the scenario objectively and recognize that being wrong about something didn’t mean I was a failure. I was living the story directly. Which meant that I was wrong. I was the failure.
So I reached for a safety blanket.
I am no stranger to late-night spirals and I have an arsenal of tools ready to meet them. But that’s not to say I always pick the most appropriate tools for the job. My weapons of choice for the evening were my tarot deck and Arrested Development.
I am a data-driven person. But when I am overwhelmed and can’t make sense of what’s in front of me, I rely on my tarot deck to help guide the way. I’m aware these are near polar opposites, but that’s the exact kind of fuel a spiral runs on.
I stated my intention clearly before I pulled my card. It went something like this:
“The direction of my work is changing and I realize that I need to make peace with being uncertain about the future. But I feel like I’m failing. Objectively, I know that I’m new to this, I’m doing my best, and I need to treat myself better. I truly believe that the lesson here is to keep moving forward and not get stuck on every detail. Please tell me what card I should lean on for guidance this week.”
The card: Justice. Which, in short, reflects on cause and effect and accountability. It’s a “you reap what you sow” sort of message. Which, ironically, I already knew going in.
I let that rattle around in my head while I turned on Arrested Development and began my third consecutive rewatch. I’ll be honest, I’m not sure how many full episodes I’ve actually paid attention to, but I know I feel better when I fall asleep laughing.
An hour passed and I was still wide awake. It was now 2:00 a.m., and I needed more clarity. So, back to the tarot deck I went. This time I was brief and just asked for a card to help clarify my interpretation of the Justice card.
The result: the Hanged Man, reversed. This one relates to self-imposed resistance and refusal to let go.
If this writing thing doesn’t turn out, I am seriously considering a future in tarot. The second card gave me the relief I needed, and I fell asleep within 10 minutes.
Now, make no mistake, I also see the flawed logic in trusting my tarot deck to give me answers I already knew. But that’s the rub of all of this. We can be completely aware of what is happening and still feel trapped inside of it. Self-awareness doesn’t necessarily separate us from the spiral we’re stuck in.
For me, self-awareness is usually part of the spiral. I knew I needed distance from my thoughts. I knew it at 12:00 a.m. And I still knew it at 2:00 a.m. But I wasn’t doing anything about it.
Let’s go back to the kitchen.
Five hours have passed. I’m foaming my latte. And suddenly I’m shaken from my half-conscious state by the thought, “I think, therefore I am.” At that moment, I filled in the blank I needed. “I think, therefore I am, thinking.”
I am thinking. I am not my thoughts.
Admittedly, I didn’t get much further than that. I didn’t solve my insecurities. I didn’t launch into a whole new strategy to approach my writing. And I haven’t figured out a foolproof way to ensure that, if I try hard enough, I will get what I want.
I don’t have any of those answers. The only answer I came away with was:
Who do I think I am?
Sydney fucking Buchanan.
Let’s overthink this together:
How do you distinguish between listening to your thoughts and identifying with them?
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