Cognitive distortions
Do you ever go over your past and fantasize about what you would have done differently? I do. I think about how I would have skipped out on college and started businesses instead, and how I would have gone to therapy 10 years ago and met the love of my life and how I'd have everything just totally figured out by now.
But that's pretty negative, isn't it? To focus on all the mistakes I made, things I can't change.
I was thinking about my friend Nick, that I wrote about last night. I consider him and his family as extended family of my own. When I think of our friendship, I feel such a warm and boundless love and acceptance of him just as he is.
When I think about my past in this light, how could I redo it? If I did things differently, I probably wouldn't have met him and I would be without such a lovely friendship that shaped me into the best parts of who I am now.
And my best friend- she knows my soul. She is the only one who sees me like that. How could I live a life of getting everything else, if I don't have her in it? And even the jobs that went nowhere. Even the fucktards I dated in my early 20s. Like... all of them have beautiful moments in there. Even the painful moments were alive.
It's all so beautiful, when I look back with that lens. I wouldn't change a thing.
But I usually look at the past so negatively. Why? The stories we tell ourselves shape our reality. And I want my reality to be full of gratitude and appreciation.
It's time to start looking at my reality with rose colored glasses more often.