When we are down about writing, just replacing negative thoughts with positive ones is not enough. Sure, it can help a little—but those positive thoughts must feel real for it to help a lot. And so they must be based in something true and trustworthy. How do we find that truth in positive thoughts? Our desired outcome should feel inevitable. A foregone conclusion.
I can tell you—every time I am in a project, at some point there is a time of doubt and then at some point I get into it and there is a sense of inevitability to it. Right now I am starting a new phase in the meditation support for writers at Academic Muse. It involves a lot of work and development. Niggling doubts have nipped at me, but things have settled into a sense of inevitability now. It doesn’t matter how I feel from moment to moment because the outcome is certain. How can we get into that state?
This is important, because the inherently active mind is always going to throw up negative thoughts. But when there is a sense of certainty, we don’t have to fight so much with them, because the thoughts are passing but the outcome is inevitable. How do we get that sense of certainty?
Here’s how:
We act, and think, as though the outcome is certain because we have learned what conditions lead to the result, and have set up those conditions and continue to repeat those conditions, thus the outcome is inevitable.
It’s more than “I think I can, I think I can.” It’s more than positive affirmations. Those are fine. But for real power, we think and act “as if” we will succeed, but it is not blind.
That’s why you have heard me say time and again to focus on what is working and what works, not on what is wrong with you or your writing.
Study what works → Do what works → Get Result
Start with what you know. Honestly—there are several things all of us absolutely know works well for us. It might be a certain time for writing, or shutting off the internet, or not checking email until after writing, or light, brief exercise in the morning, or sketching a plan for the day. Write these down to emphasize them.
Know these conditions and recognize when you are or are not respecting them. There may be also some things you feel you would like to know about this, and there might be some sources of information or support that you also know will work. Write those down too. That’s a start.
The Sense of Certainty comes from focusing on these things. Replacing negative thoughts with positive thoughts is switching our involvement over to what we know will work. And we don’t have to know everything. We only have to know something. If we focus on and reframe our thought and action on what we know works, the outcome feels truly inevitable because we repeat the conditions for it to happen inevitably.
The confidence will ultimately come both from our knowledge and our actions. We learn what works systematically, and then implement it. The result is inevitable and we know it.
It’s a cycle too. The more we see how it works, the more we will feel certain about implementing it.
So, start with what you know, or learn just one step in the system that leads to inevitable results. Focus on that one step and repeat it until you see the result.
Study what works → Do what works → Get Result
This is where our involvement and entanglement should go, to this chain. When negativity strikes and we get tangled in it, we turn to this chain. It’s a positive thought, with truth in it. And a sense of inevitability ascends in us.