“What fresh hell awaits me now?”

That’s the usual thought going through my head before I open my email.

“What’s the point when it’s all definitively going to end in ruin?”

It’s really a wonder I get anything done at all.

I’ve always considered myself a pessimist, but to figure out just how bad it is I decided to take every related psychological test I could get my hands on.

I found that not only am I a pessimist (rated 100% pessimist on one test), but I have low self-esteem, high anxiety, low subjective happiness, depression, and high mental fatigue, all of which I believe is highly connected to my mindset. No matter how good I get at manipulating behavioral techniques, it’s hard to get anywhere if you’re starting with no gas in the tank.

A few weeks ago I had a conversation with a friend who was dealing with a lot - relationship issues, work problems - just life problems in general. He understandably felt pretty down, but I actually saw his situation as immensely positive. I felt that he was just about to break through on everything, and it made me realize just how subjective the pessimism/optimism scale in my own head is.

Someone once defined anxiety as “worrying about the future”. But it’s often not so much about the facts, but the interpretation of the data that builds in a prophecy of the future. Things will go bad. And it stands in opposition to the other end of the spectrum, where optimist believe it’ll all eventually go well. Both stances appear self fulfilling.

And that’s reflected in my self-talk.

The problem for me is that mental health is hard to chart. People tell you to keep your chin up, but it’s rare to see people actually change. People don’t stick to mental hygiene techniques, and if they do it’s difficult to see if once a day psychological work, like meditating or affirmations, carry over to what is a systemwide problem.

Tally clicking, with its emphasis on catching urges in the moment, seems like a good method to change this and perhaps make a deep, psychological change. I’ve used it to successfully counter a number of vices, from curbing alcohol to eating healthy. It offers daily metrics and a process to observe tendencies that pop up throughout the day. It also has the potential to ingrain an alternate behavior.

To test this, I’m going to take 90 days to click every instance of cynicism running through my head. But my added step will be to replace my normal inner dialogue with an optimistic interpretive message. Things like:

“What if everything is going completely to plan?”
”What if this is all leading to something really good?”
”What if the bad things now are briefly eclipsing what will eventually become really good?”
”What if all the struggles I’m facing are about to break, causing me to take a new path that will get me something awesome?”
”What if denial now is saving a wonderful experience for my future self?”

I think tally clicking might hold the key to rewriting my “base code” of operation.

Unlike my other 90 day challenges, I’m going to try something different and blog regularly about my thoughts during this challenge as they come up.

photocred: glass half full by Jess C, depressed by Gianfranco Blanco, tally counters by JaulaDeArdilla