One of the best things about rap is the way artists continually remythologize themselves. Ludacris “gave Bill Gates some binoculars and said look out for me!” while Drake reminds us that he and his crew “started from the bottom now we here”.

On week 3 of my experiment to tally click pessimism, I realize just how much I continually create my own story in small moments throughout the day.

Here’s my data:

Instances of Pessimism vs Time (Days).png

ANXIETY

One thing I noticed this week is that I’m not noting detailed, minute anxiety - like why I’m picking my lip. I used to count all of this in my dynamic meditation experiment several years ago. That might be something to add as I progress.

The small bits of anxiety I did notice this week were:

Interpersonal events, like whether a food delivery order would go ok in the handoff.
Decision making. For example, when trying to decide where to go out to eat, I got nervous over whether my choice of food would be perfect.
Unusual feelings. I recently had several work-related successes and it lead to nervousness. I’m not used to success at work, and this anxiety emerged from a sense of difference, which added on to a host of identity issues.
Lack of worry. Momentary anxiety reared its head when I didn’t have anything to fret about. I could feel my mind actively searching. But this wasn’t future projected. It was just being nervous and anxious in the present, which was really weird.

MEALANCHOLY

I also felt that same sort of momentary negativity with sadness.

Last week I mentioned a sense of sadness for no reason, one connected to awe. This week I had a deep sense of feeling stuck in amber as everything went by, and it reminded me of an episode of Parks and Rec. Ron Swanson, the show’s old school paragon of gruff masculinity, is teaching the boys in the area to camp. It’s filled with misery - a smoky fire, baked beans, real manly stoic stuff - while the rival version of the Girl Scouts has a smorgasbord of fun activities courtesy of their eternally optimistic leader, Lesley Knope.

Ron’s boys abandon him for Lesley’s version of the Scouts, and he’s left alone. Lesley asks him to enter the circle of warmth and community but he quietly refuses. The world has past him by, but it’s who he is, and he will not change. For Ron it’s not a depressed hopelessness, but one filled with an odd sense of peace and acceptance.

At first glance, it’s not a cynical, future projection of bad times to come. But I think the sadness is very similar to loneliness and creates a negative mythology. It assumes there are no others like you, and as time goes on the world moves in a way that selects fewer people like you.

SPONTANEOUS OPTIMISM

But there was also a lot of positivity this week.

I had several spontaneously optimistic thoughts looking towards the future, often powered by gratitude. I thought about how I was lucky being born in this time, that everything was working out for me. And that’s a rarity - I have to deliberately practice gratefulness, so having it manifest on its own was huge. I also spontaneous reframed several negative statements by immediately telling myself “what if I make the perfect choice?”

And while this felt good for me, it also effected others. At one point Lydia said something cynical and I automatically asked her “What if this turns out perfect? What if all this worry is for nothing?”

This project is quite selfish, but moments like this spur me on even more, showing me how I can potentially become a person who uplifts those around me.

And that lead me to times when friends cheered me up. My old roommate use to be my confidant for all the drama that went on in my college years. After I moaned over a new trial he’d say “yeah, but at least things are interesting, right?” It’s a good story, and isn’t it even better if it’s an underdog tale, when, like Drake says, you started from the bottom?

A NEW IMPLEMENTATION INTENTION

My reflections this week helped me update my protocol.

I naturally future project cynicism and cherry pick evidence from the past to bolster that prophecy. Why not hack that? From now on, after reframing the situation, I’m also going to dip into the past to select a bit of positive evidence.

Let’s take the earlier example of a food delivery gone wrong.

Once I notice myself future projecting nervousness at how it could potentially go wrong I will:

[CLICK my tally counter] + [REFRAME = “what if this delivery goes perfeectly”] + [FIND POSITIVE PAST EVIDENCE = “the last time I ordered something it went perfectly”]

What’s interesting is how so many rappers do this. They take all the bad things of the past and use it to tell a better story where they become great. Your identity may be your past, present, and future, but active reframes retell that story from moment to moment.

But I’ll leave Kanye and Eminem to become rap gods. I’ll just settle for becoming an optimist.

photocred: statue of Alexander by Herbert Frank, boat by lensnmatter, broken car mirror by Agustín Ruiz