Magical thinking...

I remember when I was an 8 year old kid and my parents had split up and were getting a divorce. It was so hard and so painful for me and I really didn't want it to happen. I kept coming up with all of these crazy, far fetched ideas to keep them together, and each time one of the ideas failed to achieve my desired results, I would just think that I hadn't tried hard enough. Maybe if I just tried harder, believed more, I could fix it. I know it is pretty common for young kids to feel like divorce is their fault, but for me it wasn't that I thought I was to blame: I thought I could be/should be/had to be the one who fixed it. Magical thinking at its finest, but it did morph into different coping strategies as I got older. Some have become helpful and others, well, not so much.

Once I grasped the fact that I was not all powerful and couldn't make things happen just by wishing them, that magical thinking developed into a pretty strong optimism instead. Sure, I couldn't just will things into existence, but I COULD work really hard on something I wanted to achieve. I developed a very strong will and determination to accomplish goals. That has served me really well throughout my life and continues to serve me well to this day. I am nothing if not a hard working goal setter! 

The not-so-helpful offshoot of that magical thinking is this pervasive belief that if things don't work out the way that I had hoped, even things that I logically know are out of my control, then I just didn't work hard enough. *I* must have personally done something wrong. The universe knew that I just wasn't focused enough, so the thing I wanted to happen didn't happen. Yes, I hear how dysfunctional and irrational that is even as I sit here typing it, but there it is. (I mean, I can't change the negative thought patterns until I admit to them!) 

Yes, I'm working on this. Yes, it is a struggle.  Yes, I *might* think that this crappy year is all my fault. Sorry folks, I'll try harder next year.

xoxo