Thoughts at Three O’clock…

…that’s AM, by the way, not PM, because that’s just how my brain works sometimes.

From Thursday, December 29, 2022

It’s three o’clock in the morning, and I can’t sleep. So what better way to remedy that situation than to get up, make a steaming mug of Crio Bru, and clear my head. I have thoughts — SO MANY thoughts! It’d be great if they didn’t come rushing in all at once at three in the freaking morning, but here we are. It occurs to me that my head is not unlike the Crio Bru filter (or the coffee filter if that’s your drink of choice, same difference). Sometimes that thing’s just gotta be scraped out and emptied or it’s just gonna collect all kinds of funk and mold.

I’ve been studying about limiting beliefs lately — you know, those nasty thoughts that pop up in our heads every time we decide to finally get around to doing all the productive things we’ve been procrastinating over the years. Some of my limiting beliefs sound like this:

• You’re too old to start a writing career.
• You’ll never write anything new or original.
• No one will ever like what you write.
• You’ll never make money writing fiction.
• You never have time to write.
• You have no talent.

Imagine the fun of waking up to all THAT at three AM!

But in exploring all these limiting beliefs, I’m also learning how to turn them around and make them work for me. The first thing you have to do is identify them. That part’s easy; you just sit back, close your eyes, and dictate all the negative thoughts that pop up. I identified fifteen of those nasty little suckers. But when I sat back and looked at them, there weren’t actually fifteen, because many of them were simply repeats or restatements — the same thoughts bouncing around inside my head, echoing.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with these thoughts; they are, after all, just a warning voice, a way for your subconscious to protect you against some of your most deeply-rooted fears. The real danger though is when you listen to these thoughts and act on them, or use them as excuses to not act. Rather than doing the things you want to do, problems arise when you allow these fears to overwhelm you into never accomplishing anything of value to you.

After you identify the limiting beliefs, it’s important to drag them out into the sunlight and expose them for what they are…basic simple fears. They aren’t the giant scary dragons we thought they were. Turns out they’re just shadows projected onto the wall by some tiny mouse scampering across the hallway past the night-light.

You’re too old to start a writing career. Where does a thought like this even come from? And what fear is generating it? I didn’t start writing until I was over forty years old. Why didn’t I start earlier? Well, that’s a story for another day. But the point is, I’m not one of those writers who knew when I was two years old that’s what I wanted to do with my life. Also, writing was never one of those things I felt compelled to do from the time I could hold a pencil in my grubby little fingers. When all my friends went outside to play, I went outside to play too. I didn’t turn down invitations to parties or stay home from prom because I didn’t have a date, or choose solitude with my pen and notepad in my bedroom when everyone else was playing video games or watching movies. I didn’t catch the writing bug until well into adulthood. Is forty too old to start? My knee-jerk reaction says no, of course not, that’s ridiculous, and then I make a list of all the “great” writers who started their careers late in life: Twain (41), Tolkien (45), Chandler (51), Michener (40), Stoker (43). Conventional writing advice says it takes a million words and anywhere between ten and twenty years to become proficient at writing. Do I even have twenty years of life left in me? Well, that’s the fear isn’t it — the idea that my time will suddenly be cut short just as I’m starting to make real progress and become proficient.

Now then, what to do about it…

Once you’ve transcribed the limiting belief — I’m too old to start a writing career — and identified the fear behind it — I’ll be dead before I’m any good — you have to turn that thought on it’s head and transform it into something positive. This takes some real effort because your fears will arm wrestle you for control. Your fears want to be in charge. But in the long run, it’s really best for you to take that control back for yourself. It’s simple, really, once you throw Fear out into the sunlight. He’ll yell and scream and kick and cry and fight to get back inside to the safety of the shadows, but if you lock the doors and make him stay out there long enough, eventually he’ll shrivel up and blow away like vampire dust.

Turning this particular limiting belief upside down was tricky, but I worked it over and finally came up with: You’re never too old to start doing what you love. Simple, yet so powerful, turning a thought that once made me cringe into something that now feels empowering and exciting.

Here’s what it looks like for me, turning all these limiting beliefs upside down, from something that keeps me down to something that inspires and motivates me:

• You’re never too old to start doing what you love.
• My experiences are all original and unique, and I can always take something old and breathe new life into it.
• It’s not my job to make everyone like my stories. My job is to create things and share them and let people do whatever they want with them.
• There is money to be made in fiction, but I’ll never sell a story I don’t first write, or a story I don’t keep submitting. Focus on the things I can control, one step at a time.
• I get the same 24 hours as everyone else on this planet, every single day. The question is: how am I spending the time I’ve been given?
• Talent = Work + Passion. I become a better writer with every new story I complete and every new technique I put into practice.

We all have fears and negative thoughts that cut into our happiness and productivity. It’s important to identify them, explore what they mean, and find productive ways of turning them around and using them to help us pursue the things that give us joy. Just so happens my brain enjoys doing this at three o’clock in the morning. Hopefully your hours of introspection and self-development come at more convenient times.