So I like to be informed of the news around the world but at a certain point it becomes too much. Most of the news in the newspapers is negative there is very little positive news pieces, and by reading more and more about what is wrong with the world, everyone becomes pessimistic and decides they can't change anything anyway since there are too many problems and they are too big, and so people don't try.
Now unfortunately this is my thought process also, I listen to all the negative news and think only about the negative side of living and of course that contributes to the helplessness and the depression. Take today for example, it's cold, now its raining, the crazy politicians are fighting again, and we have the 4th? election here in the past 3 years? My acne is now worse, and tomorrow I have to be at work an hour early, which means waking up at 6am....what else, let's see, that Japan's nucleur site will turn into Chernobyl, that 3 kids were injured when one brought a gun and it accidentally fired, the libya mess is continuing, the gas is now 1.35, and a university student was killed in her apartment by an unknown attacker at a university.....not to mention that I feel completely incompetent seeing my own patients at my placement.......
See the problem? No wonder I feel helpless and depressed, I only think about the negative, day in, day out....I actually studied this pattern believe it or now, and yet am following the same one....
So..to break this habit I'm going to try to think of 5 positive things that have happened today, its actually a lot harder than thinking about the negative which I must have listed about 20 things. Let's see:
1) I had a nice chat with a few med students today, and was not intimidated and was not nervous, and did not feel as I was inferior to them.
2) I'm slowly becoming more confident in my placement, and was actually able to answer pt questions more confidently (without stuttering, or long silences where my brain desperately tries to find some sort of sentence) and making it seem that I know more than I actually do...progress
3) I had a nice family pesach meal yesterday and today and enjoyed the wine the most, hmm maybe I should sit down with my family for a meal more often...
4) My friend is raising money by running for a worthy cause
5) There is a 4-day weekend coming up with no school work! well at least official school-work....
My negative thinking has gotten so bad, that I think, no matter what positive thing I do it will somehow turn around and bite me, or will end up being negative anyway so I view any good deed as completely useless when that's the wrong way to think, since I can't change wars, or politics on a national scale, and I can't change what they do even though we like to think we can by voting for different parties but in the end it doesn't really make that much difference. But what I can change is the relationships I have with others or looking at things on a much smaller local scale, making a pt feel comfortable, easing their concerns, talking to a friend about their problems, playing with my cat, visiting with my grandfather and grandmother, supporting a local business by buying products from them instead of something cheaper but where a person is making min wage, reducing the amount we drive....even though those seem to be very small things, they do make a big difference to those people, I can't stop wars, stop climate change or stop someone dying from cancer, but I can make small lifestyle changes that do help others just not on a large scale....
That wasn't as hard as I thought, now I challenge everyone (even though there are few) that read this blog to write 5 positive things that have occured in the past day and how you can/are helping others, or producing small changes in the community.
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