The Mountain Is You by Brianna Wiest

Author:Brianna Wiest
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf, mobi
Tags: self-help, mastery, trauma, self-sabotage, overcoming, personal growth
Published: 2020-05-18T14:12:22+00:00

SPOTLIGHTING

Everyone thinks that the world revolves around them.

You are thinking about you and your own interests all day, every day. It can be challenging to forget that others are not thinking about us with such intensity; they are thinking about themselves.

The spotlight effect is what happens when we imagine that our lives are performative, or “on display” for others to consume. We remember the last two or three embarrassing

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things we have done and imagine that others are thinking about them actively as well. Can you recall the last two or three embarrassing things someone else did? Of course you can’t. Because you aren’t paying attention.

Spotlighting gives us the false impression that the world is all about us, when it is not.

These biases plus others, when combined with psychic thinking, or the idea that our assumptions and feelings about the world will transpose into reality, are harmful and mostly incorrect. Instead of trying to predict what will happen next, our energy is better used when it’s focused intently on the moment—the infinite “now,” the mystics would say—because the truth is that the past and future are illusions in the present, and all we have is the present.

Instead of trying to use your intelligence to hack what’s next, try to get better at where you are currently. That’s what’s really going to change the outcomes of your life.

L O G I C A L L A P S E S A R E G I V I N G Y O U

P R O F O U N D A N X I E T Y

Most of the anxiety you experience in life is the result in inefficient critical-thinking skills. You might assume that because you are anxious, you are an overthinker, someone who obsesses about unlikely and scary outcomes more than is reasonable. The reality is that you are an under-thinker.

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You’re missing a part of your reasoning process.

Let’s start at the beginning. Anxiety is a normal emotion that every person experiences at some point in their lives, typically when circumstances are stressful, tense, or scary.

When anxiety is chronic and begins to interfere with day-to-day functioning, it becomes a clinical disorder.

We understand the importance of speaking about mental health with the same degree of legitimacy as physical health. However, in the same way that we’d question what someone keeps tripping over if they repeatedly sprain their ankle, a lot of anxiety is similarly circumstantial, as many illnesses are. Specifically, anxiety tends to be the result of an inability to process acutely stressful and ongoing circumstances.

If we want to heal, we have to learn to process.

This applies to everyone, not just those with a diagnosis.

One of the hallmarks of anxiety is rapid thinking. Because you are focusing on some issue so deeply and for so much time, you assume that you are also thinking through the issue thoroughly and arriving at the most likely conclusion. However, the opposite is happening.

You’re experiencing a logical lapse. You’re

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