The work that I love, creative writing, seems to have closed its door on me. When someone very dear to me died, the joy and passion I once had for writing died, too.
Being stuck is anxiety-producing for anyone, but especially us Aspies. How can I reduce my anxiety? I need to give myself attainable goals.
So I have decided to blog once a week. But then I look back at my blogging history, and I feel anxious again. I can see that I don’t blog regularly. Maybe I can’t.
When we self-talk in a negative way, we say things like, I don’t. I can’t. I don’t know how to… or I’m not good at…
But we can convert these defeatist thoughts from the negative to the positive by the addition of a simple, single three-letter word: YET.
I’m not blogging once a week—Yet.
Saying ‘yet’ interjects a positive possibility into our future.
Saying ‘yet’ implies that we are not finished.
We are not done. We are not stuck in the muck of failure. We are working, perhaps slowly, but nonetheless surely toward our goal. The battle is not over. The cause is not lost.
Not giving up is important to our self-esteem.
It is a significant factor in our sense of self-efficacy, a term created by a renowned psychologist and Stanford professor of psychology named Albert Bandura. Self-efficacy is our faith in our own ability to organize information, to make informed plans, and then successfully execute the steps required to manage “prospective situations”.
In other words, self-efficacy is our belief in our ability to strategize, to manage our behaviours and motivations. It is an awareness of our strengths and limitations when working toward goal achievement.
When we take a negative statement like, I’m not capable of… and change our thinking to say, I’m not capable of this yet, we imply that we are working toward achieving this goal.
We are changing our mindset, and thus, we are changing the direction of our lives.
Our seemingly unattainable goal is no longer that daunting closed door of I can’t. Instead it has become, I’m still working on that.
Give it a try. Open up some of those doors you’ve recently closed on yourself. Instead of I can’t.. or I don’t know how to…tell yourself,
I can’t do this yet…but I’m working on it!
This helpful tip came to me through an Autism BC sponsored webinar presented by Chelsea Jelic from POPARD[1] .
[1] Provincial Outreach Program for Autism & Related Disorders, a BC Ministry of Education Resource for Teachers and Students.sive
Margaret Jean 