Eviction Notice
Turning Feral Journal - Day 28
Day 28: I used to let a lot of things live rent free in my head. Negative things people would say about me or my work, failures that I wouldn’t let go of, and things and positions I wish I had the money or intellect to achieve. But giving conscious thought to those brain traps began to add up. I found myself hyper-analyzing my past and over-indexing on my future… oft ignoring the most important time, the present.
So a few years ago I served eviction papers to all of those pesky, semi-permanent, thoughts. Emily V.V. telling me in high school I had a jack-o-lantern smile? Gone! The time I didn’t land my dream job after making it through the final interviews? Outa here! Fallout post-divorce? Sayonara! The desire to make enough money to support my extended family? You are on your own now, folks!
Great! That sounds easy you might say… But what I realized since kicking those drag weights out of my brain is that squatters do what squatters do… they come back. To make this a long term fix you have to put up a fence after you kick them out and you have to stand guard like a sentry because it’s not a matter of if they come back, but when. However, with the right guard up (and recognizing which new thoughts smell like a squatter) it’s much easier to keep them from breaching the walls and laying claim to your valuable cognitive space. Being offensive here and stopping them at the gate is much easier than battling the mental courts over ‘squatters rights’ in the future.
We only have so much cognitive load to spread around, so be mindful of where yours is being depleted and focus as much energy as you can on the present. Lastly, don’t be afraid to hand out eviction notices — you are the landlord of your brain.
Daily Prompt: Who or what in your mind needs to be evicted? Are there thoughts from your past or future that no longer have any rights to your brain space? If so, write them down here and take away there squatters rights:
Motivational Quote:
“We never keep to the present. We recall the past; we anticipate the future as if we found it too slow in coming and were trying to hurry it up, or we recall the past as if to stay its too rapid flight. We are so unwise that we wander about in times that do not belong to us, and do not think of the only one that does; so vain that we dream of times that are not and blindly flee the only one that is. The fact is that the present usually hurts. We thrust it out of sight because it distresses us, and if we find it enjoyable, we are sorry to see it slip away. We try to give it the support of the future, and think how we are going to arrange things over which we have no control for a time we can never be sure of reaching.
Let each of us examine his thoughts; he will find them wholly concerned with the past or the future. We almost never think of the present, and if we do think of it, it is only to see what light it throws on our plans for the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means, the future alone our end. Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées
Rewilding Action: One of the tools that I used when hunting, trapping, or backpacking is OnX maps. It has a great offline function and has so many tools, features, and options that it is a no-brainer for those spending time outdoors. It will show you where public and private land start/stop and allow you to mark up any area or thing you find in the woods (think animal sightings, tree stands, etc.). If you are a data dork like myself you will love it.
I just picked up a copy of Pascal's Penses. I look forward to reading it. Thanks for this post!
Such a timely post for me, as I’m going through a similar process!