Tell Yourself a Story From the Other Side
A mental exercise for when you’re feeling outmatched
Sometimes, when I feel outmatched by the thing in front of me, I do a little mental exercise: I pretend I’m on the other side and tell the story of what happened as if I’d nailed it. If I’m struggling to write, for instance, I might imagine being at some future book reading and telling the audience that I nearly gave up on the manuscript, but thanks to a push from my husband or an idea that came to me while I was making pancakes, I picked up the work again. I imbue my story with all the detail and color commentary that I might have otherwise attached only to the catastrophized version of my life. Call it a success fantasy.
This morning, I waited 54 minutes to check out at Safeway, standing in a line of carts that snaked up in the pet food aisle. The woman behind me, her hair and makeup perfect, had seven bottles of Martini & Rossi and nothing else. The young man behind her wore a full-face double-ventilator gas mask. No one was being particularly nice to each other, and I felt overwhelmed. So, right there, next to 25-pound bags of dog food, I told myself the story of the 2020 pandemic and how, in the end, we nailed it.
My success fantasy went like this:
