Forgive (Yourself) and Forget (Everyone Else)

Sometimes I feel like one of those wind-up toys. On particularly bad days, stress and tension build up until I'm at my limit and I just have to go bonkers for a bit before I can continue on with my life. Being naturally curious, I try to identify when and how these nuggets of negative energy accumulate and at what point the critical threshold is reached before I can't handle any more.

In this sense, a better analogy would be that of a balloon. In this example, all of those negative thoughts and feelings that we tend to hold on to would be the air inside the balloon, and the emotional limit would be the point at which it pops. The size of an individual's balloon can vary, along with the rate at which air enters and exits.

For those of us who happen to be very self critical, we tend to internalize this negative air quite frequently and let it create tension within our mental and emotional balloon. In addition, such an attitude often makes it difficult to let go of perceived troubles and release pressure. The result is the presence of a lot of unnecessary stress and anxiety that can only hinder our ability to live a more fulfilling life. After all, it's quite difficult to stay grounded when you're filled with so much hot air (I'm having too much fun with this).  Eventually, the balloon has to pop, and all of the pent up energy is released in the form of outbursts, breakdowns, etc.

As someone with a busy mind, I occasionally make the mistake of interrupting people in an effort to remain engaged in conversations. Sometimes it feels like I have an unfortunate sixth sense for when someone's about to start speaking, because on many occasions, I can enter a conversation at the exact same time as someone else. Whereas a healthy response in this situation would be to apologize, let go, and move on (I'm getting better at that), I instead fixate on the awkward and grow very self conscious of when I choose to speak up. Rather than actually focusing on what others around me are saying, I retreat into my own head in order to manage the building stress from all the negative thoughts I'm holding on to.  As expected, this tends to exacerbate the situation.

If there's one thing I learned from the internet, it's that you shouldn't read the comments section on most websites.  Similarly, it's probably best not to read the comments section of your mind.  So what's the moral of the story? We're all human and we all slip up sometimes, so let yourself feel embarrassed, forgive yourself, forget about what others are thinking, and continue being awesome.