Recreating Your World, An End to Negativity
Think about the hours we hand over to imagining the worst. I know I notice it, especially in one relative of mine. This person is well past thirty and still carries around a belief most of us drop in our teens: that life is rigged against them, that the bad outcome is already decided. Whatever they expect, that's what they end up seeing. So let me ask you something. Have you ever caught yourself mid-worry and deliberately swapped the ending? Pictured the version where things go right instead? The movie playing in your head does something to how you act. It can wind you up or calm you down.
And it reaches further than mood. If you've already decided you won't get the job, the part, the chance, how much effort do you really put in? You prepare a little less. You answer a little more carelessly. The quiet thought of "I won't land it anyway" quietly makes sure you don't.
Here's a question worth sitting with. Do you spend more breath on what you dread than on what you'd actually love to see happen? Most of us do. Once in a while we let ourselves play the fun version, spending an imaginary million in our heads, and that's harmless entertainment. But push past the lottery daydream. If something's broken, picture it mended. Then picture it replaced. Then picture it replaced by something better than the original.
We keep slapping "realistic" limits onto our imaginations and calling it maturity. It isn't thinking clearly; it's a habit of shrinking the picture. You didn't do that as a kid. Back then, bigger and stranger was always better. Did you ever assume, the way I did, that the White House held gadgets so advanced that not even the wealthy and famous had gotten their hands on them yet? I was convinced the president could order up anything, and would be first in line the moment some prototype rolled off the bench.
Prayer runs into the same wall. Have you ever asked God for a particular thing, or for that thing or something better, and let the limits be God's to set rather than yours? The second you redraw the boundaries yourself, you're right back inside the loop of expecting less.
I've lived both sides of this. Once I planned a remodel and addition for a house; another time I went looking for the right double-wide. For the house I sketched plan after plan, and one of those sketches became the real addition we built. For the double-wide I gathered brochures and walked through models from a stack of different manufacturers. Neither project had any firm plan behind it when I started. I was just "wishbooking," the old word for what people did when the Sears-Roebuck catalog landed in the mailbox.
In a tight economy it can feel foolish to hope for the best possible outcome and then spend real time preparing for it. Giving in to the gloom takes no effort at all. "Ask and it shall be given you; seek and you shall find," the Bible says. But if you've never decided what you're seeking, how will you recognize it when it shows up? Women: would you hand your whole wedding over to someone else, no input, no say in a single decision? Men: would you sign up for a hunting trip, a fishing weekend, or a photo safari with no control over where you go or what you do once you're there?