If you really want to test how positive or optimistic a person that you really are, watch your reaction to someone, who you love, not texting you back quickly, or not showing up immediately to a planned get-together.
My friends and I had a hilarious discussion about our overreactions to everything. I have very smart, creative, imaginative friends, but like all things, being smart and creative and imaginative, can be a blessing and a curse. A friend of ours was meeting a mutual friend, but when she showed up, the friend wasn’t there. She texted the rest of us and said that the friend wasn’t responding to texts or calls. We all started reassuring our friend for about three minutes, but then the texting wildly veered into questions of car accidents, heart attacks, amnesia, early onset Alzheimer’s, passive-aggressive behavior from someone who secretly doesn’t like you, etc. etc. . . . . Turns out, a few minutes later, there was a text back to my friend and it was all just a very explainable miscommunication. Yawn.
Why do we go to over-reactions so often? Any time that I lose something and I can’t find it, before you know it, I am convinced that a very stealthy, clever robber (who probably lives in my attic) has stolen it. It never fails, I find the nail clippers or the pizza cutter, soon after my mind goes to crazy-land. In this particular situation, I know why I over-react. I’ve conditioned myself to believe that when I start blaming other people (real or fictitious) for my own foibles, the Universe will send me a lesson. I’ll find my object (yay!), but I will have the right dose of guilt and shame to punish myself for believing that someone is out to harm me. It’s a lesson that I’ve never fully learned and digested, because I do it to myself, again and again and again.
I wonder if we over-react for the adrenaline rush – the excitement, the flush the that comes to our cheeks, with our hearts pounding. I wonder if we do it to ourselves, because our otherwise normal, day-to-day life seems somewhat routine, dull, and boring. If we over-react, our lives are seemingly filled with mystery, intrigue and diabolical characters, just like the movies.
I always feel stupid and annoyed with myself when I realized I pushed my own panic button. I preach to myself (and to others, if I am honest) to stay in the moment, live in the now, deal with things as they come, but actions speak louder than word, right? I am also annoyed with how my mind always goes to the worst case scenario. Maybe, as a self-professed optimist, I need to take baby steps. I’ll allow myself to still over-think, and to over-hypothesize, but this creative over-reaction must always lean to the positive.
