#SongoftheDay Beautiful Things Can Happen (Leslie Odom Jr.)
If I were to name this post properly, I would call it "Daphne's Earrings." You'll soon know why.
The other day, I watched an online tarot reading that focused on improving your outcomes by telling your story in a positive way.
Now, I do A LOT of storytelling, and not only because I'm a fiction writer.
My brain does not stop.
I tell myself stories all day long: about my life, about my trauma, about the future as it could be and the present as it probably isn't.
Meditation, mindfulness, and the methods of cognitive behavioural therapy have helped me to become aware of my rampant thoughts and storytelling. The more aware I become, the more I notice how negative and fear-driven my stories are: maybe my partner will cheat on me or leave me, maybe he'd be happier without me in his life, maybe some stranger will be a jerk to me when I don't deserve it, maybe my best friend thinks I'm stupid and annoying.
On and on with these stories.
The tarot reader I watched mentioned that his life changed drastically when he started telling himself positive stories instead of negative ones.
The first thing I thought about was toxic positivity, a concept I've been hearing about a lot lately: plastering optimism and cheer over dark moods instead of experiencing and accepting your true feelings.
But the second thing I thought about was Daphne's earrings, and that was much more helpful for me in understanding what this guy really meant.
If you own the entire series of Frasier on DVD, as I do, you'll be aware that there's an episode called Roz and the Schnoz, which has a B story about a cheap pair of earrings Frasier buys for Daphne. He picks them up at the drugstore and gives them to her as a "just because" present, but she mistakes them for emeralds or sapphires (I forget which) and thinks they're a gift to commemorate the anniversary of her employment.
There's a scene at the end of the episode, after Daphne has discovered that the earrings aren't made of precious stones, when she tells Roz that there are two ways of looking at the situation: 1) she can be upset because they're fake and Frasier didn't intend them as an anniversary present, or 2) she can find it sweet and charming that he saw some cute jewellery and it reminded him of her.
So this is what I'm thinking about now. I tell myself so many stories that assume other people have ill intentions toward me, or they don't like me, or they're going to hurt me in some way. When I tell myself stories about bad things happening in the future, they almost never come true--but they do inform my moods, attitudes and even my actions.
I don't intend to gloss over my feelings. I intend to note them and allow them. But I don't want my feelings to drive the stories I tell into negative realms. That's my natural inclination, but it's also a habit, and one that can be broken.
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See you tomorrow!
Giselle
