How much of what we feel is because we’re used to feeling it?
Have we confused our habitual emotions with our present reality?
And if so, how the hell do we get out of it?
This morning started the way most of my mornings do. Wake up. Make a coffee. Sit down with my journal. I went to drop into my daily free-write, but I kept feeling this pull toward my to-do list instead. Like I needed to look at it first. Like something urgent was waiting there.
So I switched over and wrote three very mild things:
pay deposit
piano (noon)
dance (tonight)
I stared at the list, honestly underwhelmed, aaaand then it hit me..
Is this what I was feeling stressed over?
There was no packed schedule. No looming chaos. Just three normal, even good, things and yet, my body had already been moving through the morning with that familiar rushed energy. That low-grade anticipation that something might be forgotten, that background hum of stress about what would inevitably land on tomorrow’s list.
It threw me how automatic it is and to watch it play out in real time. The way stress sneaks in, not because of what’s actually happening, but because it’s what we’re used to feeling. For me, it’s rooted in owning a business, in adulting in general lol, in years of needing to stay ahead of things. The thing is that once it’s there, it seeps into everything from how I communicate to how I feel and behave. It quietly weakens my energy without ever announcing itself.
Seeing those three items written out made the pattern impossible to ignore. “I’m living my dream if this is my to-do list,” and in that moment, I couldn’t justify the anxiety anymore. I had proof. Nothing about my current reality required me to feel the way I was feeling.
I caught the thought as it came in and received it like an old newspaper. A story I’d already read, a story that no longer carried any shock value. My internal committee gathered, briefly, and we all agreed: this wasn’t worth continuing. The habit had done nothing but bring unnecessary stress and negative thoughts. So I threw it out because it didn’t deserve space in my mind.
I got my body involved too.
I went back to my journal and started writing through what I’d realized. How often I shift into habitual stress without any real cause, how being here, fully here, doesn’t make me unproductive or behind or a waste of time, no matter what my old wiring tries to tell me. It actually does the opposite, it makes me grateful and it makes me present. It lets me experience the relief of not having to stress.
I know the feeling will try to rise up again at some point. It always does, but I don’t fear it anymore. I don’t believe it either. I’ll notice it, stay present, and remind myself that what I need to feel is based on what’s actually happening now.
My current reality.
My current state.
And right now, I’m doing pretty great.
