“You can go totally limp wherever you’re sitting right now. If you live with someone they will find you eventually, motionless on the floor. You don’t have to do anything; just lie there.
“People will attempt to rouse you. You still don’t have to do anything. At some point, someone will call an ambulance to take you to a hospital. While there, you continue to remain motionless. Eventually a team of specialists will move you to a facility designed to take care of people who do nothing but lie there. There are plenty of things you should do: get up and get on with your life, be a good parent, be honest, work hard, study hard, be kind, participate in life. But all these actions require you to choose to act on these behaviors. You don’t have to live this way; you are not physically forced to behave in any given fashion.
“While you lie motionless in a home, all your friends will visit for a few weeks and watch you lie there doing nothing. You’ll lose your job and probably your house. After a few years, you’ll likely lose your spouse and even your own family will eventually only visit on holidays. You can lie there and do nothing for as long as you choose. Because there are no musts.
“Then one day after a few years of just lying there, you decide to get up and start talking. You leave the institution and start putting your life back together. At this point you have no money, no clothes, no home, no bank account, no spouse. It may take a few years and some pretty impressive explanations to your friends and family, but you manage to bring them back into your life and gain back their trust. But you can probably forget about your old boss and your old job.
“Guess what? You can probably piece your life back together, and you do it faster than you think. Eventually you’ll recover your world, and in a decade no one but the people closest to you will even remember the entire episode. You’ll even get a new job and your world will return to normal.
“Even after all that, everything will be okay, and who knows, maybe even better than before. This absurd hypothetical example illustrates that Believing in musts is irrational. Remember: there are no musts. You do not have to do anything. Must is an illusion. And guess what? Everyone else on this planet enjoys the exact same freedom you enjoy. No one else must either!”
- Lord, Spencer. The Brain Mechanic. Deefield Beach , Florida
This quote at first struck me as funny because the example is so extreme that it verges on absurd. Yet at the same time, this gave me food for thought. The passage was best combined with a quote from later on in the book.
“Anger stems from irrational beliefs about others, and anxiety stems from irrational beliefs about yourself.”
-The Brain Mechanic by Spencer Lord
These two quotes combined changed my belief about my anxiety. I realized that it stemmed from the same irrational beliefs that cause me to feel like a failure. It’s not that I have low self esteem, but rather that I hold myself high enough and to high enough standards that I’m bound to fall short. If there’s nothing that I must do, then whenever I do something positive, I am successful.
This concept of musts also helped me free myself up for the pressure chains that school had me in. While taking a break from my studies, I could just cope with my anxiety and focus on healing and molding my brain to function better in the future.
The Brain Mechanic is truly a useful tool that will lead you to reflect of you life and why you feel what you feel.
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