You know, triggers are an interesting thing.

i’ve been thinking about this a lot over the last seven days, ever since i got an email from a client that felt deeply disrespectful and deeply personal for unnecessary reasons. But the email itself is not important. The content of it is not important. It’s the trigger that matters.

Leading up to receiving that email, my outlook on life was bright and rosy. In fact, several people close to me had mentioned how it seemed like things were just going so well. i was positive, energized, excited about the future. i had confidence. i could plan for future events and activities, future purchases, future investments, future things with my kids and family and friends. The sky was clear blue, the sun was shining, the world was beautiful.

And then one email changed all of that. Just one.

All of a sudden the sky became cloudy and gray. The sun was hidden. It was dark, cold, unforgiving. My confidence was gone. i went from feeling supremely confident in my abilities to wondering where my next paycheck was going to come from. How soon before i’m living in a cardboard box? One email, and it destroyed everything. Wondering if i’m a fraud. How quickly is everyone else going to find out i’m a fraud and abandon me? Clients leave me, friends leave me, family turns their back on me. It’s only a matter of time, right?

One email. The entire outlook changed.

But i guess the question is, has it changed? i mean, sure, there are changes, but life is about changes. Was this a fundamental seismic shift where literally everything was different? Not at all. But in my mind it was. And that’s really hard.

i was talking with a really good friend this morning about how we get into these cycles, these loops. We feel good. We feel optimistic, energized. We have confidence and swagger. And then it disappears, and it’s usually because of a trigger. And for me, those triggers are both internal and external.

Sometimes they’re free-floating. Those are the worst kind. It’s not like i can pin it on some external event and say, “Well, this is why my outlook changed.” A lot of times it’s just an internal trigger, free-floating, out of nowhere. Self-doubt shows up uninvited. We don’t believe in ourselves. We think we’re frauds. Imposter syndrome. Fortune-telling, but the worst outcomes only. We don’t evaluate anything else but the worst possible outcomes.

That’s really hard to deal with when it’s internal. It’s really hard to deal with when it’s an external trigger too, but at least we can point to something.

And on the flip side, as my friend and i were talking, what we discovered is that we often need another trigger, a positive trigger, to get us out of that loop. And for me, that positive trigger almost always has to be external. i haven’t figured out how to create that internal positive trigger because my internal triggers are almost always negative. Seeing the worst in things. Predicting the worst in things. Rarely do i predict the best.

So it’s hard to create an internal trigger to get me out of that loop, which means i’m a prisoner to some external stimuli happening that would put me in a good place. Maybe we get a new contract signed. That could be a trigger to snap me out of it. Maybe a new opportunity shows up. Maybe a new connection shows up. Maybe a new idea pops up for a business opportunity, a project, a product. Something external shows up to validate that i’m not a loser. That there are opportunities for me out there. That i can make a living. That i do bring meaning to people. That i do work that’s valuable.

But again, i am dependent on that being an external trigger that comes my way. i so wish that internal trigger could be what breaks the loop.

And here’s where the conversation with my friend got really interesting. We realized it’s really just a lens on the same problem. It’s not that we’re saying the problems should go away or the challenges should disappear. In fact, quite the opposite. We crave the challenges. It’s just that we don’t enjoy when the lens is negative, when we’re predicting the worst in the challenge rather than putting a positive lens on and saying, well, what’s the best thing that could happen? How can we go about this in a way where we can attack this problem and solve it, and it would be meaningful and enjoyable and actually valuable?

So we challenged each other to raise the level of our self-talk, to raise the level of how we talk to each other, to be a bit more positive. It surely couldn’t hurt, given that most of the talk is negative and it’s definitely not helping.

i don’t have this figured out. i’m not writing this from the other side of some breakthrough. i’m writing this from inside the loop, trying to see it clearly enough to maybe, eventually, find a different way through. And maybe that’s the most honest thing i can offer right now. Not a solution. Not a framework. Just the admission that the voice in my head is almost never kind, and i’m tired of letting it run the show.

If you’re in your own loop right now, i see you. i’m right there with you. And maybe the smallest thing we can do today is catch ourselves in the act, notice when the lens shifts dark, and ask one simple question: is this real, or is this the loop talking?

It won’t fix everything. But it’s a start.

✌️💛

-jason