Prepare for the Positives, Too
shifting from worst-case scenario thinking to hopeful anticipation
“Janelle, I want you to create a vision board for your year.”
It’s not that I didn’t want to make one. I’m a creative. Lock me in a room with scrapbook paper, stickers, scissors and glue and I’m practically in heaven1. But when my therapist at the time sent me on my way at the start of 2024 with this homework for the week, I have to admit I was less than thrilled.
I had barely made it through 2023 (hence why therapy). Existing like a girl lost at sea, I had been treading water and doing my best to keep my head above each crashing wave. Only there was no break in the swells long enough for me to be able to lift my eyes and hope to catch sight of land. I didn’t have a vision for anything beyond making it through each day. At best, I was surviving.
Eventually finding myself at the start of a new year, I was no longer treading water like my life depended on it. My body and my mind were calming, with my feet finally beginning to feel the steadiness of land once again.
I wasn’t just surviving anymore— I was starting to heal.
My therapist attuned to this shift must have thought I needed the push, after years of just trying to stay afloat, to look up and dream again.
While in the process of piecing together my assigned vision board for 2024 I stumbled upon a quote during one of my morning workouts. Apparently the very toned, YouTube exercise lady thought flashing an inspirational quote on the screen between sets would help to motivate us to squat lower. She wasn’t wrong.
This quote stuck with me:
“As you prepare your heart for all the outcomes, don’t forget to prepare for the positive outcomes, too.” — Malala Yousafzai
One might think that finding themselves back on solid land after years adrift at sea would bring a person fresh vision and hope, but as Dr. Bessel van der Kolk writes, “the body keeps the score2,” and my body and my mind had been conditioned through the years to anticipate the worst. Although I had made it back to shore, my body didn’t feel safe while my mind was constantly spinning “what-ifs” like a broken record. I only knew how to prepare for the negative outcomes—
I was still bracing for the next wave.
How we wait or anticipate the future is often shaped by our experiences, trauma and suffering included. Our bodies and brains are hard-wired to protect us. Meaning we learn quickly through painful experiences what to do, and what not to do. Like the example of a hand wincing back at the touch of a hot stove, or like my five year old son who is now keenly aware of the sharpness of my shaving razor (a lesson learned through an accidental knick of the finger at age two).
We experience thoughts like—
“Last time I let my guard down like that, that person hurt me.”
”Last time I went there, I had a panic attack.”
”Last time I got pregnant, I lost the baby.”
”Last time I put myself out there, I got rejected.”
”Last time I tried that, I failed.”
We rehearse the past like there’s only one way our story ends— “The wave that crashed over me before is sure to come again, I better brace for it.” Anxiety is our body and our brain’s way of warning us of these threats, whether real or imagined.
April Joy (DNP, PMHNP) of The Christian Mind Reset writes this, “neuroscience shows your brain does not automatically evaluate truth or lies. It responds to repetition…What you rehearse becomes what your mind returns to by default.”
We often find ourselves trapped in a pain loop. We end up projecting our past sufferings and anxieties into the future while remaining imprisoned in a cycle of fearful anticipation.
…But thank God this doesn’t have to be where our story ends!
“God designed the brain to be shaped by what it repeatedly takes in. When we intentionally repeat truth, especially God’s Word, new pathways form and lies lose their power.” — April Joy
The shifting from worst-case scenario thinking to hopeful anticipation may feel hard, and it does take awareness as well as intentionality, but it is possible.
Yes, our brains are protective, but they are also plastic. What does this mean? This means that our brains are less like stone and more like playdough— able to be shaped and hold their shape until they are intentionally reshaped once again.
Neuroplasticity is the grace of God in our brains biologically declaring that we don’t ever have to stay stuck in our negative thought patterns.
This reshaping or ‘renewing’ of our minds generally doesn’t happen overnight. We don’t like to hear it, but it’s a slow process. As Justin Whitmel Earley shares in his book ‘The Body Teaches The Soul’, it’s a lot like tending to a garden—
“Anyone who gardens knows that the job is complex and you do not have total control. You work on the land, but the land works back on you. Your mind and body are the same. We do not have absolute control over our plot of mental health any more than we have absolute control over our backyard flower patch. We faithfully plant, but, like salvation, growth is always a miracle, and so is mental health.”
He goes on to share one of the reasons that this “gardening metaphor is so helpful is that it acknowledges both our agency and our dependency.”
We are dependent because we have no control over the change and growth our bodies and brains experience. We can workout and expect to see our muscles grow, but ultimately we don’t have control over the process of actually making them grow. If that were the case, I would have had a six-pack ages ago. The same goes for our brains and patterns of thinking—the wiring and re-wiring of our neural pathways is ultimately outside of our control.
And yet, in the same breath, what we do matters. Agency means that nothing of what we hope to see grow in our garden actually will without our hands being put to the plow.
To grow in hopeful anticipation and out of anxious thinking requires our participation.
The exercise lady’s quote ended up becoming the centerpiece for my vision board project. With the space remaining, I placed photos of our family outings from the previous year— the ones where when I looked at them I felt brave.
During 2023, when I was at my lowest, I would experience panic attacks the moment I left the threshold of our home. This anxiety was brought on by an ongoing health struggle that made it difficult to go, well, anywhere really. Every time I attempted to leave the house my mind was instantly flooded with all that could go wrong. But when I looked at those photos from the year that I struggled so much, photos at the zoo with a smile plastered across my 3 year old’s face, photos at the Falls and out in nature with my family, or photos of vacations and adventures with friends— I was finally able to see what went right.
My mind may have constantly told me, “It’s not worth it— you can’t make it.”
But the proof is in the pictures. I did.
We can go through our lives always bracing for the next wave, or we can start reminding our brains and our bodies that just because yesterday held a storm, doesn’t mean tomorrow will too.
Hope is an embodied practice.
I’m still learning what it looks like to walk out of my front door believing for the positive outcomes instead of fearing for the worst, but I trust that every step I take out in faith is doing the slow and holy work of renewing my mind. Every step forward is uprooting the lies and fears while cultivating a mindset of hope in their place.
Where in your life do you need to embody and forecast hope today?
Where do you need to start preparing for the positive outcomes, too?
Let us put our hand to the plow together. Rehearsing the truth of God’s word over our lives and stepping out even when it feels scary. Let’s garden with hope. Until eventually one day, we will look up with dirt covered hands to see a once desolate and dry part of life, blooming and bursting at the seems.
“Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past.
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland.”
Isaiah 43:18-19
This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Anticipate."
add in a matcha latte and some good worship and I definitely will be in heaven.
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
"Neuroplasticity is the grace of God in our brains." Yes and amen!
Love this! Neuroplasticity is such a gift from God! I started reading The Body Teaches the Soul and I’m on the thinking chapter.