Summer is officially over and midterms are speeding towards us. Between assigned readings, dodging the Laurier plague and attempting to get that perfect Instagram worthy pic of maple trees with orange leaves, October midterms are a transport truck doing 200 km and your mental health is a deer in the headlights.
Despite the inevitability of midterms in a few short weeks, you don’t have to be Bambi this October. The secret is to exercise your mindset, and you’re going to want to start now. Exercising your mindset is like enrolling your mental health in an emotional Zumba class. It takes practice in the beginning but before you know it you’ve built up mental strength and you’re an emotional Zumba pro.
Exercising your mindset is as easy as repeating mantras every morning when you wake up and situationally when you need them. You’re actually already doing this everyday whether you realize it or not! When you wake up on Monday you probably say to yourself “!#$! it’s Monday,” and that’s negative self-talk. Negative self-talk is like an Instagram filter for your mind, one that makes things blue and gross *cough* the Nashville filter *cough* and positive self-talk is a pristine VSCO filter. The official terminology for emotional Zumba is positive self-talk! You’re going to be blown away by how big of a difference positive self-talk will make in your life. The next time it’s Monday and you catch yourself thinking “#$%!” repeat a positive mantra to give yourself a better filter on life.
Here is are some examples of positive mantras you can use to exercise your mind:
1. Actually, I can!
A very common form of negative self-talk is “I can’t do this” or “this is unfair” and the best way to switch that filter is to tell yourself that you can! When you catch yourself internally screaming in the library about to throw your textbook across the room thinking, “I can’t do this” tell yourself “Actually, I can.”
2. I am going to do my best
The school year just started and, if I’m being honest, I’ve already caught myself saying “I am going to fail this course” … several times. So I’ve put this one into practice and stopped overwhelming myself with hypothetical failure and instead I’ve opted to remind myself that I am going to give my classes my best effort. No one is perfect and it’s important to give yourself some self-compassion. You will never be perfect, but you can always strive to be your best self.
3. I’m really good at this
It’s easy to get lost and stressed in the shuffle of back to school, which is why it’s important to pause when you catch yourself doing something really well. Did you write a killer essay introduction? Score a sick point for your Ultimate Frisbee team? Pat yourself on the back! Your mental health will thank you for it.
4. I’ve been knocked down before and I know how to get back up
If you get a mark on a paper this semester that bums you out, it’s important to remind yourself that disappointing evaluations happen to everyone and usually they happen more than once. But you, you’re a badass and you know how to buckle down and improve. Office hours? You’re going now. Tutorials? You’re not skipping them no-more.
5. This isn’t baseball
This one sounds weird, I get it, but hear me out. I’m no stranger to negative self-talk. I actually used to be a massive bully to myself and whenever I would cry, I would tell myself “there’s no crying in baseball.” The nicest most compassionate thing I have done for myself was to validate my feelings and say, “this isn’t baseball.” A more popular version of this mantra is “it’s okay to not be okay.” The truth is you can do emotional Zumba every day. You can become the god of positive self-talk and combat every negative thought that ever enters your head, but you’ll still have moments when you cry. Humans cry, humans feel bad, and sometimes humans want to bury themselves under their weighted blankets and binge Netflix. It’s just part of being human.
So, when life deals you a bad hand and it feels like everything is going wrong, pause and remind yourself that this isn’t baseball, you’re not Bambi (or Bambi’s mom, thank god). You’ve been knocked down and you know how to get back up. You are really good at being you, you are doing your best, and you can do this
Whatever this semester throws at you, I know you’ll handle it like a champ.
Stay golden!