It's that time again! Comment below by calling your shot for this week: What healthy, value-based action do you commit to doing this week to improve your life? And how did you get on with last week's commitment? https://www.skool.com/brojo-the-integrity-army-6491/monday-accountability-52624f13?p=fd82d468

Catastrophizing is the word we use to describe getting stuck in your head imagining horrible outcomes for the future that are probably not going to happen. While they feel very reasonable, real, and likely when you’re drowning in these negative fantasies, statistically they’re extremely unlikely. This is not the same as planning for possible setbacks. There is no real planning happening here, just imagining disastrous consequences, with no thought given to how you’d actually handle these possibilities and survive them. So you know you’re catastrophizing when you’re a) imagining terrible futures, b) focusing on least likely outcomes more than most likely, and c) you’re not planning how to successfully navigate these things if they do happen. Why does this happen? Catastrophizing is a kind of mental misfire; an error in your brain’s code. It’s the combination of anxiety with imagination and hyper-fixation on threats. From an early age, or following some significant trauma, you got into a habit of worrying about worst case scenarios. The simple fact of repeating this process also validates it and reinforces it, so that nowadays you catastrophize simply because you always catastrophize. You’re somewhat addicted to indulging these negative fantasies. This unhelpful and pointless process occurs because deep down you don’t trust yourself, and you don’t trust the universe. You don’t believe you can handle unexpected things going wrong, and you assume bad things are more likely to happen than good things. So you’re left worrying about bad things happening and not being able to handle them. Your brain seems to believe that imagining things going devastatingly wrong, over and over, will somehow protect you from them. And yet, you never actually problem-solve. You only imagine the outcome, never your response to it. So catastrophizing feels important and necessary, even unavoidable, and yet it provides no value. You just sit there worrying and panicking, and it does not lead to improvement in your skills, helpful problem-solving, or better reactions to setbacks.

I’m relatively new to all of this and I wanted to share a bit about my Nice Guy journey as it’s been a bit of a whirlwind for me. I thought I was fine, I thought I was a good husband, dad and son. I worked, I helped around the house, I was there when I was needed. I listened whenever my wife told me stories of her friends’ partners staying out late and felt good that I never did that. Then, last December, my wife told me she wasn’t happy, that she didn’t feel emotionally connected to me and thought we should get through Christmas and maybe separate in the New Year. I genuinely didn’t see it coming. For the first time in my life I could see myself losing everything that I had been working for. I started desperately looking for answers because I thought I was doing everything right. Eventually, one day I saw a recommendation for No More Mr Nice Guy and listened to a 15-minute summary on my way home from work. I had to pull over as I had never had something resonate with me so much and at the same time show me how many of my behaviours I thought were “good” were actually causing problems! I then found this community and was bowled over at how many other guys this has affected. I was avoiding conflict, people pleasing, making covert contracts and hiding what I wanted. I never realised how much of myself I had given up in the process. Whenever someone expressed a negative feeling, I would try and fix things without realising I was actually shutting them down. I thought I was helping, but often I was just uncomfortable and trying to make it go away. These last few months have been the hardest in my life. I have been trying to focus on myself and rediscover the real me. I am also learning to recognise and be honest about my feelings, accepting that others may not agree but that it doesn’t automatically mean the relationship is in danger. In addition, the hardest part though has been stopping myself from fixing other people’s problems and just acknowledging what they were feeling.

6 months of this Year flew pretty darn quick! for Me it's been a wild roller coaster on multiple matters of the Mind, Body, Spirit and Heart. It's been a real doozy especially with Identity shifting, wondering still, is there a date I finally reach waking up to become what I want to be or am I always in mid-process? While One can wake up to find they aren't who They want to be, They either accept their fate or choose to make the change with whatever time they have. I'm a firm believer that Tomorrow guarantees no one, It's how We frame it that it becomes to feel like a gift not a curse, See, Now is the Youngest You'll ever be, so the times have past, things didn't go as planned, yet here You are with an opportunity to make due with what You have and turn over a new leaf. Video Gamers would call it New Game+ all the EXP, insights, hows and how not toos but it stops there as reality always holds uncertainty Scripted Games do not, This is coming from a Over-thinking Strategic thinker over-planner whose now gone from dodging every catastrophe or pitfall, to waking up in one too many and now working on Execution and successfully implementing beautifully and astonshingly effectively, using the Courage, inner bravery and Psychopathic Confidence Courses by the legendary Dan Munro in that order to work up the nerve to act on the impulse through uncertainty phobic manic episodes and begin the identity shift by creating the evidence for My Information hoarding Mind to pick up and file as certainty The shift from being complacent dressed as acceptance due to assurances from dodgy General practitioners who fancy Themselves as Liver specialists that spiralled into bloodwork coming back bonkers!! (no fatty liver isn't normal like I was told and continued to a few weeks ago by a GP who looked like My Dead Dickhead Grandpa and left My condition unchecked for 9 bloody years I won't get back until I reversed it and got My Metabolism healthy again) That has since changed, upon reflection, It mainly happened upon Me going through the 8 phases of grief ( I know there's 5, but from Work Training, research and 6 months visits with a Psychologist, 8 was comprehensive.):

I have benefitted from BROJO, confidence & Integrity. & am forever thanking & have started to feel the suttle