Last year Steve was offered one of Shelter’s Grow year long apprenticeships. Here he talks about his tendency to think about how his life up to this point has programmed him to expect negative outcomes as he faces his six month review and asks if  positive thinking could lead to more positive results.

He adds..[press play]

Audio Transcription : This is Steve Walker, reporter 12, I think, yeah, it’s the..I think the 10th of May. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but this professional life, that I attain to uphold, i think it would be the right description – if I do uphold it – anyway, I’ve got a six month review tomorrow. I was just wondering, are these levels of anxiety and stress natural? Is it normal to be this anxious about something, because at the end of the day, my beliefs tell me that, you know what ever is going to happen is going to happen anyway.

This is where I am at. Why would they bring me into employment, you know, not to continue it?  And the truth is, there’s no valid reason. But fuck me the head don’t half play some games. Cuz I’m lying here now now thinking that I’ve already planned for them to destroy me, for the end of the world, I’ve planned for all that. This is what I find fascinating.

I’ve planned for it.

‘Oh Steve It’s not working out’ etc etc

 Interestingly, I haven’t planned for ‘Wow Steve this is…you’re doing amazing, you’re smashing it.’

You know, I’ve got no plan for that. Even just saying that brief description of, you know, the positive plan made me erk inside as I said it.  I can talk about the negative all day – what’s that about? You know, it’s so true, isn’t it, if somebody said to me, be at your front door at six o’clock in the morning, there’s 200 pound there for you, Steve? I’d probably get there about 10 past six with a bit of hope thinking ‘UWWWE I hope I aint missed it’. If they said to you be at your front door at six o’clock in the morning or someone’s going to hit you with a stick I’d be be there at fucking 3. It’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous, makes no sense to me at all.

My point is, I know I’m rambling on a bit, but my point is why do I create a scenario for the negative, but not the positive? It’s interesting to me this because clearly I’m more comfortable with the negative, which i totally accept and understand that, but how to change. How do we change this? I think that NLP comes into play, that neurolinguistic programming, because words are really powerful. I totally get that. You know, it’s like a seismic shift has to occur just to start looking on the fuckin’ bright side. You know, I mean?

if I had a pen and paper next to me now and I’ve written out all the good things about work and all the bad things about work, clearly… well…let’s get it straight the good things clearly outweigh the bad things or, you know, or nobody would be doing anything would they? . Again what I’m saying is… I know I’ve mentioned this in other reports… but It’s a big leap going into work. It really is, you know. I didn’t… I did not consider all this gamble side of it. As soon as they said you should apply for this it will be perfect, apply for it. You got the job – brilliant. Never stopped to think of the consequences. Signing off. It’s huge for me. I did it. Never done it in my life properly. But I did it. Didn’t think, what if it goes pear shaped? You know.

And it hasn’t done. Again, I’m just fascinated by the dark energy that I so often succumb to thinking about. Yeah, I wonder what that fucking is. I wonder if I start to create positive scenarios, change the linguistic programming into a positive vocabulary, that’d be a good starting point. Well, there’s no maybe about it would definitely give it more chance of manifestation instead of the dark matter. Let the light come in a bit Steve. You know, instead of lying here talking to yourself because you’re worried about something that you’ve created loads of black scenarios for, let’s create a bit of light scenarios. So tomorrow, when I have my six month assessment I fully expect to hear Steve you crack on lad, everything’s cool. Let’s see how it works out.

I have to add on to that message…wouldn’t it be hilarious if I got sacked.