SUNDAY SEEDS OF THOUGHT: Solving For X When You Don't Know WHY

Dr. Carmela Maxell: Welcome back to Sunday Seeds of Thought with Rooted in Rising. A little space to slow down, check in with yourself, and plant something useful before another week begins. I'm Dr. Carmela Maxell. Before we get into today's seed, do me a favor. If you've been listening and you haven't followed or subscribed to Rooted in Rising with Dr. Carmela Maxell yet, go ahead and hit that button. And if these conversations have been helpful to you, Leave a comment, give the show a rating or review, or send an episode to somebody who could use it. Every follow, every share, every review helps more people find this little corner of the world we've been building together. And apparently, we really are building it around the world. So wherever you're listening from, thank you. Now I want to talk about something today that I think a lot of us do without even realizing we're doing it. Solving for X when we don't know Y. And yes, we're doing algebra today. I'm sorry, I didn't want this either. But stay with me. If you remember algebra, and if you don't, congratulations on successfully repressing that period of your life. You probably remember sitting in class. Staring at something like 2x plus 4 equals 12. And the teacher would say, solve for x. Okay, fine. At least there was an equation. There were numbers. There was information. There was something on the other side of that equal sign. You had enough information to start working toward an answer. But somehow, as adults, We've developed this fascinating ability to try to solve for X when we don't even have the fucking equation yet. It's Sunday. The week hasn't started yet. Nothing has happened. Nobody has sent the email. Nobody has called. Nobody has pissed you off. Nobody has disappointed you. The meeting hasn't happened. Your boss hasn't said. Anything. Your partner hasn't done anything. Your children haven't suddenly informed you at 8 47 p.m. that they need a trifold poster board, 12 pictures, and an authentic representation of the solar system by tomorrow morning. Nothing has happened yet. And somehow your brain is already sitting there, like, okay, if this happens Monday, then I'll do this. And if she says that, I'll say this. But then if she responds like this, I'll probably need to say that. And if that meeting goes badly, ugh, I'll send this email. And if they don't respond, that probably means this. And if that means this, then I'll have to do that. And suddenly you're nine hypothetical catastrophes deep into a week that hasn't even had the opportunity to disappoint you. Ma'am, it is Sunday. Monday hasn't even put its shoes on, and you're already putting it on trial. And listen, I'm a planner. I believe in preparation. There are things that we absolutely should think about ahead of time. Look at your calendar. Know what's coming. Prepare for the presentation. Pack the lunches. Set the alarm. Make sure the gas tank isn't sitting on Jesus will provide. Those things are useful. But there's a difference between preparing for what you know and rehearsing what you fear. And sometimes we confuse the two. Because they can feel very similar. Both involve thinking about the future. Both involve considering possibilities. Both can make us feel like we're being responsible. But preparation says here's what I know. What can I reasonably do with that information? Anxiety says here's what I don't know. Let me create seventeen possible outcomes and emotionally experience all of them just in case. That is not preparation. That's pre suffering. And some of us are very fucking good at it. We rehearsed conversations before anyone has asked to talk. We prepare defenses before anyone has accused us of anything. We imagine rejection before anyone has said no. We interpret silence before the other person has had an opportunity to explain it. We decide how a meeting is going to go and Based on the tone of a calendar invitation. And don't let somebody send, can we talk tomorrow? now we're detectives. What do you mean talk? Talk about what? Why tomorrow? Why not now? Why did you put a period at the end? You don't usually use periods. Is the period aggressive? Was there always a period? Let me search our previous messages. Now you're conducting a forensic linguistic analysis of punctuation because somebody typed six words. And the whole time, that person may just want to ask whether you can cover something Thursday. But your brain has already fired you, ended the relationship, moved you to another state. And started calculating what rent costs there. Because once again, uncertainty is uncomfortable. And the brain really doesn't like an unfinished story. When we don't know what's going to happen, we start filling in blanks. And sometimes, somewhere along the way, we learn that if we can anticipate every possible outcome, maybe we can protect ourselves from being caught off guard. If I imagine the disappointment before it happens, maybe it won't hurt as much. If I rehearse the argument beforehand, maybe I won't freeze. If I prepare for the worst possible outcome, maybe I'll feel more in control. If I can figure out exactly what somebody is thinking, maybe I won't have to sit with the discomfort of not knowing. So we solve. And solve and solve. Except we're solving an equation that hasn't been written yet. And here's what I want us to notice that costs us something. Because our bodies don't always make the distinction between the experience we're having and the experience we're vividly imagining. Think about it. You can be sitting safely on your couch on Sunday night. Nothing is happening. You're in your pajamas. You've got your blanket. Maybe you're watching something on Netflix. Your cat is judging you from across the room. Hmm. Everything is fine. And then you think about tomorrow. You imagine the conversation. You imagine something going wrong. Your shoulders tighten. Your jaw clenches. Your stomach feels different. Your breathing changes. You become irritated. You start preparing your defense. Maybe you even become upset with somebody over something they have not actually done yet. Meanwhile, they're somewhere eating cereal. They don't even know they're currently losing an argument with you. And they're losing badly, by the way. You've had several hours to prepare. They never stood a chance. But that's what makes anticipatory anxiety so exhausting. We can experience the emotional cost of something before we've experienced the event itself. Sometimes the event never even happens. So now we've suffered through something once in imagination, only to discover there was nothing to survive. Or the thing does happen. And now we've experienced it twice, once in rehearsal and once in reality. That's a terrible two for one special. Nobody asked for that. So here's a seed I want to plant before this week begins. You do not have to solve problems you do not have yet. Read that again in your head. You do not have to solve problems you do not have yet. That doesn't mean becoming irresponsible. It doesn't mean ignoring something you know is coming. It doesn't mean refusing to prepare. It means learning to distinguish between a problem that exists and a problem your mind is generating because it wants certainty. That's an important difference. Because one deserves your attention. The other might deserve your curiosity. So when you notice yourself doing this, ask. What do I actually know right now? Not what do I suspect, not what am I afraid might happen? Not what happened the last time. Not what my friend thinks is probably happening. Not what somebody on TikTok said it means. What do I actually know? Maybe you know there's a meeting tomorrow. That's information. Maybe you know somebody said they want to talk. Once again, that's information. Maybe you know you have a difficult deadline coming. That's information. But they're going to be angry. I'm gonna mess this up. This conversation is gonna end badly. They're probably disappointed in me. Something terrible is coming. Those aren't facts yet. Those are predictions. And predictions are not the same thing as information. You don't have to solve for them. And then there's another question I want you to ask. Is there anything useful I can do about this tonight? If yes, do it. Prepare your notes. Set the alarm. Put your documents together. Pack the bag. Write down the question you don't want to forget. Do whatever reasonable preparation is available to you, and then stop. That's the hard part. Because eventually preparation reaches the end of its usefulness, and anything beyond that becomes rehearsal. You cannot pre live your way into certainty. You cannot think hard enough on Sunday to guarantee an easy Monday. And you cannot prepare for every possible version of a week that hasn't happened. At some point, you have to trust the version of yourself who will actually be there. I think I forget this sometimes. We're so focused on figuring out what might happen that we forget the future version of you gets to participate. Monday you will have information Sunday you doesn't have. Tuesday you will know what happened Monday. And Wednesday you will know more than both of them. You don't have to make every decision for all of them tonight. They'll be there. And they've handled things before. Let them clock in when it's their shift. You can prepare for Monday without emotionally living through Monday on Sunday. You can look at your calendar, set out the clothes. Check the schedule, charge the laptop, put gas in the car. Make sure there are actual caffeinated K cups in the house. Ugh. We've learned from our mistakes. That's preparation. But you don't need to rehearse an argument that hasn't happened. You don't need to determine what someone's email means before they send it. You don't need to predict whether Wednesday will be terrible. And you don't need to decide how you'll recover from a disappointment that hasn't happened. And you definitely don't need to borrow Thursday's anxiety to pay Sunday's bills. Because here's the thing when X actually appears, you'll have more information. You'll know what was said. You'll know what happened. You'll know what you feel. You'll know what needs your attention. You'll know whether there's even a problem to solve. And you can trust the version of yourself who exists in that moment to respond with the information available in that moment. That's something I'm trying to practice more myself. Not how do I make sure nothing goes wrong? But if something goes wrong, do I trust myself to respond? Those are very different questions. One requires predicting the future. The other requires trusting yourself. And maybe that's where some of our peace lives. Not knowing what's going to happen, not having every possible answer, and definitely not in successfully predicting every curveball. But in knowing whatever happens, I will meet myself there. I'll gather the data, I'll decide what deserves my attention, I'll ask for help if I need it. I'll change course if the situation requires it. I'll figure out what I can figure out when there's actually something to figure out. And until then, I don't need the answer yet. I'll answer the email when it arrives. I'll have a conversation when there's actually a conversation to have. I'll make the decision when I have enough information to make it. I'll solve for X. when there's actually an X. So tonight before you start mentally opening Monday's inbox, before you rehearse Tuesday's meeting, before you predict Wednesday's disappointment, before you've decided what Thursday's silence means, and before you've somehow emotionally arrived at Friday exhausted from a week that hasn't happened yet, come back to Sunday. Come back to where you actually are. Ask yourself is there a problem in front of me right now? Like actually. If there is, handle what you can. And if there isn't, put the imaginary calculator down. Close the hypothetical spreadsheet, dismiss the imaginary jury, stop drafting responses to conversations nobody has initiated. You don't know X yet. And you don't know why. You're allowed to wait for the equation. You're allowed to let Monday be Monday. You're allowed to let people tell you what they mean instead of trying to predict it. You're allowed to receive information before responding to it. And you are allowed to spend Sunday being here instead of mentally living through the next five days. The week will come. The problems that actually belong to you will reveal themselves. And when they do, you'll solve what needs solving. But tonight, maybe there's nothing to solve. Maybe the assignment is simply to stop searching for the answer to a question life hasn't asked you yet. I'm Dr. Carmella Maxwell, and this has been Sunday Seas of Thought. If this is something you needed today, send it to the person in your life who has already mentally lived through next Thursday. And remind them, we haven't gotten there yet. You don't have to live next week before it gets here. Let tomorrow introduce itself. Then decide what it needs from you. Until next time. Stay rooted in who you are and keep rising into who you're becoming. Take care.