Sometimes I get in a strange mood for no obvious reason and can’t seem to shift it. Vague moods like melancholy, low level anxiety, the blahs.
When I get like this—out of sorts—I use a technique I found in one of Michael Neill’s books, and it goes like this:
I’m feeling X…
Because…X
And that means X…
That’s it. Simple. And so effective for identifying the actual emotion, what triggers it, and the story built up around it. Silly, unimportant—gone!
Getting to grips with what’s really bugging us, what we’reactuallyfeeling, can do wonders. For instance, the emotion of anger could actually be resentment, which could actually be fear of humiliation.
Then the ‘Because…’ illuminates. Someone raised an eyebrow and it reminded you of a teacher who used to do that and made you feel inadequate or humiliated. Triggered!
‘And that means…’ We build up stories around everything that happens to us. They can be supportive, or unsupportive. Usually not true. We can change the story. Delete!
Or frequently some small event sets off a chain of thinking that culminates in a sour mood. It was that weird film I watched last night that put me in this state. Reminded me of someone I used to know. What happened to him? Oh, he died in a car crash. Mood! Gone!
A missing piece?
At times however, there seems to be something missing, a further step needed for those stubborn emotions that won’t let go.
I found the missing piece, the elusive next step, in a book by Thich Nhat Hanh, the well known Vietnamese monk and teacher.
Thich says we first need to identify, acknowledge, and recognize what is causing our suffering.
Here’s the key (that made me sit up). We need to look deeply at the emotion and discover “the kinds of nutriments that have helped it come to be and continue to feed it.”
Ah. Bingo. There we are. How am I feeding and nourishing this negative story? Until I stop feeding it, the emotion’s not going anywhere.
How do we nourish emotions? That part is easy—TV, Internet, social media, books, people we hang out with, gossip, politics, news.
But also there’s our constant self-talk that reinforces the negative story and keeps it alive and kicking. Just waiting to be triggered.
Next time you notice that story repeating itself in your mind, simply say, Not now! And bring something more positive to mind.
Cut off the feed and the emotion cannot thrive.
This always works for me.
So, to recap:
I’m feeling X… (emotion, really drill down)
Because X… (trigger)
And that means X …(story you tell yourself about it)
And I am nourishing this by X… (What is keeping this story alive)
Try it and let me know how it works for you.
Take care
Margaret
PS If you would like help dealing with negative emotions then I can help! I have over 20 years’ experience coaching people to let go of stuff (technical term) that’s not helping them.
Contact me here and we can discuss booking a 1 hour, online session. Easy, no fuss, affordable.
If you live in San Miguel de Allende we can meet one-to-one in a private, open air setting.
A friend of mine passed recently. He died suddenly, at age 58, just 2 weeks after his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. In retrospect the signs had been there for months—stomach pains, extreme fatigue, appetite changes.
He lived in Scotland, and I knew him from years ago when I lived in the UK and we trained together in NLP, hypnosis, and Time-line Therapy, in California. Those were heady days when we were both launching our respective careers in coaching and writing.
We kept in touch and spoke on Facebook Messenger regularly, comparing notes and motivating each other with suggestions and ideas. He had struggled in the past year to get productive, but his health kept interfering. He had been on a rollercoaster of ups and downs.
His death came as a shock. He had so many plans and ideas and creative projects waiting to spring to life. I tried to makes some sense of it, gain some perspective on his passing. My emotions were all over the place and I needed a coping mechanism.
I looked back over the last year and asked myself: when was he happiest during that time, and why?
For some reason this question seemed important. Urgent, almost.
It wasn’t hard to recall. Our conversations always started with, How was your week? When he had been ‘up’ and full of life it was always down to a certain activity.
Following his morning ritual.
His ritual would be to get up at a reasonably early hour, and spend his first hour or so reading something inspirational, journaling, writing his goals for the day, meditating, and exercising. He was a big fan of Hal Elrod and his Miracle Morning prescription for a productive and fulfilling day.
When he was ‘down’, he typically didn’t do any of that. He would lie around in bed until late, crawl out of bed, and rush to his office in a blur of grogginess and disarray.
But here’s the key; if he could make himself do his ritual even on his down days, the effects were tremendous. He had to force himself, but it was always worth it.
His ritual set him up for the day.
Why was this ritual so impactful? How and why did it make his day go better and make him joyful? Simply this; he was in control. The day was not controlling him; he was controlling the day, to the best of his ability. When he felt in control, he was more confident, centered, and productive. It provided an anchor. He frequently said that if he could perform his ritual in the morning, then no matter what else he did, the day hadn’t been lost, and if he didn’t do his ritual, then he struggled to make the day work.
Can you relate? Do you have a morning ritual?
There are few rules to follow. Wake up the same time every day at a reasonably early hour. Do not hit the internet, listen to radio or read emails until you have finished your ritual. It’s your choice what to do but it should be inspirational, centering, motivating. Examples are reading, meditating, exercising, journaling, goal setting.
Since my friend’s passing I have tightened up my morning ritual and made it more organized and automatic, and the positive results have been noticeable; more in control, more balanced, happier with myself.
His death made me even more aware that every day is an opportunity to develop and be of some use, somewhere, to someone. I don’t want to waste my time if I can help it. If a morning ritual can assist that, then I’m all in.
His is one of many self-help books available to encourage you. Let me know how you get on.
Take care
Margaret
PS: If you would like help creating and sticking to a morning ritual, I may be your gal. You can contact me via email for a coaching session and we can get started. I’m into no-fuss, relaxed, affordable coaching, either online or here in San Miguel de Allende.
Hey, I’m delighted to offer you a kindle copy of my new book, which is FREE today and tomorrow (Sept 26, 27, 2021, otherwise only $2.99)! It’s called Life Coaches! Find Your Zen & Step Up Your Game, the second book in my series of short, easy to digest guidebooks called Shortcuts to Success.
But it’s not just for coaches. It’s for mentors, therapists, counsellors, trainers—anyone in fact who works one-to-one with people in a professional capacity with the aim to help or guide in some way.
Let me tell you a story.
Years ago, when I had about a decade of life-coaching experience under my belt, I took a course in advanced coaching to step up my game.
I was enjoying this course up in Northern California, among the Redwoods in Sonoma County. I’ve always figured that if you’re going to spend a couple of weeks training somewhere, it may as well be a nice somewhere, so there I was.
It was a rigorous course and a big part of the training was running mock coaching sessions with various partners, that is, other participants on the course.
On this particular day I had a very experienced coach I was partnering with. He was a bit daunting for me; I had a lot of respect for him and was, I confess, a little anxious to impress him.
We went through our session, taking turns coaching each other and the idea was to give helpful feedback.
His sage advice
At the end of my turn as coach, he had four words of feedback for me: “You’re working too hard.”
Ack. How embarrassing. Internally I bristled, while externally I thanked him for his comments. But in my head I was busy making excuses for myself. Of course I came across as working too hard, trying to impress. It was an unnatural situation and I knew I was being critiqued, yap, yap, yap.
He then went on. “Let the client do the work, not you. That’s not your job. Just let go and relax. You have a strong personality; don’t let it intrude on your coaching.
You just need to find your Zen place.”
My Zen place…
Those words made me reel with a confusion of emotions, but I knew what he meant.
I was familiar with Zen. I had been fascinated with it as a college student, had read all of Alan Watts’s books, had devoured Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and generally joined in the zeitgeist of all things Zen of that era. Zen was trendy in my day.
Zen is best known for enabling a state of relaxation, zero fear, being totally present and undistracted.
‘Unfazed’ as Alan Watts described it.
Unfazed. What a great word—the essence of cool, undaunted, unperturbed, undismayed by circumstances. Non-reactive. In control of your emotions and able to handle criticism. Bullet proof.
The perfect place for a coach—and anybody for that matter.
My partner was urging me to find that state of calm, the Zen state of coaching, where everything flows and so much is happening.
This book is the tale of my subsequent odyssey to become a better coach and trainer.
It’s fun, and short—you can read it in less than 2 hours—and reveals 5 insider secrets I discovered about coaching that helped me step up my game. I believe you will find these secrets very practical in many contexts, not just coaching.
Come along with me as I set out to find my Zen
Enjoy the chapter on A Coachable Cat
Discover what they don’t teach you in coaching college
Learn how to step up your game no matter what line of work you are in.
I would love to hear from you how you liked it and where you found it useful in your life and work. Email me here with any feedback.
And I would be so happy if you wanted to leave a nice review on Amazon. Reviews are the lifeblood of authors and help us so much. As this is a new book, I need a certain number of reviews to be able to advertise it. So your review really, really counts!
I’m kind of embarrassed to admit this, but I’m a news junkie. There. It’s out.
I know, I know, the news is all fake, or toxic, or slanted, and designed to elicit strong emotions in us so we will get addicted and read more. Manipulative. Forcing us to form opinions.
I know all the arguments—we need to keep our minds clean and clear and we attract what we think about. And I am in total admiration of those who avoid the news entirely in order to remain unstressed and calm.
And yet I still turn to news hubs before doing anything constructive. It’s like a drug for sure. I love tuning in for the first time in the day. What’s new? What’s going on? Anything exciting?
Gives an initial high but then is unable to deliver on subsequent doses, like the first cigarette of the day. Or so I’ve been told. I don’t smoke, drink, take drugs, or even coffee; but the news? Forget it. I’m so there.
And as a result I do spend quite a bit of my time dealing with unpleasant images in my head and feeling outraged over injustices I can never do anything about.
I have a friend who has detoxed from the news completely and doesn’t know what I’m talking about half the time. On the one hand I admire her discipline, but on the other I don’t really want to be like that. It seems like escaping.
You see, I don’t really like to think it’s an addiction despite what I said earlier. I prefer seeing it as a challenge. A challenge I don’t want to run away from. You can try to live in a bubble, but eventually something will burst it and you still have to deal with all those emotions.
What I want is this—to be able to scan the headlines, dip into an article here and there and remain calm and untroubled by it all. I want to be able to handle it. To be up to date, informed, but unperturbed.
I want to be in control.
I just want to be able to observe, and avoid taking sides or reacting. In other words, not play the game the media is playing, trying to manipulate my mind and emotions. I don’t have to. Then I’m free.
I don’t HAVE to form opinions about everything I read or listen to. I can remain neutral if I so choose.
This leads me to the title of this blog, ie Two Lines That Sum up What I Believe.
The other day I was re-reading the poem Desiderata by Max Ehrmann, and two lines grabbed my attention and literally made me gasp. It summed up perfectly what I deep down really believe about life, the news and world events, and all that other stuff that seems designed to keep me agitated. They are towards the end of the poem. Here they are:
“And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.”
There. That’s my opinion on all of it. I’m going to stick that line somewhere on my computer to remind me all is well and will develop in its own time without my help.
I will keep an interested eye on things, and act where I can, while remembering it’s all working itself out as it should. Unfolding.
I know that deep down, this is what I believe. This is a work in progress and I’m not there yet. But now I have a strong vision and intention of where and how I want to be.
What sums up your beliefs? Does this help you with something?
Let me hear from you. If you like this blog and would like more like it, or if there are other subjects around personal development you’d like to discuss, let me know. Please. I love getting feedback from you.
Margaret
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Many of us are feeling a toxic mix of emotions right now—frustration, anger, grief, outrage, despair. That underlying feeling of unease from watching the news, which can result in stress and a feeling of helplessness. It’s not at all comfortable and quite distracting.
The anger combined with powerlessness can literally make us sick if we’re not careful. And is a huge time waster.
As a life-coach I’m always looking for solutions and reframes that can help people cope with stuff that happens. Turn it around and make it bearable, if not positive.
The best approach ever to stress
Without doubt the best teachings I have ever come across for coping with events that make us feel helpless comes from the ancient Greco-Roman philosophy called Stoicism.
I confess. I adore Stoicism and it is my go-to back-up support these days. It always has something supremely useful to give us. Practical lessons in everyday living.
Most of us have heard of Stoicism, or at least are familiar with the term to be stoical. It’s associated these days with a sort of calm, unemotional, austere type of behavior. Non-sentimental and with uncaring connotations.
This is not true to the original teachings, which I want to share.
Rather than urging us to be uncaring or unemotional, Stoicism teaches us to focus on what we can control. That which we cannot control, do not waste energy nor stress about. It’s a waste of time. Period.
Here are some quotes from the early Roman Stoic philosopher Epictetus. You will be amazed how current they are.
“Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not. It is only after you have faced up to this fundamental rule and learned to distinguish between what you can and can’t control that inner tranquility and outer effectiveness become possible.”
And…
“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control.”
And…
“Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control.”
This is hardly unfeeling or austere. It’s dynamic, intelligent, and realistic. And above all, sublimely practical.
Anger and stress serve no one
Each of us has a mode of action—a way we are best suited for acting as decent, responsible human beings.
Some of us are activists and the first to be out on the streets demonstrating for justice. I have a friend in Mobile, Alabama, my home town, who is like this. I admire her immensely. She works tirelessly to help people vote and is always organizing events. (You know who you are Dianne Jones!) I would last about 5 minutes marching anywhere for anything, and my organizational skills are zilch, so I don’t think that’s my best way to serve. Plus she has tons of energy. I don’t.
But I can vote. I can write letters to people in power. I can donate money or give encouragement to people who are out there working on the line to make the world a better place.
So what can you do? What can you not do?
Always focus on where you do have some influence. Take appropriate action and then let the rest go. Do what you can and do not worry about what you cannot. We are all different.
Anxiety helps no one. And realize, the calmer and more detached you are in your action, the more effective it will be.
That’s it. Simple. Wise. Evergreen advice from first century Rome. We all know it, but we still find ourselves in a lather over events totally outside our control.
It’s so simple
So if you are feeling upset or angry or frustrated, STOP, and ask yourself—is this within my sphere of influence? If yes, then what positive steps can I take to make it better? If not, then give yourself permission to let it go.
You can still care without stress. You can be concerned without stress. The Stoics call it calm indifference. The Bhagavad Gita, the book that was the central influence on Gandhi during his one man confrontationwith the British Empire, describes it as holy indifference. The only effective action is that taken with holy indifference.
Think about it. If each of us focused on what we could do, and took action in a positive, calm state, and then let go the negative emotions, would our lives and those around us improve?
The Stoics certainly thought so. Try it. It’s incredibly liberating.
