Catching Your Swooping Emotions
Tools to keep you grounded as you change your life
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The downside to evaluating your life and digging into your past to uncover unconscious triggers for behaviors you want to change is that it can bring up some uncomfortable emotions: shame, regret, anger, and a burning desire to go back in time and do it differently this time.
Which is why we avoid it at first. Tell ourselves we just need a day off, a vacation. Or to buck up and get on with life. Focus on the good things we have and tell ourselves not to be sniveling ninnies, that people starving in [insert location of choice] would love to have our problems.
How did that work out for you? Yeah, me neither. Although sometimes you absolutely do need a vacation. Self work is tiring if you’re doing it properly. The autopilot is disengaged, yet somehow the normal everyday stuff still has to happen, people need feeding and taking to places and support and interaction, and their growth doesn’t stop just because you’re going through a seismic mental or emotional shift. Don’t ignore your needs until you’re gasping on empty (see how successful that was when I waited till desperate to get away in this post).
I’m not talking about all inclusive resorts, massages and bubble baths necessarily. It’s more about doing something whole-heartedly that’s just for you, when the back of your brain isn’t running through your to-do list. Stop the multi-tasking and schedule yourself something. Can you start with five minutes right now? Pick one thing in your field of vision and practice really seeing it. It can be anything: a leaf, a book, a vase of flowers.
Zoom in closely, as if you were a tiny insect. Notice how your object is dependent on many other things to simply exist. In the case of the flower, it grew on a plant that had (or has) roots reaching down into the soil. Soil that teemed with earthworms and bacteria that fed it nutrients. It had moisture from rain, and make chlorophyll from sunlight, birds that ate bugs that could have consumed it… everything is interconnected.
Let this be a soothing thought. Everything you have ever done or will ever do will be influenced by and will in turn influence countless other objects, people and events. There are too many to count, so just rest in the understanding that you can’t wipe out the web you stand on. All you can do is take the next step and make a connection now that seems to lead in an interesting and congruent direction. This judgement will always be based on what you know and feel right now. It cannot be otherwise — unless you wish to return to just doing what someone else tells you to do.
Now that you’ve calmed down a little, it’s time to go back to those uncomfortable emotions about having wasted your life up to now, about how it’s too late to do anything about it, much less start over. I’ve found it invaluable to let those thoughts and feelings spool out of my head and down onto paper. Let them all out, because they’re caught up and laid down according to unconscious rules you’ve accepted all your life and that right now you may finally be ready to notice, to accept they don’t serve you after all. Writing them down helps you to review them and spot patterns, then ask yourself the questions:
‘Is this really true?’
‘Does it have to be true?’
‘How might my feelings change if there was a possibility these rules were false?’
Try to think of at least one example of how something else might be true. Like ‘If I’m going to live another twenty, or thirty years, I do have time to retrain as [insert new role] while working to gain experience and have a new fulfilling career.’
Or ‘I could start an evening / weekend class at community college and experiment with a new hobby.’
When we were children, dreaming of being firefighters or ballerinas or veterinarians, we didn’t burden ourselves with the long term practicalities, we played with hoses, twirled on our toes, and pressed our ears to the furry chests of pets to hear their reassuring heartbeats. We were alive to the joyous possibilities in our dreams.
I’m sure, like me, you have heroes you look up to — people who have just got on with living their unconventional, generative lives without getting all hot and bothered about what other people might be thinking. When I think of them as a group, I’m struck by two characteristics they have in common.
They’re full of generous curiosity about life (they seek to understand, not just to ferret out juicy morsels of gossip).
They show enthusiasm and optimism for how things might turn out well (rather than worrying how they might go wrong).
So, to channel that sense of abundance (as a wonderful counterpoint to your previous doom-scribing), I invite you to get somewhere peaceful where you won’t be interrupted, and imagine what the best possible outcome might be. Imagine there’s a fairy godmother in the corner of your room and with a wave of his/her wand and a sprinkling of fairy dust, that best possible outcome is yours right now.
Write down what that feels like. Get into the sensory detail and how it feels in your body. If you’d like some step-by-step guidance, Dr Martha Beck talked Andrew Huberman through her ‘Ideal Day’ exercise on his podcast. The exercise begins around the 9 minute mark. The importance, as Beck stresses, is not to let your left brain make it up, but to let your body feel it.
How did you find it? I hope you notice, as I do every time I do this exercise, that a breathing space has opened up between where you currently are, and a version of the future you’d like to get to. In this space, there is less regret and more hope. Also, the creative ideas wheel starts cranking out opportunities to try.
Some people will call this exercise ‘manifesting’, however, I prefer to see it as priming your brain to take notice of things you actually want, to be alert for opportunities as they arise. Once you’ve come up with your vision, every time you think about it is like the visualization that athletes use to get themselves in the right mindset for the challenge ahead. Also, doing the exercise doesn’t have to be a one-off thing; given that we’re always evolving, expect your ideal day to change over time too.
Let me know what you discover in the comments. What else bubbles up for you and how has your approach to change developed over time?
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