Here’s a tool that’s helping me out with the Being Less Certain.
Tiny bit of meta-blogging
So, obviously, the Internal Expert wants everything to be flagship life-changing content, and so I’ve been frozen on putting this idea into words for days.
I’m working on getting better at aiming for a small step in the direction of maybe-a-little-bit-helpful.
So here it is, a little less varnished than it might be.
The mind loves A and B
It seems to me that the mind either gets very certain about one thing (‘It’s A‘), or at best wants to polarise things (‘It’s either A or B‘).
If I don’t do this, it’s all going to fall apart…
Dinner better all be ready at the same time, otherwise it’s ruined…
You know.
What my-Buddhist-nun-crush Pema Chödrön called in the lecture I was listening to on my walk today as
… caught between the prongs of hope and fear.
My tool to combat this is (I’m capitalising it): Find Five.
Find Five
When you’re finding yourself stressed about something:
find out what you’re certain about, and make sure it’s one of five possible options. They don’t even have to be probable options, but possible options.
A very recent invoicing example
I realised just now that I’ve been procrastinating making an invoice.
When I thought about it, I realised in the back of my mind I was predicting that the money was going to arrive too late (and then the sky would fall down).
I then, as an experiment, found four more (= five) possibilities:
2. Having delayed it leads to more money (somehow)
3. Having delayed it leads to them cancelling
4. The invoicing process goes smoothly
5. The invoicing process has a couple of hiccups
Effect: Something gets shaken up, loosened, almost like the mind can’t quite get so certain, and there is more space, maybe (hopefully) leading to me actually making the invoice.
Hospital-y example
I’m taking a Person I Care About to the eye consultant tomorrow. I realised that I’m a bit anxious about it.
What am I (mostly unconsciously) feeling certain about?
Either:
A) It’ll go smoothly, we’ll have a great time, she’ll say the operation will go ahead.
B) The consultant will be a bitch, she’ll be non-committal, the Person I Care About will have a flip-out.
(See where the anxiety might be coming from?)
So what happens if I Find Five (loving the capitalisation!)
C) Some of the answers will be less clear than I want, but some will be clearer.
D) She will tell us of a breakthrough which will change the whole view of the situation.
E) We will have a crash and the whole thing will be moot.
Effect: Sigh of relief.
Not positive affirmations
It seems that even if the options are, er, not totally ‘positive’ (this is not positive thinking, these are not affirmations, god forbid), just the fact that it’s all a bit undecided seems (for me, anyway) to reduce the anxiety.
We get certain about intentions too
Also useful for when someone’s stressing you out. (What else might their intentions be? Hyeh. And another… Find five…)
My experience so far
Find Five (yep, capitals!) particularly works when finding some options in the middle, and if you’re particularly tied to an extreme, taking one at the other extreme, as long as you find five.
Don’t necessarily expect immediate total relief (yeah, not that cool), but see if there’s a bit more space, a little more air to breathe when you turn to look.
***
My challenge this week
When something/someone is stressing me out, to Find Five alternative views/positions/thoughts.
***
You are free to join me, if you like.
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Love it Andrew.
I do so love any blog which specifies that there will and has not been the use of any positive affirmations. Especially(lets do a little dance here) when you are able to demonstrate the potential to shift stuff ie the absolute friggin certainty that things are doomed or whatever, with lovely clarity, using a simple and easy-to-apply tool that can be accessed with ease and ahhhh. Very nice thank you very muchly!
I have much to angst about at the moment. Will see if my dementing little self can remember to apply this strategy and shift some stuff that’s keeping me hemmed in.
Also great for warning your readers that you may have a little time off teaching by the way. In therapy land as you may well know it’s standard practise to make sure everyone is reminded that time away is coming up. So that there’s not a huge feeling of being lost in the dark when they are needed sorta thing. So I think that gently reminding us of time off and roughly when you might be up and running again might indeed be useful.
Plus you know it’s really both inspiring and reassuring when someone who is committed to working on their stuff has systems in place so that they simply take time off to do other stuff whether it’s a workshop or taking some holiday.
I never want someone who is offering to, in some way, help me with my stuff to be doing this at the expense of their own health and well being. We want to see that you are practising what you preach and giving yourself space and time to rest and go more slowly. I think that’s good practise anyway without wanting to sound all expert-y without actually being one! Ummm anyway that thought just cropped up based on some other blogging experiences I’ve had – as oppposed to anything I’ve seen here. But still it may be relevant in some way.
All food for thought,
Thanks Andrew.
L
You are awesome.
I’m going to go and try this now with the thing I’m currently worrying about.
you must be passing this telepathically!
Homework-y example:
I have an essay plan to hand in in two days, I haven’t thought about it, I have too much to do to think about it.
A) I waste hours researching rubbish and end up handing in a garbage essay plan which means I have to write an essay I don’t want to later in the (course) year and end up getting crap marks because I didn’t prep well enough (subtext:….and I must be stupid and therefore a failure because of all this!).
B) I find the perfect info online/in magazines, write a brilliant synopsis of an essay ( article) which I can’t wait to write and between now and writing become something of a guru on the topic ( subtext: I am clearly a gifted communicator with brilliant insights into this topic!)
….hmmm some work to do here on a few judgements I might have. But C and D came out as a result of talking to a peer who hasn’t done the essay plan and isn’t going to (because we have another silly deadline to meet) which made me think ‘OH other options?!’ so…
C) I will do my best and get the foundations of some chapters and structure which I can research more thoroughly in the next few weeks, and not stress about tweeking it as I find out more about my subject.
D) Some mag will write an article on exactly the topic I propose and I will plagiarize it completely (is that legal?!?!)
GREAT thoughts, keep writing