We could all us an extra boost of can-do! Here, experts share easy ways to do hard things and increase your joy, resilience, and well-being. Read more here.
This article first appeared in the May 24, 2021 issue of Women’s World Magazine!
From fearing the future to dealing with a deluge of decisions, life is exhausting these days. Here, easy ways to power up your drained batteries.
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This article first appeared in the August 17, 2020 issue of Women’s World Magazine.
When it comes to new year’s resolutions, we often start out with enthusiasm and resolve, only to find it fading within a few short months. One of the reasons for this is we focus too much on the end goal, for example “lose 10 pounds”, “organize our garage”, or “run 5 miles”. When we focus so much on our end goals, we often miss out on two very important things.
The Journey
One of my goals is to scan my photos and organize them into online albums, something that my family will be able to share in the future. However, when I think about doing it, I feel overwhelmed. There are so many photos, this will take hours. When I do manage to get started, I feel impatient with the process and only satisfied if I complete an album.
When I focus on the goal of finished photo albums, I miss out on the journey of looking through the photos, enjoying them, and reflecting on the time they were taken. Without those pleasures, my enthusiasm for the project fades, and I’m running only on grim resolve.
Committing to the goal of your new resolution means committing to the journey as well. If the trip to get where you want to go sounds like a grind, perhaps there is a way to get there that inspires you as well. To help you find that inspiration, ask yourself, what are the personal values that my journey might honor?
Personal Values
In my case, there are several values that might inspire me to be more present for my journey with the photo albums. Fun, creativity, and love come to mind. And when I feel the urge to keep going “just to get it done” I might turn to other values like flexibility, self-care and patience. Practicing my personal values is what keeps me coming back again and again.
To live a life of value, we must allow our values to inform how we live. In the busyness of our lives, it’s easy to lose track of what we value, and this year is a wonderful time to remind ourselves what they are.
Here is a list of core human values. When you think of this next year, what values would you like to live by?
SELF-ACCEPTANCE GROWTH OPENNESS CREATIVITY SPIRITUALITY
FUN/PLEASURE RESPONSIBILITY AUTHENTICITY COMMITMENT RESILIENCE
ADVENTURE HEALTH HONESTY SELF-EXPRESSION COMPASSION LOVE
FLEXIBILITY HUMOR PRESENCE/MINDFULNESS COURAGE INDEPENDENCE
PEACE HONOR TRUST SPONTANEITY FORGIVENESS CONNECTION PLAY FLOW
I would recommend writing your values down somewhere that you can be reminded of them. We so often lose sight of what is truly important to us.
Resolving to live by our values can motivate us to reach or goals, but more importantly, they help us appreciate the journey. It is the journey, not the destination, where most of life takes place.
Do you, or someone you know, have trouble making decisions? It could be as small as deciding what to wear in the morning, or big, like whether to buy a house or continue to rent. You may spend countless hours going through pros and cons in your mind, asking others for advice, or simply putting off thinking about it.
Difficulty making decisions is associated with two of the three Monkey Mindsets, intolerance of uncertainty, (thinking you need to be 100% certain of your decision), and perfectionism, (the belief that making the wrong decision would be catastrophic). Both of these mindsets are impossible standards to meet and create unnecessary agony, anxiety and avoidance when making decisions.
By contrast, those who have an easy time deciding can tolerate the uncertainty and are comfortable with less-than-perfect outcomes. You can learn to do this. Here are three simple steps to follow when you are stuck with a difficult decision.
Once your decision is made, you are no longer stuck, and you can move forward. If your decision brings the results you hoped for, good. If the decision did not work out, also good! You’ll have an opportunity to practice coping with the outcome. Flexibility and resilience are two of the most important commodities in life!
Be sure to watch the 3 minute video below this post to learn 3 simple tools to help you manage your time and feel less stressed.
Here is the definition of “Holiday”, by our trustworthy Wikipedia:
A holiday is a day set aside by custom or by law on which normal activities, especially business or work including school, are suspended or reduced. Generally, holidays are intended to allow individuals to celebrate or commemorate an event or tradition of cultural or religious significance.
What really catches my eye is a time to set aside or reduce normal activities, which is intended to give more time to reflect and celebrate what is important to people. For many of us, instead of reducing our normal activities, we end up piling on additional activities around the holidays. This ends up causing stress, which does not cultivate hospitable conditions to reflect and celebrate.
Let me give an example of my client Ann, a single mom who came in the week before Thanksgiving feeling more stressed and overwhelmed than usual. Ann owned her own business and so had planned to work up until the day before Thanksgiving. I had her explain what she had planned for the next day, and this is what she outlined:
Ann wasn’t reducing her normal obligations, she was simply piling on more. Expecting ourselves to accomplish more with the same amount of time and energy is like expecting our car to go an extra 100 miles on the same tank of gas. Our time and energy, like a tank of gas, are limited resources that need to be managed correctly to stay in good supply. To help Ann manage her time and energy that day, I had her use three time-management tools that I use with my clients: Accommodate, Delegate, and Eliminate.
Ann started out by accommodating. Her first thought was to eliminate her workout, but I advised against it. Self-care is often the first thing people want to cut out, and it is the very thing that reduces stress and helps increase energy levels. Instead she decided to cut the amount of work she wanted to get done with her business in half. Next she delegated. She told her daughter that if she wanted a ride to her friend’s house she needed help around the house, so delegated cleaning the bathrooms to her. And finally, she eliminated, instead of home backed pies, she would get store bought ones.
It’s not always easy to use these tools. Eliminating a task or activity we’re attached to can be painful. Delegating tasks that may not get done as well as we want—her daughter would not clean the bathrooms the way Ann would like— can be disappointing. And accommodating, or compromising, around tasks can feel like a loss. But look at the alternative. Taking on more than we can handle makes us stressed and resentful, inhospitable conditions in which to reflect and celebrate what’s important to us.
Managing time and energy helps people to cultivate what they personally value most, in Ann’s case it was flexibility, connection, presence and fun. Those are qualities she wanted to have not only during the holidays, but every day of the year!
I am working with a client who came in complaining about difficulty deciding things. Whether choosing a career path or just buying a pair of shoes, unless she was 100% certain she was making the right decision, she delayed, conducting endless research, revisiting her pros and cons list, seeking reassurance from others, and changing her mind repeatedly. I recognized these behaviors right away as safety strategies. As long as she employed them, she was safe from the threat of deciding something she was uncertain about.
Using safety strategies to avoid uncertainty fuels a cycle of anxiety that tends to get worse over time. Whenever a decision is delayed due to uncertainty we reinforce the mindset that certainty is indeed possible, training the brain to categorize future decision-making situations as threats to our safety. Over time, we have less and less tolerance for uncertainty, and higher levels of anxiety when the need to make a decision arises. That’s why I call these strategies feeding the monkey mind.
In order to interrupt this cycle my client would have to begin to think more expansively around decisions, accepting the inherent uncertainty of life. Together we brainstormed for an alternative belief to counter her need-to-be-certain mindset. Here is what we came up with:
| Monkey Mind-set | Expansive Mind-set |
| I must be certain that I am making the right decision or else I will be miserable forever.
|
It is more important to practice flexibility and learn to cope with whatever decision I make than to be certain of my decision. |
Of course, her new belief wouldn’t last long if she kept up her safety behaviors. Together we made a list of new behaviors that would give her the opportunity to practice tolerating uncertainty.
| Safety Strategies | Expansive Strategies |
| Research options endlessly
Constantly seek reassurance Repeatedly change my mind |
Restrict time weighing pros/cons
Refrain from asking others’ opinions Make a decision and stick with it |
Over time, using expansive behaviors will increase our tolerance of uncertainty and create less anxiety when making choices. And as a bonus, expansive strategies give us more resilience when a decision doesn’t work out well.
To help you identify your own intolerance of uncertainty you can download this quiz. To help you recognize your beliefs—and develop new healthier ones—you can download the Intolerance of Uncertainty Mind-set Chart from Don’t Feed The Monkey Mind.
#MonkeyMind #AnxietyAuthor #AnxietyCBT
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