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Blog Short #139: How to Effectively Deal with Stressors


Photo by konstantynov, Courtesy of iStock Photo

Over the last several weeks, we’ve learned about how stress affects the body and mind and some strategies to release it. This week we’re talking about stressors. That will conclude our three-week discussion devoted to stress management.

I’ve got six strategies you can try for dealing with stressors. Let’s go through them.

1. Avoid “avoidance.”

There are two parts to this one.

Part 1: Do your best not to resist the stressor.

That’s easier said than done, but you can get better at it by adopting the mindset that things happen unexpectedly. That doesn’t mean expecting things to go wrong but staying flexible and prepared to pivot when they do.

Part 2: Avoid stressors by planning ahead.

Many stressors occur because you cut things too close. You wait until the last minute to do something or don’t take care of things that need doing, and they rear their ugly head at the most inopportune time. Do what needs to be done in a timely manner and stay on top of your stuff.

2. Watch your narrative.

The stressor is one thing, but the story you tell yourself about it is what most influences how you react.

The narrative that gets you in trouble is catastrophizing and focusing on worst-case scenarios.

Cognitive distortions can run wild when you’re stressed and inflate your negative emotions – fear, despair, anger, overwhelm – so that you begin to react to your fantasy of what’s happening more than the actual reality in front of you.

It’s easy to do this when facing a possible loss, such as harm to someone you love, your finances crashing, a job loss, etc. These stressors are harder to manage and require some soothing self-talk or support from someone else who can be a voice of reason.

When your emotions take over, step back if you can and be mindful of the story you’re telling yourself about what’s happening. When you do that, you activate your prefrontal cortex and get into a thinking mode. That allows you to calm your emotions and adjust your narrative to something more realistic and also move your focus toward dealing with the situation.

3. Set boundaries.

Stress is sometimes the result of someone else’s problems or unrealistic expectations of you. Relationships, especially close ones, blur the boundaries of what belongs to who and what each person’s responsibilities are. This is especially true when co-dependency is strong, or one person takes advantage of the other.

If you tend to be a “caretaker” who habitually rescues or kowtows to the other person’s needs at your own expense, then you likely feel chronically stressed. Over time, you feel depleted emotionally, physically, and psychologically.

No amount of stress-release activities can alleviate this kind of repetitive pressure. Only you can do that by setting boundaries and recognizing your part in the dance, although it doesn’t feel like a dance. It’s more like being repeatedly tackled on the football field.

Take time to assess your relationships (including those at work), and ask yourself if more boundaries are needed.

If you’re the person that’s often rescued, then you need some boundaries for yourself, which requires looking closely at how you can manage your responsibilities better.

This isn’t something to beat yourself up over, but something you can use to improve your life.

4. Narrow down.

Many of us are stressed because we do too much. You might argue with me with the retort, “It’s not my choice! I have to do too much!”

Some people are trapped in daily responsibilities that seem necessary, and they may be. An example is the single parent with three kids who works full-time, doesn’t make enough money to make ends meet, and has no support system. That person has too much to do – every day. Still, a careful examination is helpful.

Most of us have some room to make choices but don’t. We take on too much, then feel overwhelmed and complain about not having enough time.

Try this:

  1. Write out everything you do on a daily/weekly basis.
  2. Now put it all out on a calendar. Where do you do it? During what hours?
  3. Next, prioritize. What’s most important, and what could you let go of?
  4. Where do you waste time?

You likely don’t know how much time you waste.

I did this exercise once. I wrote down how I spent every minute for a full week. It was rather grueling but eye-opening. I got a better feel for how much time things took versus how much time I thought they took and where I wasted time. It helped me decide what to let go of and how re-position some tasks to be more efficient.

5. Find the value.

Progress comes from overcoming obstacles.

You’ve heard some version of this, I’m sure, and that’s because it’s mostly true.

When things come easy, we might perform well, but when there are obstacles to overcome, we seem to rise higher and perform better. It’s like working out – when you push your muscles just a little harder than is comfortable, they acclimate to the challenge and get stronger.

Stressors you consider to be obstacles or roadblocks often have something to teach you. You groan when they come up because you aren’t in the mood or ready to learn that lesson right now, but that’s how things go, isn’t it?

So look at the situation and ask yourself what you might gain from it. Even when you have a job you don’t like, there’s something you’re learning either about yourself, or perhaps a skill, or how to deal with adversity. What are you getting you can use later?

This is called “positive reappraisal” (Nagoski, 2019). It’s a valuable concept you can tap into when you feel stuck and unhappy with where you are. That doesn’t mean you should pretend everything’s fine. Using positive thinking this way is not beneficial. See things as they are, but push yourself to see the silver lining until you can make a change.

This leads us to the last one.

6. Know when to quit.

Sometimes dealing with a stressor is deleting it. This is when you decide to cut your losses because staying in the situation is not feasible or advisable.

This applies to bad jobs, bad relationships, and self-destructive habits.

In Burnout, Emily and Amelia Nagoski suggest doing a cost-benefit assessment. Ask yourself:

  1. What are the costs of staying in?
  2. What are the costs of getting out?
  3. What are the benefits of staying in?
  4. What are the benefits of getting out?

Make sure to consider both short and long-term costs and benefits. This will help you see it more objectively.

Sometimes you know even before you do the exercise, but it helps to apply some soul-searching and see it on paper.

One More Thing

We usually see stressors in the present tense as something we’re experiencing now. Yet, it helps to look at them in terms of the big picture. The question is:

How does this situation fit into my overall “why”? Why am I here, what am I trying to accomplish, and what’s truly important?

What you do daily feels different when you see it in terms of your bigger picture. It aligns you with what’s meaningful for you and allows you to sync your actions, goals, and attitudes toward your purpose(s). Stressors become part of that larger landscape, and you feel more appreciative of what they teach you, or you know when to let them go.

I’ll end on that philosophical note.

That’s all for today.

As always, have a great week!

All my best,

Barbara

Blog Short #138: Stress-Release Strategies That Help You Avoid Burnout


Photo by Zac Durant on Unsplash

Last week, you learned what stress does to your body and psyche, especially chronic stress that builds up over time. Part of managing stress is finding effective methods to release it so it doesn’t negatively impact your physical and mental health.

Even when you can control the things that are causing your stress (stressors), you still have to recover from the fallout of dealing with them.

That’s what we’re talking about today: What activities or practices can you use to de-stress and “complete the cycle” of stress release?

Some of these will be short-term strategies you can use on the spot, and others are long-term strategies that keep you stress-free while immunizing you to stress build-up.

I’ll list them and give you brief descriptions.

A Quick Stress Primer

Before we start on stress-release methods, I want to summarize what we’re trying to accomplish with these activities. This information comes from Rick Hanson, author of Buddha’s Brain.

He likens releasing stress in the body to “cooling the fires,” which is an apt description. To accomplish this, we need to tap into the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), which is one component of the autonomic nervous system (ANS).

The autonomic nervous system is a part of the overall peripheral nervous system and regulates crucial physiologic processes such as heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, digestion, and sexual arousal.

The ANS has three divisions – sympathetic, parasympathetic, and enteric. For our purposes, we’re only concerned with the first two.

  1. The sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activates the fight-or-flight response to perceived danger when you’re stressed.
  2. The parasympathetic (PNS) does the opposite: it calms and soothes your body and brain after periods of stress.

Stress-release strategies aim to stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system while cooling the sympathetic nervous system.

Having this information under your belt makes it easier to decide what activities might be helpful. Let’s go through them now. I’ll start with short-term activities.

Diaphragmatic Breathing

Everyone knows deep breathing is helpful when you’re stressed, but there’s a way to do it.

Place your hand on your upper abdomen just below your ribcage. Start with a slow inhale through your nose to the count of 4. As you breathe in, push your belly out as you move air up into your lungs. Hold that for a count of 4. Now exhale through your mouth to a count of 4 until you’re completely empty. If you like, hold this for a count of 4 or just begin your next inhale.

Complete the whole series four times. When finished, sit and relax and feel the calming effect. The PNS is stimulated during exhalation, so make sure to exhale completely.

You can do this routine any place, and it takes only a few minutes. It’s a reset for the body and mind and is helpful when you feel your emotions ramping up.

Progressive Muscle Relaxation

I’ve attached a handout with specific instructions for how to do this activity. (Get links to the handouts at the end of the article.) Generally, it consists of focusing on various body parts one at a time, noticing tension there, and then releasing it by consciously relaxing.

For example, focus on your shoulders. Where do you feel the tension in them? Are you holding them up or hunching forward? Now relax them completely. Go to the next body part and continue the process.

You can work from your feet up or your head down. A more extensive process is to tense each body part intentionally before relaxing it. Either way is helpful.

Quick Relaxation

Rick Hanson suggests four things you can do quickly at any time. They are:

  1. Relax your eyes, jaw muscles, and tongue.
  2. Let yourself sink into the ground (if lying down) or chair if sitting, and feel the tension draining out of your body. This is a good exercise to use when going to sleep.
  3. Run warm water over your hands. It’s surprising how much this can relax you.
  4. Scan your body for areas of tension, and then relax them. You may know specific body parts you tense regularly. Check them first.

Exercise

Exercise is a short and long-term solution and one of the best methods of releasing immediate stress. Going for a walk outside does wonders for both body and mind and helps you complete the cycle of a stressful incident. A run is great if you can do that. Anything aerobic does the job. Walking is fine.

Regular exercise raises your stress tolerance and clears out a backlog of stress you might be holding in your body.

John Ratey likens exercise to a “stress inoculation.” Toxic levels of stress erode connections between nerve cells in the brain. Regular exercise has the opposite effect. It sparks the growth and preservation of neurons, which creates stronger nerve connections and enhances brain functioning.

An added benefit is that aerobic exercise also increases serotonin and dopamine levels in the brain, improving mood, focus, and motivation.

Meditation

Along with exercise, meditation is one of the most effective methods of completing the cycle and releasing stress. It’s also the best method of reducing stress-related reactivity to adversity.

Meditation:

  • Increases gray matter in the insula, hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex, which enhances memory, cognition, and control of emotions.
  • Improves psychological functions such as empathy, focus and attention, compassion, and tolerance.
  • Creates emotional space so that you have less negative reactivity to stressful events. I’ve meditated regularly for many years, and I’ve noticed that when something stressful occurs, I have an almost slow-motion reaction that allows me to stand between myself and the event and observe while thinking about how to react. This happens automatically. I feel calm even when something goes wrong. If I do have an anxious reaction, I can note it without fully engaging in it.
  • Decreases the release of stress-related cortisol.
  • Strengthens the immune system.
  • Diminishes mood disturbances and other chronic psychological conditions like anxiety, insomnia, and impulsivity.

Think of it this way:

Meditation works directly on the mind while calming the body and enhancing physiological functioning on a neural level. If you meditate regularly, over time, all your other habits will improve, as will your ability to regulate your emotions. Meditation also delves into your subconscious and releases stress associated with memories and trauma.

It’s both preventative and healing. It immunizes you from stress.

Talking it Out

Stress is worse in isolation. Talking to someone who can listen helps you pull the stress out, work it over, and release it. Don’t go it alone, but make sure you choose the right person to talk to. Read this blog to help you do that.

Finding Refuge

This one also comes from Rick Hanson.

Ask yourself this question:

Throughout your life, where have you found refuge when you needed a place to let down your guard and feel safe and soothed?

This could be a place, activity, person, or persons such as family members, friends, or partners. It could be a teacher/mentor/spiritual figure. Pets count too.

It might be something more ideological, like truth, compassion, faith, or love.

Or maybe books, poetry, or art.

Where, who, or what are your refuges, and how do you experience them? Think about this over the next week and identify them.

When you keep them in mind, you can turn to them even in thought when you’re stressed. Just focusing on them can recharge and relax you simultaneously and give you the fortitude to keep going.

These are your sanctuaries.

More Ideas

I’ve attached several PDFs below to extend what we’ve discussed here. You can download them if you like and keep them for reference.

This blog didn’t address what to do about stressors. That’ll be coming up next week.

That’s all for today.

Have a great week!

All my best,

Barbara

ProgressiveMuscleRelaxation.pdf
OtherStress-ManagementStrategies.pdf
So-HumMeditation.pdf


FOOTNOTES:

Davidson, R. J. 2004. Well-being and affective style: Neural substrates and biobehavioural correlates. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 359(1449), 1395–1411. DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2004.1510

Dusek, J. A., Out, H. H., Wohlhueter, A. L., Bhasin, M., Zerbini, L. F., Joseph, M. G., Benson, H. & Libermann, T. A. (2017). Genomic counter-stress changes induced by the relaxation response. PLOS ONE, 12(2): e0172845.https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0172845

Goyal, M., Singh, S., Sibinga, E.M., Gould, N.F., Rowland-Seymour, A., Sharma, R., Berger, Z., Sleicher, D., Maron, D.D., Shihab, H.M., et al. (2014). Meditation programs for psychological stress and well-being: a systematic review and meta-analysis. JAMA Internal Medicine, 174(3), 357-368. DOI: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2013.13018

Hanson, R. (2009). Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom. Harbinger Publications.

Hölzel, B. K., Ott, U., Gard, T., Hempel, H., Weygandt, M., Morgen, K. & Vaitl, D. (2008). Investigation of mindfulness meditation practitioners with voxel-based morphometry. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 3(1), 55–61. DOI: 10.1093/scan/nsm038

Luders, E., Toga, A. W., Lepore, N., & Gaser, C. (2009). The underlying anatomical correlates of long-term meditation: Larger hippocampal and frontal volumes of gray matter. Neuroimage, 45(3), 672-678. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2008.12.061

Lutz, A., Brefczynski-Lewis, J., Johnstone, T. & Davidson, R. (2008). Regulation of the neural circuitry of emotion by compassion meditation: Effects of meditative expertise. PLOS ONE, 3(3):e1897. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0001897

Ratey, J. & Hagerman, E. (2008). Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain. Little, Brown Spark.

Tang, Y., Ma, Y., Wang, J., Fan, Y., Feg, S., Lu, Q., Yu, Q., Sui, D., Rothbart, M., Fan, M., & Posner, M. (2007). Short-term meditation training improves attention and self-regulation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(43), 17152–17156. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.070767810

Blog Short #137: What Stress Does to You


Photo by mixetto, Courtesy of iStockPhoto

This week’s subject comes from twin sisters Emily and Amelia Nagoski, who authored the book Burnout. The issue is stress, and today we will delve into how stress is felt and what it does to your body and mind.

Next week we’ll talk about how to manage stress. I’ll also give you a handout with additional instructions for using some relaxation techniques.

Let’s dive in.

Stress versus the Stressor

This concept was eye-opening for me. It’s not something I don’t know on some level, but something I rarely think about or recognize. I’m guessing the same applies to you.

Here’s the basic idea provided by Emily and Amelia in their book:

Dealing with your stress is a separate process from dealing with the things that cause your stress. To deal with your stress, you have to complete the cycle.

One initiates the stress; this is the stressor that activates a stress response in your body.

The other is the fallout: this is the “neurological and physiological shift that happens in your body when you encounter” a stressor or threat.

The distinction between the stressor and the stress itself is crucial because what often happens is that you focus on reducing stressors but forget that experiencing them leads to residual effects in your body and psyche that continue long after the stressor has been removed.

And, if you’re facing chronic ongoing stressors, your body doesn’t catch up. It just keeps piling on, which results in all kinds of physical distress and sometimes disease processes. Your mind also doesn’t recover but gets embroiled in chronic reactivity as you try to manage things.

I doubt anyone doesn’t experience chronic stress from time to time, and for many, it’s a daily experience.

Now let’s look at what happens when confronted with a stressor.

The Body’s Response to Stress

You know a lot of this already, but you may not know the particulars, and those are important to understanding how to manage stress.

Stress is caused by a threat, whether physical, emotional, or cognitive. Something feels dangerous, and your brain accommodates that feeling with an automatic call to arms. It’s like the red alert on the Enterprise (if you’re familiar with Star Trek). The alarm sounds, and everyone gets in their place to ready themselves for battle.

Your heart rate increases, blood pumps fast and pushes into your muscles, you breathe harder and faster, your sensitivity to pain decreases, your muscles tense up, your attention narrows, your senses are heightened, and you’re hypervigilant.

Imagine hearing someone fiddle with the doorknob on your front porch in the middle of the night. You can hear a pin drop, and you can barely breathe.

Those are the obvious feelings; most everyone knows them because we’ve all experienced them. What you might not know is that other shifts are occurring in your body and brain.

Your brain narrows your focus to previous experiences and knowledge relative to what’s happening right now. It’s like opening only the windows on your computer that are relevant to the current situation and closing all the others. Your body slows down organ systems that aren’t considered necessary for battle. These include digestion, immune function, musculoskeletal, and reproduction.

Your entire mind and body revise activities to focus on the perceived threat and suspend normal functions to facilitate a response.

If the stressor is a single incident, you will likely be more successful at managing the stress once the threat is past. But if you experience chronic stress, those organ systems take a hit daily and cannot function optimally. Diseases like IBS, ulcerative colitis, heart disease, infertility, and many others are fed by chronic stress, as reduced or overactive immune responses hamper your body’s ability to fight against them.

Your Mind’s Response to Stress

As your body revs up its army, your brain narrows in on responding to the stressor. It helps you decide whether to stay and fight, take flight and run, or freeze and play dead. You quickly assess which is most likely to keep you safe and which is possible. If the threat’s right on top of you and there’s no way out, you either fight or play dead. You may decide to flee if you’ve got a little room to think and a way to escape.

All this is done in your head while your body goes through the shifts we just described. Your emotions supply the energy that surges through your body as the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline are released. They ready you for action.

“Freeze” is another story.

Freeze is different from fight or flight. When you’re involved in fight or flight, you’re active. You have a direction to take. These two avenues involve the sympathetic nervous system, which gives you a “go” signal. Sympathetic means “with emotion.”

When you freeze, the opposite occurs. You suspend all activity. This avenue involves the parasympathetic nervous system. Parasympathetic means “beyond emotion.” When you freeze, you may feel removed from yourself, disengaged, numb, and sluggish. You can’t think or make sense of anything.

Fight or flight is like applying metal to the pedal, whereas freezing slams on the brakes.

Now stop and imagine for a minute a situation you’ve been in where you felt one of these responses. If you can, imagine three of them where you had the experience of each response.

Now think about experiencing any or all of them regularly.

With chronic stress, the experience of tension or anxiety isn’t acute, like if someone’s breaking into your home in the middle of the night. It’s muted, so you forget it’s happening sometimes. It rears its head here and there, then settles back down to just below your conscious awareness, but it’s still active.

Here’s the big problem: Your body never forgets.

Complete the Cycle

Complete the cycle means that once you’ve dealt with a stressor and the conscious danger is past, your body still needs additional help to move out of the stress cycle. You might know that the stressor is gone and feel some relief, but your body hasn’t yet gotten the signal that all’s clear and all systems can go back to their normal functions. It’s as though the ship’s captain knows the threat’s been averted, but he hasn’t told his team that they can turn off the alarm and return to their usual stations and duties.

You have to give your body that signal. You have to provide a method to release the stress that’s been accumulated in responding to the stressor and send the message that it’s safe.

Just knowing you’re safe from the stressor doesn’t automatically do that. And if you’re chronically stressed, your body accumulates stress and never feels safe.

What are the signs that you haven’t completed the cycle?

  • Excessive fatigue
  • Insomnia
  • Negative, obsessive, or overthinking
  • Racing mind, difficulty concentrating
  • Worry and foreboding
  • Lack of motivation, not taking care of things
  • Numbness, apathy
  • Anger, unexpected emotional eruptions, panic attacks
  • Self-destructive behavior and habits
  • Over or under-eating, poor diet, craving junk food and carbs
  • Body picking
  • Chronic illness, aches and pains, asthma, infections

Great. What’s next?

That’s what we’re going to address next week. I’ll review the best methods of “completing the cycle” and helping your body and mind release stress.

In the meantime, you can think about what your stress load is. You may be unaware of just how much stress you handle daily. That can easily happen when you’re immersed in it. It’s good to take an objective view. Then you can start to unravel it.

That’s all for today.

Have a great week!

All my best,

Barbara

Blog Short #136: Why Talking About Your Problems is a Good Thing


Photo by Srdjanns74, Courtesy of iStockPhoto

Talking about your problems and sharing your negative feelings with someone is good for you.

Let’s start with why, and then I’ll give you the science behind it.

The “why” is that it can:

  • Reduce stress
  • Lower anxiety and worry
  • Relieve isolation
  • Facilitate healing from trauma
  • Strengthen the immune system
  • Reduce emotional pain

That’s not a complete list, but it covers some of the most significant effects.

Now for the science.

Reducing Isolation

When you express your thoughts and feelings to someone who’s open to hearing them, several processes are activated that join you and the listener together to create understanding and connection.

1. Mirror Neurons

The first process involves mirror neurons, associated with the brain’s ability to feel what the other person feels.

Neurons are nerve cells that send messages throughout the body. A mirror neuron is unique because it fires when you act and also when someone else acts.

For example, when you throw a ball up in the air, my mirror neurons fire the same as yours, as though I also threw that ball in the air, even though I didn’t. I just watched you do it.

So when you’re talking to me and telling me how you feel or what you’re experiencing, I can share those feelings. By hearing your words, my brain can grasp what they mean on an experiential level. You sense this, which makes you feel less isolated with your problems and emotions.

2. Neural Coupling

The second mechanism that facilitates connecting is called neural coupling. If you’re talking to someone who seems to grasp what you’re saying and feeling, you feel in sync. You click with each other. This feeling is rooted in an actual alignment of the two brains neurologically. As explained by Katherine Hobson (2018), it works like this:

A speaker’s brain waves generate a sound wave — speech — that in turn influences the brain responses in the listener and brings them into alignment with her own.

Hobson likens it to dancing with a partner: “Neither person is doing exactly what the other is, but the moves are complementary.” And, the more in sync you are, the stronger the felt connection.

3. The Container and the Contained

This third mechanism is a psychological concept called “the container and the contained.” It means that when you express your feelings to me, I take them in and hold them for you so you get some emotional space and can begin to sort them out.

This is a big part of what happens in psychotherapy. As you unfold your story to the therapist, there’s a transfer of your distress, and she contains it for you as you work it through. It relieves your feeling of carrying the burden alone.

Now let’s look at how talking helps you deal with emotional pain and trauma.

Reducing Emotional Pain and Gaining Insight

Talking involves labeling your emotions with words, which has the effect of organizing and creating a structure for your thoughts and feelings. You effectively begin to reduce your emotional reactivity and think analytically about what’s going on.

The more you tell your story or narrative of a traumatic event, the more you move through the various stages of healing until you eventually find a place for it that no longer plagues you.

It’s like washing a piece of dark cloth over and over in hot water and soap until eventually it’s a pale grey. The shadow is still there, but it’s considerably diluted and no longer has the impact it once had. You can fold the cloth and put it in your dresser drawer. It remains, but it’s no longer within view.

Talking out your problems also has physiological benefits. It’s been shown to reduce visits to the doctor and increase overall immune response. We carry our stress in our bodies, and over time it can interrupt immune activity and increase health issues such as heart disease, inflammation, immune disorders, skin eruptions, sleep cycles, and mood disturbances.

Now let’s address who you should talk to.

How do I choose the listener?

Can you talk to just anyone when sharing your problems or distress? Of course not. Here are the qualities you need in someone to get the effects outlined above.

1. Empathetic

Above all, choose someone who can understand how you feel and is open to hearing it. The best is someone you can relate to and whose emotional profile is similar to yours. Choose a friend, family member, or professional therapist with whom you feel comfortable.

As an aside, not every therapist is right for every person. Therapists are people with personalities and backgrounds; sometimes you match up, and sometimes not. Generally, a good therapist understands your feelings without judgment and listens much more than they talk.

2. Have the energy and time available.

Does this person have the time and energy to listen? Just ask, and be mindful of how much time you think is needed. You might need to choose a specific time and get their agreement before starting. Maybe you want to do it over coffee, but make sure you set a limit for yourself so the other person doesn’t feel stuck or trapped.

3. Choose someone who isn’t going to take over the conversation.

You could have a great friend who’s empathetic, has a similar emotional disposition, and has the time and energy for you, but can’t listen without inserting her biases and ideas.

If you want to talk about a break-up with your partner but know she’ll take over the conversation and scorch your ex because she thinks that’ll help you, don’t choose her. That doesn’t help. You’re looking for someone who can listen and let you roll it out without interruption or trying to fix things.

When Talking is Not So Good

The Rant!

Everyone needs to vent sometimes, and it’s all right to do that to get something off your chest. You may even need a few rounds to do the job.

However, extended ranting is unhealthy because it increases your level of anger without resolving anything. It keeps you stuck.

Chronic venting is like continually revving your motor and never moving the car forward.

It’s also not fair to the listener. Who wants to listen to someone take off on the same rant over and over? It’s like being stuck in a deep ditch with no foreseeable way of getting out.

If you need to vent, time yourself. Keep it short. Best is to ask the listener, “Do you mind if I vent for a moment? I promise not more than 5 or 10 minutes. I just need to get this out so I can think about what to do about it.” Most people are okay with that.

The purpose of venting should be to move you forward so that you can work with whatever’s holding you up and find a way to either resolve it or let it go.

Venting should not be the main show. It’s a lead-in to a solution, not the solution itself.

Last question: Isn’t talking to someone burdening them?

It depends on the relationship and the persons involved. In most close relationships, there’s an unspoken understanding: You talk when you have an issue, and I’ll do the same. You take turns and welcome listening to each other. This is true of good friends, romantic partners, and family members.

If you have serious problems that require more, seek out a therapist so that you get the help you need and don’t overburden the relationship. Chronic anxiety, depression, or other mood disturbances might require some therapy, or in some cases, medication. That’s up to you, but if you feel you’re burdening someone, ask them about it directly, and you can decide together how to approach that.

Next week we’ll begin a 2-part series on handling stress.

That’s all for today.

Have a great week!

All my best,

Barbara


FOOTNOTES

Bastiaansen, J. A., Thioux, M., & Keysers, C. (2009). Evidence for mirror systems in emotions. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Series B, Biological Sciences, 364(1528), 2391–2404. DOI:10.1098/rstb.2009.0058

Ferrari, P. F., & Rizzolatti, G. (2014). Mirror neuron research: The past and the future. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Series B, Biological Sciences, 369:20130169. DOI:10.1098/rstb.2013.0169

Hatfield, E., Cacioppo, J. L. & Rapson, R. L. (1993). Emotional contagion. Current Directions in Psychological Sciences, 2,(3), 96-99. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8721.ep10770953

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Winwerman, L. (October 2005). The Mind’s Mirror. American Psychological Association, Vol 36, No. 9. https://www.apa.org/monitor/oct05/mirror

Blog Short #135: How to Help Someone Who’s Stuck Without Enabling


Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

How do you help someone who’s stuck or feeling paralyzed without enabling them?

It’s a fine line sometimes, but there are some things you can do and will help, while other strategies won’t help and can make things worse.

Before you use the strategies I’m going to give you, you need to decide if the situation is one you want to take on. Here’s how to figure that out.

Ask yourself these questions.

  1. Can this person make use of help? In other words, is this someone who perpetually seeks help but doesn’t use it? They give lip service to good advice but never take it.
  2. What’s your level of investment in this person? You’re more likely to want to offer help to someone you’re close to than an acquaintance, although you might still want to help someone you don’t know all that well, depending on the situation and what kind of help they need.
  3. Will offering help to this person create a hardship for you? Do you have the time, energy, and willingness to get involved?
  4. And last, what’s your motivation? If you’re offering help because of your investment in the outcomes, you might want to rethink it. An example would be needing someone to change their behavior to reduce your anxiety about them. That isn’t always a bad thing, but you need to be aware of your motivation and understand the impact it might have on being able to offer tangible help.

Now let’s go through the strategies.

The Process to Use

Listen and validate.

The first step is to get a clear picture of what’s happening with this person. To do that, ask open-ended questions and encourage her to talk about what’s bothering her and how she feels about it.

This requires listening empathetically without judgment. Once she becomes comfortable talking openly and lays out the problem, ask her what she thinks is in the way of moving past her dilemma. What are the obstacles?

Sometimes just getting things out on the table creates a small opening and lifts the feeling of paralysis. Don’t try to fix it at this point.

Clarify what unstuck would look like.

In other words, where does she want to be? What specific things or behaviors would make her feel like she’d climbed out of the hole and was on her way to fixing her problem? What’s the goal?

Sometimes people don’t know the answers to these questions, or their shame has blurred the possibility of anything changing.

But, by continued empathetic listening and questioning, you can help them begin to sift through the thoughts and emotional obstacles that are in the way. These need to be identified because they significantly impact being and staying stuck.

Point out any positive movement, ability, or success.

Point out any other successes or actions that she’s taken previously. These don’t necessarily have to apply to the situation at hand, although if they do, all the better. Help her recognize her strengths that she can tap into.

Reminding someone of their accomplishments or successes draws them away from all-or-nothing thinking and extreme judgments that keep them in the never-ending “I’m not worthy” loop.

Lend your ego strength.

This is where your active participation comes in. Offer to help get things going by doing the following:

  1. Come up with one or two small actions she can take. Nothing big, time-consuming, or difficult. Agree to one.
  2. Set up continued accountability by checking in with each other. Make it regular. If the action is scheduled two days from now, set up a check-in after that – either the same day or the day after. If it fails, schedule it again until successful.
  3. Once there’s a success, set up a new action and repeat the whole thing.

You lend your ego strength when you maintain your involvement and cheer the other person on. You’re showing that you have faith in their ability to follow through, and you have a backup plan if things don’t go well the first time.

In some cases, you might go as far as to take the first step with them. For example, if improving health is the plan, you might agree to walk with them several times a week. Or if they need to make an appointment somewhere, you could be present when they make the phone call. It depends on your relationship and what seems appropriate based on that.

A caveat here: This step and the next are most likely not something you would do with an acquaintance or someone you’re not close to. They’re for people you’re more invested in.

Continue accountability checks.

Set up a regular check-in once you both get through the first action and a follow-up. You’re acting as an accountability partner. However, this is tricky because you don’t want to take on the role of monitoring or managing.

Sometimes accountability agreements work best if both people are involved in accounting for something. You each make goals and set regular check-ins to see how you’re both progressing. By doing it this way, no one feels watched, which could result in resistance to the whole plan.

Here’s what not to do.

The basic rules are:

1. Don’t criticize.

Encourage trying again when there’s a failure. Remember that your purpose is to lend a hand, not to become invested in the other person’s performance. You’ll be most helpful if you can keep your personal goals out of it.

2. Look for small wins and reward them with feedback.

You’re the helper, cheerleader, and compassionate witness of the struggle.

3. Don’t enable bad behavior.

You can empathize with someone’s woes when stuck in destructive behavior patterns, but you can’t do things that will enable them to continue those behaviors. You need to set boundaries.

You wouldn’t keep giving someone money who continues to overspend. You could assist them with figuring out how to overcome that problem and validate that it’s hard to do, but not rescue them from it. Help them take steps to solve it, not continue it.

This is where the fine line comes in:

The more invested you are in the person and your relationship with them, the harder it is not to rescue.

4. Don’t help at your own expense.

Helping should be good for both of you. If being involved with the issue is too stressful or difficult for you, you need to think carefully about how much you can offer.

An Added Benefit

If you’re the one who’s stuck, you can apply all of these steps yourself. You can enlist the help of someone who cares about you but will let you solve your problems without trying to fix them or tell you what to do.

If you’d like to try this, select someone and let them read these steps. Together, plot out how you want to apply them. Maybe you can work with someone who’s also feeling stuck, and you can be each other’s ear and accountability partner. This arrangement works very well because you both get the added energy of being the supporter.

Helping someone else get unstuck can allow you to do the same.

The critical component to making this work is to accept and deal with repeated failed efforts and then try again until there’s a success.

The most essential quality is perseverance, not succeeding. Because if you persevere regardless of the number of tries needed, you will succeed.

That’s all for today!

Have a great week!

All my best,

Barbara

Blog Short #134: 6 Messages You Broadcast that Keep You From Getting What You Want


Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash

You broadcast messages daily that give people information about who you are and what you want – or don’t want.

Most of these messages are given and received subconsciously, but they influence how people experience you and how your life unfolds.

You can’t be aware of all the information stashed away in your subconscious and unconscious mind. It would be impossible to hold all of that in awareness at once. Still, you can figure out the primary messages you send based on your experiences – especially repetitive ones.

It helps to go through this process when you’re feeling stuck or have repeated experiences you don’t want to have, or are not getting what you want despite your many attempts to do so.

Examples might be:

  • Wishing to be in a relationship but consistently striking out
  • Attracting the same type of toxic person over and over
  • Going from one job to another and being disappointed every time
  • Making friends but being unable to hold on to them
  • Or you generally find yourself in the same unwanted situation again and again

You may feel that you’ve tried everything possible to change these patterns with no success.

So what gives? If you’ve tried what you can, what else can you do other than suffer more?

The answer’s not out there; it’s in here. Inside of you. What are you broadcasting from the inside that creates the same old disappointing experiences?

This isn’t about blame. It’s about stretching your awareness to see if there are subconscious messages you may be sending out unknowingly that conflict with your aspirations and desires.

Here are six messages you may be broadcasting that interfere with getting what you want.

1. You can take advantage of me.

You wouldn’t broadcast a message like that knowingly, but you can easily send it based on your behavior. Behaviors might include things like:

  1. Doing things to please others, even when at your expense
  2. Letting your need to be liked override being exploited or abused
  3. Repeatedly rescuing people without holding them accountable
  4. Saying yes to everything, even when you don’t want to
  5. Taking on responsibilities that aren’t yours

All these behaviors let people know they can take advantage of you, even if they do it unknowingly or not on purpose. You encourage it without meaning to and then feel resentful when it occurs. It happens automatically.

2. Rescue me!

The desire to be rescued may not be in your conscious awareness, but it comes through loud and clear when it’s there.

What people feel coming from you is a sense of desperation. You might come off as confident, especially at first, but the underground feelings of loneliness and neediness come through over time.

Despite what you say or how you act, helplessness pervades the emotional air around you, and people drop off.

The need to be rescued can co-exist with being taken advantage of because, in your quest to get the love and attention you need, you sacrifice yourself, hoping it will bring someone in (or keep them there).

3. I’m not worthy.

Feeling unworthy can come through in many ways. Sometimes it’s obvious and shows up in how you talk about yourself and through your body language.

You can also transmit it through self-deprecating behaviors.

A less obvious one is a lack of self-care and self-discipline.

Someone who feels unworthy might not take care of themselves; they let their body go, ignore health issues, finances are in shambles, live in clutter, do sloppy work on the job, forget things, etc.

That doesn’t mean that these behaviors all represent feelings of unworthiness. You can be forgetful, for example, yet function highly in general.

I’m talking about an overall pattern of letting yourself go, which translates to “I’m not worthy enough to care for.” People will automatically reflect that feeling back to you, even when unaware. Or it can trigger the same feeling in someone else, and they avoid you to avoid feeling it in themselves.

4. I need attention.

In this instance, your behavior is aimed at getting attention, sometimes at the expense of others. You might seem dramatic, entitled, self-centered, or just loud. You might turn most conversations back to you. Or you compete with or one-up others and don’t recognize their discomfort or disapproval of your behavior.

Attention seekers can be engaging initially, but the interest wears off quickly, and people scatter as they realize it’s a one-way street.

5. I need to be in control.

There’s a fine dividing line between being competent and needing control. You’re likely attractive when you present as someone who’s confident, able to manage things, and intelligent. However, if those qualities are tinged with militarism and a need to be in charge no matter what, you’ll push away people because you lack the ability to collaborate and be open-minded to the wishes and needs of others.

Dominance is not an attractive quality, and where you might initially attract someone with your competence, they move away when they uncover the need to control underneath it.

6. I can’t be trusted.

People may not learn this about you right away, but it comes through over time. It may be subtle, like not following through on what you say or fudging things ever so slightly to avoid being in trouble.

It may show up in a big way, like cheating, omitting significant information, or lying outright about things that will be offensive when uncovered. Or it might manifest through repeated manipulation or personal attacks that seem unwarranted.

Trustworthiness is a character trait, and if it’s not there or is consistently challenged, people sense it even before you act it out. It’s as though you’re wearing a “keep out” sign on your back to everyone except those who are either like you or have repeatedly been victimized and can’t break the pattern.

Even an unwitting lack of dependability or reliability can send the message, “I can’t be trusted.”

What to Do

If you have repeated experiences that aren’t satisfying or cannot engage in relationships that are good for you and meet your expectations, try going through this list and ask yourself if any of these messages apply. Take your time and give it some deep thought. It’s easy to defend even while trying to sift through the possibilities, but keep at it until you’re satisfied with your progress.

If you can pinpoint messages you broadcast that keep you from what you want, you can change them to more attractive and healthier ones.

It may require changing your self-talk and behavior as well. It takes work, but it’s work that’s worth the time.

Get some help if you can’t do it yourself. We’re most blinded by ourselves. It’s easy to see patterns like this in others, but we have difficulty turning inward. If you have someone who knows you well that you trust, you can run the list by them and ask if they see these patterns in you.

Keep this in mind.

The messages you broadcast have significant power over how your life goes. You can’t control everything that happens, but you can control what you put out there.

However you decide to approach it, know that working on yourself and becoming self-aware is the quickest and best route to change the outer circumstances of your life, especially your relationships.

That’s all for today.

Have a great week!

All my best,

Barbara

Blog Short #133: Unhealthy Competition in Relationships


Photo by shapecharge, Courtesy of iStock Photo

A little friendly competition is stimulating and fun. It’s a form of play and can enhance a relationship. But you have to be careful because competition that has an edge to it or goes too far can be damaging. Regular competition in relationships, especially between partners, can threaten the relationship’s survival.

Today we’ll go through some of the most common ways people compete with their partners and offer strategies to turn it around. This information applies to any close relationship, including those between parent and child.

Let’s start with a quick description of what a healthy relationship looks like.

Characteristics of Healthy Relationships

Intimate relationships are, by nature, collaborative, not competitive. They’re characterized by the following:

  • Mutual care and consideration of the other’s well-being
  • Acting as a team
  • Empathy and support
  • Celebrating each other’s achievements and accomplishments
  • Being in each other’s corner
  • Mutual respect
  • Trust
  • Two-way communication, listening, understanding, and honesty
  • Being present for each other even when with other people

The bottom line is that you’re both on the same side and want each other’s happiness.

Characteristics of Competitive Relationships

These are some signs that you or your partner are competitive with each other.

1. Dismiss each other’s accomplishments and achievements.

Both parties may be guilty of this, or just one of you. You’re unable or unwilling to celebrate your partner’s accomplishments. He gets a promotion at work, and you either minimize, dismantle, withdraw from celebrating, or dismiss it as a non-event. You might also sing your own praises at your job and outline how you’ve succeeded and done more.

Sometimes this behavior is more subtle. You give lip service to the event, but your heart’s not in it, and you move away from the subject as soon as possible.

2. Need to be the bigger victim.

This is called “victim competition”. No matter what negative thing happens to the other, your experience is worse and takes precedence. It’s one-upping but of a specific type. You’ve got a worse story to tell. Your problems are more significant, more traumatic, and more intense. Your experiences trump those of your partner.

3. Compete for territory.

You don’t share space, you battle over it, and one person usually dominates. I’m using the term “space” loosely here. It can mean actual space, such as areas in your home, or it can mean needing to talk more than the other, having more attention, having the last word on rules, opinions, or choice of activities. You want the upper hand in deciding how things work and what you each do.

4. Focus on criticism.

You point out each other’s shortcomings regularly and exploit them. One’s up, and one’s down. You’re never on level ground.

5. Keep score.

You both keep score on what each of you does (or doesn’t do) and use it to criticize and punish. Who makes the most money, who has the best friends, who has the better job and standing at work, who does the most housework, etc. You compare skills that aren’t even comparable and can’t show appreciation for or celebrate each other’s contributions.

6. Fight to win, not to resolve problems.

There are no compromises. If one has to succumb to the other, it is with smoldering resentment. If you have kids, you might ensnare them in your battle while building your defenses along the border. You may encourage them to choose sides.

Why and How Couples Become Competitive

Those descriptions are the extremes, but if you find any of those describe to some degree your relationships – romantic or otherwise – consider whether any of these possible causes apply.

Developmental issues are triggered.

The closer, more intimate, and longer you’re with someone, the more early developmental issues are triggered. If you know someone from a distance, you may get their best presentation because you haven’t triggered anything that’s tied to early attachment models they have with their parents. But intimate relationships will trigger those issues, and they’ll begin to show up in their behavior toward you. The more intimate the relationship, the more they show up.

How often have you heard someone say,

“My husband (or wife) is super nice to all our friends. They all love him and think he’s wonderful. But that’s not how he is with me. I get his worst.”

That’s why sometimes couples are fine while dating, but things change once they’re married. The commitment causes those triggers to appear.

Insecurities surface.

If you have insecurities about who you are, your worth, or your ability to perform or achieve, you might try to overcome these feelings by denigrating your partner’s success. It’s not so much that you don’t admire your partner’s achievements; it’s more that they exacerbate your lack of confidence. You can’t help but compare yourself and come out on the losing end.

Behavior was modeled in your family of origin.

If you grew up in a family where your parents consistently competed with each other and were at odds much of the time, you’ve internalized that behavior model even if you strongly dislike it.

If you had a parent who competed directly with you, meaning they sabotaged your progress, didn’t show pleasure in your successes, or focused primarily on your deficits rather than your assets, you have been given a heavy dose of those behaviors and may automatically repeat them, even when you wish not to.

Great, so what do we do?

Step 1: Identify the patterns together.

This might be difficult, especially if resentment and distance have crept in. Even so, you can turn it around. Depending on how well you communicate, you can either seek counseling to help unravel it or try it on your own.

If both people can focus on identifying how and why they’re competing with the other, without a lot of recrimination on each person’s part, you can change the patterns.

This entails gaining empathy for each other. No one acts like this because they love it – unless they’re a sociopath or psychopath. Most people fall into it, and it continues until it’s the automatic response.

Start with yourself.

If you’re unsure how to communicate about it together, begin with yourself. Journal or write out the ways you contribute to the pattern. When and how are you competitive with your partner? Be brutally honest with yourself, but don’t beat yourself up.

Instead, carve out some small new behaviors you can exercise to turn it around. You could try listening with full attention when your partner tells you something good that happened to her and show interest. Withhold a negative comment you don’t need to make.

Use the list I gave you at the beginning that describes a healthy relationship. What behaviors can you incorporate to reflect those characteristics?

Step 2: Work on becoming a team.

Use this team idea any way you can. Appreciate each other’s contributions. What do you both bring to the relationship, home, finances, and kids? Whatever it is, appreciate every little act. If you both do that, you’ll close up the distance that’s grown between you.

Step 3: Get help.

If your history is holding you back and you can’t work through these patterns, see a counselor to help you work on your issues so that you become stronger and happier on your own. Get to the root of your insecurities, anger, victimization, or whatever holds you hostage.

Even if you ultimately leave a relationship because it’s become too toxic and is beyond repair, you still need to work through your patterns. Otherwise, you’ll repeat them in the next relationship and pick another toxic partner.

Relationships are a lot of work, but they’re worth it in the long run if you apply the effort.

That’s all for today.

Have a great week!

All my best,

Barbara

Blog Short #132: How to Create a System to Execute Your Goals


Photo by INDU BACHKHETI, Courtesy of iStock Photo

How do you stay engaged in activities that focus on what’s most important to you without getting sidetracked by all the “noise” that competes for your attention daily?

That’s what we’re tackling today. I’ve got a list of strategies to get and keep you there. I’m drawing from three authors, and as always, I recommend you read their books for more information and details. They are:

  1. James Clear – Atomic Habits
  2. Charles Duhigg – The Power of Habit
  3. Greg McKeown – Essentialism & Effortless

Let’s get to it because it’s a lot to condense into 1300 words which is always my goal.

Design a routine.

Habits are the machinery that facilitates achievement.

Work gets done best when routinized, automated, and practiced consistently over time. To do this, you have to create habits.

The basic structure of any habit includes three parts (Duhigg). These are:

Cue – Routine – Reward

You set up a cue that triggers a behavior and then reward that behavior to instill it. My cue to write is to brew a cup of coffee and sit it on the table next to my writing chair, where I’ve placed my computer in the seat. The routine is to write for a specified time (usually an hour). My reward is crossing it off my list and checking Facebook for ten minutes.

In addition to setting up routines, several other strategies can help your habits stick.

  1. Do the most challenging things first.
  2. Build one routine at a time and make sure it’s automated, which means you don’t resist doing it anymore for the most part.
  3. For more complex habits, set up different routines for different days. I don’t write every day. I write three days and record course lessons two. Change it up!
  4. Build habit stacks.

Habit stacks string three to four habits together, each serving as a cue to the next. These work very well because you get a lot done at once. The key is to make the first habit easy and something you have no resistance to. For more on how to build habit stacks, read this article.

That’s how you create habits, but how do you deal with your resistance? That’s the key. Here are some great ideas from our esteemed authors.

1. Start small.

James Clear uses the strategy of making a 1% improvement every day. The idea is that doing something consistently daily (a habit) has “compound” effects, just like money in a savings account that accrues interest daily. It becomes more embedded in your brain and more automated. Each time you execute your habit, you get greater gain.

Small steps executed consistently build momentum. If I write for 15 minutes every day, it becomes easier and more attractive, so I want to continue it and get better at it. This is how all habits take hold, both good and bad, which is something to keep in mind.

2. Make it simple.

McKeown’s strategy, which I think is brilliant, is to execute what he calls “minimal viable progress.” Ask yourself, “What is the minimal action I can take to begin moving toward my goal?” Do the least preparation needed to get going, complete the action, and follow up with a reward.

If the goal is to exercise daily, walk 10 minutes and then reward yourself with a yummy healthy snack. Minimal preparation is putting on walking shoes and socks.

3. Remove obstacles.

Equally important is recognizing the obstacles that get in the way of executing your habits.

Before you start your new habit, list all the things that could obstruct your progress. Of these:

Which one is the leader – the one that unleashes all the other ones when it sets up a roadblock? If you can get that lead obstacle out of the way, the others won’t have much power.

These obstacles can come from the outside, such as other people who impose on you and use up your time, in which case you need to get good at setting boundaries.

They can also be your thoughts, emotions, and competing habits. Examine your repetitive self-talk, ingrained emotional reactions, and sneaky ways you avoid doing things that require some mental exertion. Scrolling Facebook, turning on the TV to watch just one episode of your favorite series, telling yourself you’ll start again tomorrow, feeling moody, giving those negative thoughts about your ability to succeed a front-row seat. All of these are obstacles to your success.

Which one is most obtrusive? Which one holds you back the most? If you can identify it, you can make a plan to outwit or challenge it.

My favorite for all obstacles is to use the “minimal viable product.” It works even when you’re depressed or feeling inadequate. Tell yourself, “If I do my work for just 15 minutes, I can reward myself with 15 minutes of something else.” Then do it again and again. The product, in this case, is 15 minutes of whatever activity you choose – maybe four paragraphs written in my case. Do what works for you.

4. Build in buffer space.

This one comes from Greg McKeown. Very simply, it means allowing for the unexpected. McKeown advises adding 50% more time to every plan you make. That’s a lot! But just imagine how relieving it would be to have that time if you needed it so you didn’t feel derailed by something popping up. Better yet, you’re ahead of the game if you don’t need it!

Secondly, avoid “deadline performance,” – doing a report the day before it’s due, writing a paper all night before you need to turn it in, driving to the airport to catch a flight with not a minute extra assuming everything will go right.

Don’t wait until the last minute to tackle something that needs time and thought.

Instead, use what McKeown calls “scenario planning.” Assess the possibilities, impacts, and risks of what you want to do, and plan how to avoid them. That means doing your work ahead of time.

Make a to-do list, schedule every task on your calendar, and allow extra time in case something gets in the way.

5. Track and review.

This one’s mine and one I live by. No system remains productive if you don’t track and tweak your progress when necessary. One of the routines you’ll need to set up is regularly reviewing your process and making changes based on your evaluation.

I won’t go into this one in detail because I’ve already written a blog on how to do this, which you can access here. Just suffice it to say that a weekly review can set you up for success and keep your “why” in the front of your mind so you stay motivated and focused on your overall purpose and goals.

An Important Factor

This insight comes from James Clear. Specifically, he points out that habits stick because they’ve become part of your identity. They’re not just something you perform but something embedded in your sense of self. They’re extensions of who you are.

This makes perfect sense when your activities and behavior reflect your overall sense of purpose and values. Being on time means you see yourself as a dependable person. Meditating every morning represents your love of peace or your spiritual values. Keeping your home decluttered might indicate you value simplicity, organization, and space.

When setting up your habits and routines, think about them in terms of what parts of you they reflect. This examination will make it easier for you to stick with them.

Last Note

This blog finishes our three-week foray into clarifying your purpose and essential goals, and how to execute them. I hope you enjoyed it! Next week we’ll tackle an important relationship issue.

That’s all for today!

Have a great week!

All my best,

Barbara

Blog Short #131: You Can’t Do It All!

Last week we talked about the right mindset to pursue your goals – work, relationships, and self-improvement goals. And I encouraged you to adopt the growth mindset over the fixed mindset.

This week we’re focusing on how to narrow your focus on what’s most important to you and get clear on how you want to use your time, energy, and effort to accomplish your goals. This means whittling down to the essential aims and activities to fulfill your purpose.

To do this, I’m borrowing from Greg McKeown, who wrote the book  Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less , and highlighting some of his very effective strategies.

But first, let’s start with a quick list of ideas and beliefs that Essentialists use to keep themselves from spreading too thin. Here they are.

An Essentialist:

  • Has a clarity of purpose that guides all other decisions.
  • Prioritizes time, energy, and activities to make the highest contribution.
  • Lives by design consciously and proactively.
  • Embraces the motto “Less but better.”
  • Knows how to discriminate between what’s essential and what’s not.
  • Understands that we can’t have or do it all.
  • Takes the time and mental space to discern what matters most before acting.
  • Knows how to prioritize and eliminate nonessential activities that get in the way.

To sum it up, Essentialists have singular focus and drive aligned with a clear purpose, and remove all extraneous nonessential activities that distract, sap energy, burn up time, and prevent accomplishment.

There are two ways Essentialists activate these ideas and beliefs:

  1. Applying Essentialist principles to long-term goals and objectives.
  2. Applying Essentialist principles to everyday choices and decisions about what activities to engage in and what to forego or eliminate.

Here’s how an Essentialist narrows down to what’s most important.

1. Clarify your purpose.

To figure this out, McKeown recommends asking yourself these three questions:

  1. What do I feel deeply inspired by?
  2. What am I particularly talented at?
  3. What meets a significant need in the world?

Using these questions, let your mind roam and spend some time and space allowing your answers to come up. You likely have multiple talents, are inspired by many things, and can tie these to more than one specific need.

If you’re further along in life, you’re already on a track and have likely put a lot of time into it, but you can still benefit by clarifying your purpose and making changes in your course if that will bring you closer to what you want to do.

The purpose of this exercise is to define your “why” and “what.”

I’ll use myself as an example to help you see how this works.

My talents, according to the StrengthsFinder assessment in order, are “strategic, learner, connectedness, futuristic, and intellection.” And on the Enneagram – “helper.” Skills I have and enjoy are writing, teaching, and problem-solving.

I’m inspired by coming up with strategies people can use to solve problems – psychological and life problems specifically. I like to synthesize information and condense it into the most essential and usable insights.

Based on my work as a psychotherapist, people need to access quality information that pertains to everyday problems, which is easy to assimilate, takes little time to access, and is readily available.

The purpose is to fulfill that need using my talents.

Let’s keep going.

2. Eliminate.

Once you’re clear on your purpose, the second step is to narrow down your activities and pursuits to facilitate that purpose best. To do this, less is better.

Warren Buffet recommends that you pick one thing and practice it until you do it really well. That’s the idea to use here.

Back to my dilemma when thinking about how to fulfill my purpose, I came up with several activities that would do the job: write a blog, write a book, do a podcast, open a YouTube channel to do weekly videos, and provide online courses. I could also continue to offer individual psychotherapy.

You see the problem, right? If I do all of those, I won’t do anything well and likely won’t continue. But, by narrowing down and focusing on one or two activities, I’m more likely to succeed. So I chose to do a weekly blog as the primary activity and create an online course as a secondary activity. That’s it. I wanted to do the other things too, but I chose what I thought I could best do that would fulfill the need.

There are often many good opportunities that come your way that you would love to take advantage of and do, but if you do everything, you’ll do nothing.

You have to make trade-offs and choose those that truly align with the purpose you’ve set out. You may change your purpose or tweak it as you go, but you must stay singular in your focus.

The 90% Rule

Greg McKeown proposes the 90% rule to go through the elimination process effectively. Here’s how to do it:

Line up all those activities or opportunities you would like to pursue and rate them on a scale of 1 to 10, with ten being the best. Anything that doesn’t rate 9 or 10 drops down to zero.

In other words, you should eliminate anything that doesn’t rate at least 90%. That doesn’t mean you might not return to it later, but for now, it’s off the table.

Once you go through this process and are clear on your purpose and the few activities you need to focus on to bring it to life, stick to it.

By removing all the other choices, you free up time, literally and figuratively. You create mental space and have more energy available to devote to one thing. I chose two, but I don’t do them simultaneously. I’ll get five weeks ahead on blogs and use that five weeks to work on the course. That way, my attention is always focused rather than split.

You likely have multiple purposes, which is fine so long as you make room only for activities that take you toward your primary goals.

Being a good parent may be your purpose, or maybe participating in a nonprofit for a cause you believe in. The key is to make sure you can offer adequate attention and focus to what you want to accomplish, and remove the noise that interferes.

You can’t do it all. That’s the truth.

How to Use This Idea Daily

Every day you have choices to make about how to invest your time. You can wash your car or spend an hour talking to your kids. Or maybe sit on the couch and scroll through social media or clean out your inbox of bills and papers that need sorting and prioritizing.

Maybe you need downtime and decide to take a leisurely stroll and let your mind wander instead of working overtime on a project.

What’s most important? This hour, this day, this week, this month, this year. And how does what you do fit into your values and purpose?

Essentialists take those questions seriously and make time for what they most value. That includes leisure, sleep, and time to let your imagination run, in addition to scheduled work.

What’s Next?

Between last week’s and today’s blog, we’ve covered (1) how to approach your work and personal development from a growth mindset that allows you to pursue goals without self-defeating beliefs, and (2)  how to clarify what’s most important to you and what it takes to pursue that.

Next week I’ll review how to create a system to execute your goals.

In the meantime, if you like to read, I would suggest getting a copy of  Essentialism , even if you don’t read it straight through. It’s the kind of book that serves as a reference you read and reread over time.

That’s all for today.

Hope you have a great week, as always!

All my best,

Barbara

Blog Short #130: Do you have the right mindset?

A book that changed my view of work, success, and intelligence when I first read it is  Mindset: The New Psychology of Success  by Carol Dweck.

Having a natural tendency toward perfectionism and learning to equate self-esteem with performance and achievement growing up, I recognized the “fixed mindset” to be alive and well in my psyche.

Luckily, after using the concepts in this book, I now embrace the “growth mindset” and am happy to say it’s a whole new world that’s much more enjoyable and productive.

Our Western culture tends toward the “fixed mindset” due to the heavy focus on performance, outcomes, and success. We like to see ourselves as winners. The only problem is that if we’re not winners, we fall to the bottom of the pack and see ourselves as losers. It’s an all-or-nothing mindset, and it’s the cause of a lot of emotional angst and depression.

Fortunately, the “growth mindset” is the antidote and oasis in the desert of perfectionism that I think you’ll love if you don’t already know about it.

Today I’m giving you a sketch of the two mindsets. This blog will be the first of three that provide a blueprint you can use to approach your work and goals while enhancing your personal growth and development at the same time.

Let’s start with some definitions. I’ll use the initials FM and GM throughout to make it easy.

Five Differences Between the Fixed and Growth Mindsets

1. Intelligence

FM sees intelligence, talent, and abilities as “fixed.” You either have it, or you don’t. You were born with it, and it can’t be changed or altered. You’re a genius, or you’re not.

GM views intelligence, talents, and abilities as malleable. You can alter, enhance, increase, and improve them with effort.

People do have inborn talents and proclivities, but without effort, they may never be expressed fully or tapped into. In contrast, someone with less inborn talent in a particular area may surpass the performance of someone with more natural talent through consistent effort, practice, and attendance.

Michael Jordan is a good example. People view him as having extraordinary talent, which he does, but he didn’t begin that way. It was through relentless hours of deliberate practice and improvement that he became the basketball virtuoso we all know.

2. Effort & Learning

FM sees effort as unfavorable because it means you’re not smart or talented. If you have to try, you don’t have it. You aren’t good enough. Instead of seeking to learn, you opt out of activities you can’t easily excel in.

GM embraces and values learning because it facilitates growth and improvement. Learning and effort help you reach your potential and are ongoing. After you reach one goal, you take on another. It’s a never-ending process of unfolding and redefining, and a source of pleasure and delight.

3. Failure & Setbacks

FM sees failure as an endpoint. If you fail or have a setback, you are the failure. As a result, you stick to activities you can do and do well. You lose interest in activities that challenge you and require more than one try because failing would topple your sense of self.

GM loves challenges. You see setbacks and failures as learning experiences and enjoy the challenge of figuring out what you need to do differently. You’re open to constructive criticism, being wrong, pivoting when new information is acquired, and considering new ideas that will result in growth and exploring your potential. Setbacks are stepping stones, not a measure of who you are.

4. Performance

FM is all about outcomes. You’re either a success or a failure, and everything that gets you there doesn’t matter—only the end result matters. The focus is on “perfect” performance. Every time. You have to prove yourself repeatedly.

It’s very anxiety-producing to need to stay on the pedestal. It’s as though you’re sitting on a platform surrounded by sharks in the water, and every move you make either keeps you on top or throws you to the sharks.

GM is about process. Process seeks to develop by embracing systems, setbacks, learning, and continued redefining of goals based on experience and analysis.

Outcomes are signposts along the way to let you know how you’re doing, but they have no finality. After you reach one signpost, you begin working toward the next. The process is itself rewarding because the mission is growth.

5. Self-Esteem

FM is excessively focused on maintaining self-esteem, and self-esteem is defined by performance.

You’re either good or bad, worthy or unworthy, a success or a failure. You need to be better than others to feel valuable.

You edge toward superiority and sometimes entitlement. Your method is competition and comparison, win-lose, up-down. When you fail, you either blame others or circumstances and look to compare yourself with those you see as inferior to you. You need to be perceived as “special” to feel okay.

GM is focused on continuing self-development. Self-esteem doesn’t fluctuate due to mistakes, setbacks, or failures. When experiencing an emotional slump, you seek more challenges to energize yourself and work through obstacles. You take action to confront problems and carry on with determination.

The emphasis on process rather than outcomes shows up in continued effort – not that outcomes aren’t important, but they aren’t the basis of self-esteem or self-image.

Self-esteem comes from living one’s values and pursuing growth.

The Subtle Difference

The subtle yet profound difference between the growth and fixed mindset is that with the fixed mindset, you are your performance, and your sense of self isn’t separate from that.

With the growth mindset, you’re more than your performance. You’re a work in progress. And a part of you stands outside what you do and looks on.

Your self-awareness and sense of “being”
is your core self.

It’s like standing back and being the director of how you develop. You witness it while participating in it. You’re both a part of the developing process and separate from it simultaneously.

With the fixed mindset, you’re merged in your performance and have no real sense of self outside of it.

How to Use This Material

First, let me encourage you again to read Dr. Dweck’s book, and I’ve also attached a PDF Chart to see the differences between the two mindsets more succinctly.

Second, if you find yourself leaning more toward the fixed mindset, try making some changes as you go through each day. I’d do this in three parts:

  1. Watch your thoughts and attitudes to recognize how often you tie your sense of value and worthiness to performance and outcomes. A journal would be beneficial for going through this process.
  2. Next, think about how you deal with obstacles, mistakes, and setbacks. Do you become paralyzed by them? Or do you see them as challenges to take on and enjoy solving? You might be somewhere in between.
  3. Are you perfectionistic? Striving toward excellence and even toward an ideal is not a problem. The problem is basing your sense of self on being perfect in everything you do. That’s not possible and is an illusionary pursuit.

Once you’ve gone through these three exercises, you should know how steeped you are in the fixed mindset and see where you need to begin thinking differently.

This will set you up for next week’s blog, which will focus on defining what’s most important to you, and how to spend your time and effort on that while letting go of pursuits that are scarfing up your time and energy.

That’s all for today.

Have a great week!

All my best,

Barbara