Welcome to Monday Blog Shorts – ideas to make even Monday a good day! Every Monday, I share a short article with you about a strategy you can use, or new facts or info that informs you, or a new idea that inspires you. My wish is to give you something to think about in the week ahead. Let’s dig in!

Photo by gremlin, Courtesy of iStockPhoto

Let’s start today with a quote I recently ran across while reading Focus by Daniel Goleman. It comes from Richard Boyatzis, a distinguished psychologist at Case Western Reserve University. He says:

You need the negative focus to survive, but a positive one to thrive. You need both, but in the right ratio.

I love this quote because it’s realistic. When you have a positive outlook, you can see possibilities and opportunities for growth, and you pursue them. Yet, you still keep an eye on obstacles as they arise and attend to them, so they don’t sabotage you.

Today we’re going to delve into what it means to have a positive approach and how negative thoughts and events fit in.

Let’s start with an overview.

What is the “Positive Approach?”

In general, the positive approach is seeing life as a process of personal development that includes:

1. Self-actualization
2. Focus on well-being
3. Emphasis on strengths
4. Making enduring connections

Martin Seligman defines it in terms of the five tenets of Positive Psychology known as PERMA. Let’s go through them.

1) Positive Emotions

Positive emotions are sticky, expansive, and energizing.

Based on research, it’s been found that positive-leaning people can sustain positive feelings longer than someone who’s depressed. We know this because of what happens in the brain when you’re in a good mood. The left side of the prefrontal cortex, which is the side of the brain associated with positive emotions, is activated and remains active.

When you consistently feel and express positive emotions, your outlook tends to remain that way which affects both your perceptions and activity level.

There’s more. When you’re feeling upbeat, the left prefrontal cortex sends messages to an area in the mid-brain called the nucleus accumbens. This part of the brain is associated with motivation and reward due to its richness in dopamine.

Dopamine is the neurotransmitter associated with reward, motivation, attention, and pleasure. So when you think positively, dopamine is released, and you have an easier time striving toward goals and maintaining your attention to them.

Your brain also releases its own opiates during this process, which adds to the feelings of reward. The dopamine fuels drive and persistence, while the opiates add feelings of pleasure.

As long as you stay positive, these brain circuits stay active and help you sustain your efforts despite obstacles or setbacks. Positive emotions also keep you energized. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle.

2) Engagement

Because positive emotions keep your juices running, they help you stay engaged in purposeful activity for more extended periods.

Persistent negative emotions and a pessimistic outlook de-energize you and close you down.

That’s because your emotional energy is tied up. Emotions supply the drive to do something, so when your emotional energy is soaked up with pessimistic thoughts, you don’t have the drive to pursue anything. You feel deflated.

Positive emotions do the opposite. They activate, invigorate, and release your energy to pursue what you want to do.

You can do it with greater depth and focus and get in a state of what’s called “flow.” When you’re in “flow,” you feel completely absorbed in what you’re doing so that the sense of effort disappears. This happens when you’re laser-focused on something, and the work almost seems to happen without your input. You feel calm while being highly active. It makes work pleasurable and heightens creativity.

3) Connection

Engaging in healthy connections with others is the third aspect of the positive approach.

We’re wired to connect, and being involved in satisfying relationships allows us to experience love, feel seen, be understood, and thrive.

The positive approach fosters kindness, genuine emotions, and social intelligence. When you get into good relationships, you increase your awareness of both your and others’ motives and feelings. You have greater empathy and compassion.

Chronic negativity creates a sense of isolation, even if you regularly commiserate with others who are negative. The outlook is one of doom and is destructive to close ties.

4) Meaning

The question “Why am I here?” is at the heart of the next aspect of the positive approach. You’re focused on finding meaning and purpose you can wrap your mind and heart around to guide your goals, activities, and pursuits. You explore with hope and faith, and you’re receptive to answers when they come.

True joy comes from engaging your whole self in something bigger than you. It’s an anchor for your life’s work.

5) Achievement

This last aspect of the positive approach is putting your purpose into motion. You use your signature strengths and virtues (Seligman) to engage in activities that fulfill your purpose and provide meaning. You actualize your purpose through your accomplishments and achievements.

How does negativity fit in?

The positive approach does not include ignoring or excluding negative emotions.

Sounding an alert.

As noted in the quote at the beginning of this article, “You need the negative focus to survive.”

What that means is that you need to see what is. If you smell smoke coming from the kitchen when you’re in the back of the house, you don’t ignore it. You rush out to the kitchen to take the smoking pot off the burner before a fire starts.

Negative feelings can act the same way. They send off alarms that there’s a problem you need to attend to, and if you don’t, there are consequences to pay. We need those alarms.

Alarms can come in many forms. Sometimes they’re wake-up calls like when the boss calls you in for a meeting to discuss being late too often, or you get the cold shoulder from a friend you’ve blown off too many times. Or maybe your doctor informs you that your blood sugar is climbing because you’re eating too much junk food.

When you have negative experiences or feelings like these, pay attention. They’re alerts you need to heed.

Negative emotions are necessary and normal.

There are many instances in life that bring on negative emotions or reactions:

A loss of someone you love, severe financial stress, being laid off from your job, receiving a dressing down by your boss in front of other staff, finding out your car repair is going to cost $2000 . . .

All of these naturally bring on a period of distress, sadness, anxiety, or all of these.

It’s not good to suppress negative emotions that arise due to circumstances, even those from previous trauma. When using the positive approach, you allow the emotions to arise, feel them, and when enough time has passed, take steps to gain insights from your experience or learn something you can use.

Feeling negative emotions and having a negative approach are not the same.

Feeling negative emotions is not a problem. Hanging on to them longer than needed and feeding them is a problem.

People who have a negative approach jump first to the most negative interpretation of any situation. They move from one negative thought to another and, when presented with a positive solution, find reasons why it can’t work. As Goleman says,

“It’s not just a focus on the could, but the conviction that there are even darker ones lurking behind.”

Final Thoughts

If you aren’t naturally optimistic, you can make a shift with practice. It’s okay to keep a healthy skepticism when taking in information.

Being positive doesn’t mean being blind or having only positive thoughts.

The goal is to keep a positive attitude, even in the face of negative circumstances, while addressing obstacles that get in the way.

That’s all for today. Have a great week!

All my best,

Barbara

_FOOTNOTES

_{Davidson, R. J. & Begley, S. (2012) The emotional life of your brain. Hudson Street Press.}

_{Fowler J.H. & Christakis, N. A. (2008) Dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network: Longitudinal analysis over 20 years in the Framingham Heart Study. BMJ, 337:a2338. doi:10.1136/bmj.a2338}

_{Goleman, D. (2013). Focus: The hidden driver of excellence. Harper.}

_{Lee M-A & Kawachi I. (2019). The keys to happiness: Associations between personal values regarding core life domains and happiness in South Korea. PLoS ONE, 14(1):e0209821. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0209821}

_{Scorsolini-Comin, F., Fontaine, A. M., Koller, S. H., & Santos, M. (2012). From happiness to well-being: The flourishing of positive psychology. Psciologia: Reflexaso e Critica, 26(4), 663-670. doi:10.1590/S0102-79722013000400006}

_{Seligman, M. (2002). Authentic happiness. Free Press.}

Welcome to Monday Blog Shorts – ideas to make even Monday a good day! Every Monday, I share a short article with you about a strategy you can use, or new facts or info that informs you, or a new idea that inspires you. My wish is to give you something to think about in the week ahead. Let’s dig in!

Photo by KatarzynaBialasiewicz, Courtesy of iStock Photo,

Wouldn’t it be great to not care about what other people think? It would be easier, that’s for sure. But then, that’s unrealistic.

Even if you think you don’t care, sometimes you do, and sometimes you need to.

So which is which? When does it matter, and when does it not, and how do you stop yourself from caring when it doesn’t?

That’s what we’re going to tackle today. Let’s start with when you need to care.

When You Need to Care

1) Work and Other Contractual Agreements

When you sign on for a job or promise something to someone, you’ve agreed to perform at a certain level and follow specific rules of behavior. In those cases, you have to care what’s thought of you to the extent that you meet the expectations you’ve agreed to.

We all generally want to be thought well of by our boss, customers, or whomever we answer to in work situations. Conscience also usually dictates our caring about holding up our part of the bargain or agreement with anyone to whom we’ve promised something.

2) Situations That Reflect Your Conscience or Values

This one goes a little deeper. It’s not so much about holding up your end of a bargain. The question is:

“Am I doing the right thing? Am I causing someone harm or pain?”

You care about how your actions will impact someone else. You also care about how they see and feel about you and your behavior. The more intimate you are with someone, the more you care about what they think of you.

When You Don’t Need to Care

You don’t need to care or put any energy into situations where someone is:

1. Projecting their bad feelings onto you and accusing you of behaviors that belong to them. The caveat is that if this is someone you’re close to, you may need to work it out, but it isn’t a true reflection of you.
2. The purpose of the judgment is to bully, antagonize, provoke, humiliate, or just be mean. In these cases, set boundaries or ignore the source.

How do you get the right balance?

It’s not always cut and dried or clear when you need to care and when not. Partly this has to do with your own insecurities and partly because of the confusing nature of relationships in general.

Here are a few ideas to help you decide.

1) Watch out for “conditions of worth” you’ve internalized and chained yourself to.

If you don’t know about “conditions of worth,” read last week’s blog to help make sense of this one.

Briefly, your conditions of worth are created as you grow up by parents, teachers, coaches, your community, and society. As you move into adulthood, you internalize these conditions as your own and use them as yardsticks to determine your acceptability and worth.

When dealing with other people, you assume they use these same yardsticks, and you worry about whether you’re living up to them. Often, what you assume has nothing to do with what others actually perceive.

This is an internal problem you have to work through.

2) Don’t assume people are thinking so much about you.

Truth is, people think more about themselves than anyone or anything else.

In his book Focus, Daniel Goleman spells this out succinctly when he poses the question:

“Where do our thoughts wander when we’re not thinking of anything in particular?”

His answer is:

“Most often, they are all about me. . . ‘Me” reflects the activity of the default zone. . . Mind wandering tends to center on our self and our preoccupations.”

So relax. Everyone’s not thinking about or judging you.

3) Have a sense of humor.

Sometimes you screw up, embarrass yourself, or say the wrong thing. It happens to all of us. Learn to have some humor in those moments and laugh along with yourself. Be humble, join the human race, and lighten up a bit.

4) Avoid being judgmental.

Clean out your own closet and leave others to clean our theirs. If you consistently focus on other peoples’ stuff and send a lot of negative judgment their way, you’re opening the door to receive the same back.

5) Focus on being your authentic self.

Work on being more of who you are. Hone your values, formulate your opinions, expand your talents, pursue your interests, and connect with people that appreciate and like you.

The more authentic you are, the more comfortable you are with yourself, and the more other people are comfortable with you. Also, the less concerned you are with what other people think about you.

6) Consider the source.

Consider feedback from people you care about and whose input you value. Avoid considering input from people who simply want to fight, one-up, troll, and create discord.

7) Develop more compassion.

This includes compassion for yourself. Everyone’s in different stages of development. No one is intrinsically better than anyone else, but it is helpful to understand that we all develop at our own pace. We each have our histories, narratives, and experiences that shape where we are. When you see it this way, it helps to suspend judgment. You feel more compassionate for the difficulty in being human and appreciate the privilege we all have to live it.

Sometimes when I’m out in public and people-watching, I wonder what’s going on in someone’s life as I look at their face. What burdens do they carry? What’s their life like? What have they experienced?

When you open up that way, it’s easier to suspend judgment of everyone, including yourself. You become more forgiving and inclusive.

8) Engage in something meaningful, and that gives you purpose.

Part of being your authentic self is to express the gifts you have by engaging in purposeful activity. Put your energy into focusing on your unique talents and expressing them through your work and interactions. Create meaning through your ideas, beliefs, and values. When you have a purpose, you spend less time worrying about what other people think and more time contributing.

9) Own your worth.

All of the above feed into this one.

If you work at expressing your authentic self, question and revise your conditions of worth, set boundaries on toxic input, avoid being judgmental, develop a sense of humor that comes with humility, and find your purpose, then you’ll feel your worth.

You’ll live it while navigating through many successes and failures and new insights. You’ll care what people you care about think of you, but not to the extent that your total sense of self rests on it.

Care about what you think of yourself most. Do it with honesty and compassion, and let the rest work itself out.

That’s all for today! Have a great week!

All my best,

Barbara

Welcome to Monday Blog Shorts – ideas to make even Monday a good day! Every Monday, I share a short article with you about a strategy you can use, or new facts or info that informs you, or a new idea that inspires you. My wish is to give you something to think about in the week ahead. Let’s dig in!

Photo by Tero Vesalainen, Courtesy of iStock Photo

Today we’re talking about “conditions of worth.”

This term comes from the work of Carl Rogers, a pioneer in the field of humanistic psychology. I love this concept because it gives you a way to question how you determine your self-worth. It helps you challenge the conditions and expectations that have been imposed on you that really don’t reflect who you are or what you want.

Let’s start with a definition.

Conditions of worth are those “conditions” we think we need to meet for people to accept us as worthy of their love and positive regard.

They consist of the rules of behavior we learn growing up that serve as the measure of our worth and the conditions for approval. They start with our parents and are enforced later by teachers, coaches, friends, community leaders, and the culture. They’re based on conditional love.

If you behave in a particular way, you receive approval and love. If not, you feel disapproval and a lack of worth.

A simple way to think about it are two common parenting strategies used by most parents at some time or other:

1. Withholding love when you don’t do as they wish.
2. Showing love only when you do as they wish.

In each case, your behavior becomes the vehicle by which you feel either accepted or not – loved or not – worthy or not.

When parents act with unconditional love, they still hold you accountable for your behavior, but always with the message that you’re worthy and loved regardless of what you do. That’s a big difference.

With conditional love, you are your performance, and what is “good performance” is defined by others.

The Effects of Conditions of Worth

What happens as you grow up is that you eventually internalize the conditions of worth you’ve been taught. That means:

The voices outside your head become the single voice inside your head. It’s your voice, and it repetitively measures you against those learned conditions you now call your own. You don’t question them.

For example, what if becoming a doctor was expected of you because your father was a doctor, as was your grandfather before him. You had a natural talent for art and loved it, but your parents brushed that aside and pushed you toward med school. You knew if you didn’t meet their expectations, they would be disappointed in you. Your whole family would! You went so far as to convince yourself that you also wanted to become a doctor.

So you did. But you weren’t happy. It didn’t fulfill you. But, instead of recognizing that you took the wrong path, you decided there was something wrong with you. You shoved your desire to pursue art so far down that you lost sight of it, and you took on your parents’ expectations and made them your own.

When we accept conditions of worth imposed on us by others, without examining them for their validity, we end up reducing ourselves to an image someone else created.

We become someone else’s expectations, and we judge ourselves by how well we meet those expectations. The conditions of worth dictate the measure of our self-esteem, how we make decisions, who we get into relationships with, and how we must act to be loved and accepted.

Worse yet, we become our own worst critic. Just as we were primed with conditional love to conform to the behavioral standards prescribed, we now assault ourselves with that same mindset. And we get locked into a never-ending need for affirmation from outside sources.

It’s like being in a straight-jacket on a tight-rope; only the tight-rope resides in your head.

What can be done?

Let’s start with the goal, which is “to become your true self.” That means learning to listen to the inner voice that’s been muffled out by the years of external conditioning.

It doesn’t mean that everything you’ve learned and internalized growing up is wrong. That’s likely never the case. It means that you have to be able to sift through it all and question what’s valid for you and what’s not. What truly resonates with who you are – your values, opinions, interests, talents, and desires.

There are two parts to working toward this goal.

1. Recognizing and reviewing your conditions of worth.
2. Identifying your truths about who you are and who you want to be.

Review your conditions of worth.

In his book Authentic, Stephen Joseph outlines an exercise that I think is perfect for working on this part of the goal. It’s done in writing. Get a piece of paper and write this sentence:

To be of value, I must _____________.

Fill in the blank as many times as you can. Include everything that fits for you.

Examples might be:

• Take care of other people
• Be wealthy
• Be married and have children
• Have a career (whatever fits)
• Be sociable
• Be successful (define it)
• Be calm and never angry
• Be beautiful
• Be perfect

After you fill these in, sit with each one, and as you do, let any thoughts, feelings, or memories come up in your mind. Observe them and write them down.

As you proceed, you’ll start to see where these conditions of worth originated and how they’re embedded in your relationships with parents, family, and other important figures in your life. You might also feel the weight of each one and recognize decisions you made that took you away from what you really wanted or who you really are.

Identify your truths.

As you go through this exercise, you’ll become more aware of what fits and what doesn’t. You’ll question, recognize, and revise what you think, need, and want. You’ll be able to crystallize what you truly value. You’ll find your inner voice again – probably stuck somewhere in a box covered by heavy books and sealed with tape. Dig it out.

This process will allow you to change how you talk to yourself and construct narratives for your life. The voice in your head will become your friend rather than a correctional officer holding you hostage. The door to new opportunities for exploring yourself and becoming more of who you are will open up.

Better yet, this process puts you in charge of your life. It’s both relieving and freeing, not to mention exciting, because it opens the door to step into your authentic self and reach your potential.

That’s all for today. I hope you have a great week!

All my best,

Barbara

Welcome to Monday Blog Shorts – ideas to make even Monday a good day! Every Monday, I share a short article with you about a strategy you can use, or new facts or info that informs you, or a new idea that inspires you. My wish is to give you something to think about in the week ahead. Let’s dig in!

Photo by bernardbodo, Courtesy of iStock Photo

It’s normal to want to be seen and heard. It’s built into your DNA.

How you accomplish it is the issue.

If you grew up in a family where you felt understood, valued, and loved, you’re likely not driven to seek extra attention more than the norm.

If you didn’t grow up in a family where you felt valued and loved, and felt emotionally neglected, you might find as an adult that you feel compelled to seek attention more than other people, even when you know it’s probably not a good idea.

Attention seekers are not all narcissists trying to outshine everyone. Some are, but more often, they’re people who struggle with feeling unseen, unimportant, and unloved. At its heart, the attention seeker feels different and inferior to others.

Today I’ll briefly go over the twelve most common types of attention-seeking behaviors people use and then give you some strategies to change them.

I’m giving you the extreme example of each, so don’t feel criticized as you read along. It’s essential first to identify what behaviors you engage in most so you can make a plan to work on them.

12 Common Attention-Seeking Behaviors

1. Boasting and one-upping.

You’re uncomfortable with other people’s achievements and need to top them. You boast about your accomplishments or say something you think is more intriguing or exciting. Interactions are competitions, and you need to win.

2. You seek sympathy.

You dominate the conversation with personal stories about being victimized. Your boyfriend cheated on you, your boss fired you because he hates you, you had a terrible upbringing, you’re misunderstood, you don’t have enough money to pay your bills, you have no time for yourself. The goal of telling these stories is to gather sympathy.

3. You take over conversations.

You tend to take over conversations and bring the subject back to you.

4. You try and shock people.

Shocking people makes you stand out. You might wear something, say something, or do something outrageous. You don’t consider whether the behavior paints you in a bad light. The need for attention overrides that consideration.

5. You pick arguments or provoke.

You say things that stir people up and cause controversy. You provoke people to argue with each other or with you.

6. You don’t ask other people about themselves.

You keep the attention on you, your life, your issues, your interests. You don’t ask people about their lives or concerns. You quickly dismiss conversations that lead away from you.

7. You cling to powerful or influential people.

You quickly scan a room to find the most popular or influential person and then make yourself known to them. You use flattery to get their attention, either covertly or overtly.

8. You exaggerate.

When telling stories about yourself, you exaggerate the facts and dramatize. As a child in elementary school, I remember making up crazy dramatic stories during sharing time. The others kids were mesmerized as I spoke. The teacher raised her eyebrows, but I didn’t care. I needed the attention, and I got it until the teacher spoke with my mother about my stories. It always backfires.

9. You love social media and use it.

Social media is the perfect platform to display all these behaviors. You can pick fights, get sympathy, one-up, shock, complain, show off, and dominate conversations.

10. You either pretend you can’t do something or pretend you can do it better.

In the first case, you feign distress so someone will help you, and in the second, you broadcast your success to outdo everyone else.

11. You fish for compliments.

You need approval and confirmation, so you talk about yourself in a way that seeks affirmation and compliments from those listening.

12. You complain.

The content of your conversation focuses on complaints and negativity and holds people captive.

What to Do

That’s a long list, and it certainly paints a negative picture. Truth is, we all engage in some of these behaviors in bits and pieces, and more likely when we’re under stress or feeling low on self-esteem. It’s harmless in small amounts.

The issue arises when attention-seeking behavior is a regular pattern. If you see yourself in any of these behaviors, you’re depriving yourself. Think of it this way:

The approval, security, and love you seek can never be acquired through attention-seeking behavior. In fact, the opposite is true. Attention-seeking pushes people away and robs you of the very thing you need and want. It isolates you.

If you can accept that, you can turn things around to your great advantage.

Here are three things to try.

1) Practice listening.

Next time you’re at a social event, or even in a one-on-one conversation with someone, let go of the desire to impress the other person and turn your attention toward them. Ask questions, show interest, and keep the conversation on them, not you.

You might find this tedious and challenging but do it anyway. And then repeat it over and over until it’s an automatic habit. You can read this article to get specific instructions on how to do it well.

At first, you might feel empty because you don’t feel you get anything from these conversations. But over time, you’ll find that people begin to gravitate toward you naturally without your having to capture them. They’ll seek you out because they feel good when they’re around you. They’ll show more interest in you, and you’ll feel liked, seen, and appreciated. Truth is, everyone likes to talk about themselves, and a good listener is a treasure. It’s the best way to connect.

2) Pick the behaviors on the list above and one at a time delete and replace.

Instead of complaining, talk about positive experiences you’ve had. Things you’re grateful for, things that went well.

Instead of boasting, compliment and appreciate others’ accomplishments. It will feel ingenuine at first, but keep doing it until it’s not.

Instead of exaggerating, work on being accurate when relaying stories or talking about your experiences. Practice verbalizing facts.

The key is to decide what you’re going to do in each case ahead of time. Write it out and be specific, so you know exactly how to act. Then practice until it’s automatic.

3) Explore what feelings are driving you to seek attention.

This is the most important one.

What is it you’re really seeking and why?

Journaling is an excellent method to help you identify the emotional patterns driving your behavior, but that may not be enough. I would also encourage you to seek therapy, so you have some help gaining insight into what’s going on. As an alternative, you can talk to someone you trust who can give you good feedback.

This is an emotional process, and it helps to have some support from someone who can help you explore your thoughts and feelings without judgment. You have to be vulnerable to the painful feelings that drive you to seek attention. You can’t resolve them unless you take that step.

Keep this in mind.

You can change anything you truly wish to, and you’ll be rewarded. The desire to be loved, seen, known, and understood is your right. You just need to go about it the right way. Attention-seeking will only deprive you of it, so now is a great time to turn that around.

That’s all for today. Hope you have a good week.

All my best,

Barbara

P. S. Suggested reading: Authentic: How to Be Yourself and Why It Matters

Welcome to Monday Blog Shorts – ideas to make even Monday a good day! Every Monday, I share a short article with you about a strategy you can use, or new facts or info that informs you, or a new idea that inspires you. My wish is to give you something to think about in the week ahead. Let’s dig in!

Photo by ClarkandCompany, Courtesy of iStock Photo

Being too hard on yourself is a common plight and one I’m pretty familiar with, so I’m assuming it might be something that also gets the best of you sometimes.

I’ve found it helps to take a look and see exactly how I’m doing it, and then replace the bad habits with better strategies that work.

Let’s go through those two steps.

What exactly does “being hard on yourself” mean?

In a sentence, it means:

. . . any act or thought you impose on yourself that damages you emotionally or psychologically. It’s an attack on your very core sense of self.

Let’s try to categorize the various ways it manifests.

1. Self-criticism that belittles, shames, denigrates, deflates, or attempts to shred you.
2. Acts that punish or deprive you of the chance to repair, improve, or make amends. You might berate yourself so much that you feel too paralyzed to do anything.
3. Thought trains that expect perfection. Nothing is good enough. Successes are minimized and quickly replaced with criticism.
4. No forgiveness. Mistakes are not allowed. Worse, you take on the mistakes of others and blame yourself for them.
5. Excessive expectations. You expect yourself to be super-human. You should be able to accomplish “everything” that’s put before you and more. You are your achievements (or failures).

The Fallout

When you’re excessively hard on yourself, the underlying belief lurking in your mind is that it will make you better. You’ll perform better, become more self-disciplined, do more, succeed, and make the front page news as a winner!

Somehow, if you beat yourself into submission, you can get that monkey off your back that’s telling you aren’t good enough and aren’t living up to the expectations you and everyone else has of you – and if you only could, you’d get that approval you seek and feel like a “good person” who’s worthy.

The problem, of course, is that no one can beat themselves into being a better person. Beatings don’t work. They never have and never will.

There are only two reactions to beatings:

1. Becoming defensive in an attempt to stop the onslaught of emotional pain you’re feeling, or
2. Retreating into depression and increasing the unwanted behaviors that have brought on the beating in the first place.

In the first case, you come up with every conceivable reason why the accusations you’ve flung at yourself are wrong. They must be! You can’t be that bad. So you look for every reason, excuse, or possible way out of taking responsibility for what you think you aren’t doing right.

In the second case, you berate yourself with the most cruel and punitive accusations you can think of that build the case for why you should be beaten.

If you can relate to either of these, I would also guess that you alternate back and forth between them. Either way, you don’t feel better or do better when you’re excessively hard on yourself. That’s the bottom line.

But, there is a better way!

The Sweet Spot

There’s another approach, and that’s to make sure that the way you speak to yourself, and the way you characterize your worth, is done with love and compassion.

That doesn’t mean you don’t need to push sometimes or call yourself out. You do. However, there’s a way to do that that will preserve your worth, while helping you take steps to improve whatever needs work.

To do that, you have to start with two basic premises, which are:

Premise #1: You’re more than what you do. Your worth is intrinsic, meaning it comes from within and is tied to your existence, not your achievements. You’re worthy because you exist. All human beings have worth.

Premise #2: Life is evolution meaning your life is ongoing growth and development. Evolution is a process of change that starts with initial movements forward, followed by setbacks, new insights and resets, and then another forward push. It isn’t a straight line upwards. There are periods of growth and failure, and sometimes you get stuck in the ditch and have to pull yourself back out.

The sweet spot is learning how to ride those waves of growth and setbacks, both as an observer and participant so that you can make the most of them.

Here are some strategies to help you do that.

1) Be an empathetic and loving narrator.

If you were writing a story, you would have a main character who likely would come up against obstacles and, over the course of the story, would overcome them.

You would allow your character to make mistakes, take the wrong path at some points, and correct and find creative ways to get through the obstacles in pursuit of a good ending. That makes the story interesting!

Write your own story in this same manner. Be creative in figuring out ways to get around obstacles, and cheer yourself on when you’ve taken wrong turns and need to rethink your path. Engage in your narrative, but also be a guiding force that’s on your side.

Be mindful of how you talk to yourself, the words you use, and the feeling behind them. Compassion and guidance should work together.

2) Admit mistakes, failures, and wrong paths.

Be honest and scrutinize yourself. Take time to examine what you’re doing, as well as how you feel about what you’re doing. Objectively look at what you could do to repair situations that need it and make improvements in areas that need revamping.

Learn as you go, and do it with a sense of challenge and excitement that you can do better with sustained efforts.

Never give in to the pounding and relentless hammer of self-condemnation, and don’t forget to count your wins!

3) Hold yourself accountable, but do it with love.

Being kind to yourself doesn’t mean being lax. It just means always seeing yourself as worthy of love and acceptance while staying focused on what needs to be done.

4) When you make a mistake that involves someone else, repair it.

Fess up and apologize. Sincerely. Don’t defend or look for a way to excuse your behavior. Strength is admitting when you’ve hurt or offended or let someone down. Follow up your apology with corrected behavior.

5) Forgive yourself.

Let me give you this quote from Matt Haig from The Comfort Book. When I first read it, I let out a big exhale.

“Imagine forgiving yourself completely. The goals you didn’t reach. The mistakes you made. Instead of locking those flaws inside to define and repeat yourself, imagine letting your past float through your present and away like air through a window, freshening a room. Imagine that.”

Yes. Imagine that! By forgiving yourself and letting go, you’re far more able to keep going forward. The emotional energy you use up condemning yourself will keep you at a standstill, and you’ll find yourself unable to move. Forgiveness clears the way to keep going.

That’s all for today! Be kind to yourself, and have a great week!

All my best,

Barbara

Welcome to Monday Blog Shorts – ideas to make even Monday a good day! Every Monday, I share a short article with you about a strategy you can use, or new facts or info that informs you, or a new idea that inspires you. My wish is to give you something to think about in the week ahead. Let’s dig in!

Photo by Pogonici, Courtesy of iStock Photo

There are many ways to improve a relationship, yes? But there is one you can’t do without, and that’s the capacity to show genuine empathy.

Empathy is the glue that keeps a relationship alive and strong. It’s a:

1. Salve for conflicts and differences.
2. A means of getting closer.
3. And an antidote for loneliness and distance.

You gotta have it if you want a relationship that’s satisfying, fulfilling, and thriving!

An easy way to get better at being empathetic is to become an “empathetic detective.” To help you do that, I’ll go over the three components of empathy, show you how they work, and then give you some ideas about how to use them.

Let’s start!

Component #1: Cognitive Empathy

“Cognition” is associated with your thinking or intellectual capacity. So cognitive empathy is using your brain’s analytical skills to get a picture of what’s going on. This is the detective part. You’re an investigator.

Your goal is to see things through the other person’s eyes and understand their vision by finding out:

• What they’re thinking and feeling.
• If there’s a background story.
• And, what they want you to know.

You find this out by listening, asking questions, clarifying, and reflecting back what you hear. There’s no judgment. You simply want to understand.

The empathy part comes in when you can imagine how the other person feels by recalling situations where you’ve had similar feelings. You remember what it felt like to be there. You get it.

This type of empathy is a “top-down” process because it uses the newer part of the brain – the prefrontal cortex – where thinking, planning, self-regulation, and other executive functions occur. It involves investigation, analysis, and comparison.

Now let’s go to the next component.

Component #2: Emotional Empathy

With emotional empathy, you actually feel the other person’s feelings rather than just imagine them. Literally.

You “join” the other person, and their emotions reverberate through your body and psyche. This is what’s called being in emotional attunement with someone.

Have you had the experience of listening to a friend, and as they unfold something painful, they tear up and you tear up with them, or you get a lump in your throat or your stomach drops? This is emotional attunement.

You feel their pain as yours. Empathy is “embodied.”

This is a “bottom-up” process that occurs spontaneously and automatically. The feelings come up from the older instinctual and emotional part of your brain – the amygdala.

The way this works is that as you focus on the body language of the person speaking and pick up on facial gestures and postures, as well as hear the words spoken, your brain receives a signal of distress broadcast by the amygdala.

Simultaneously, mirror neurons in your brain replicate the feelings you hear and perceive. To make it a more complete hand-off, the area of the brain that’s activated when you feel pain – the anterior insula – is also activated when you feel someone else’s pain. You literally experience what the other person feels because it’s mirrored in your neurons.

Now, let’s go to the last component.

Component #3: Empathetic Concern

This next component is an activation of the feelings of empathy to do something. It’s the transformation of empathy into compassion and caring.

For example, you might see an older person limping across the street while carrying a bag of groceries, and you can see in her eyes and body language that she’s in pain and suffering. You might even tear up as you watch. The question is:

Will your empathy move you to ask her if you can help and carry her bag, or will you watch until you turn away and go about your business?

We can feel empathy, but compassion moves us to do something to alleviate the pain. It may be that listening until someone is finished talking is enough, or maybe you soothe or hug the person or ask if you can help in some way.

Empathetic concern pushes us beyond just becoming emotionally attuned. We want to help.

Is being empathetic something we come with, or do we have to learn it?

It’s both. All mammals have neural wiring built in to sense the feelings of others. It’s part of the evolutionary need to protect our young, so they survive and grow. We have a “keen attention to an infant’s signal of distress.” We have a “keen attention to an infant’s signal of distress.” Our brain tunes us in by arousing in our own body the infant’s emotional state.

However, more sophisticated emotional empathy and compassion are developed through your interactions and experiences as you grow up.

Your family of origin has the most significant impact on developing self-awareness of your own emotions, as well as your ability to pick up on those of others.

In other words, the apparatus for empathy is there at birth, but the development and depth of it are learned through experience.

You can develop it yourself with practice.

If empathy, and its partner, compassion, don’t come easy, you can develop them. There are three parts to this.

1) Self-Awareness

To read other people’s feelings, you need to be able to read yours first. You have to be more vulnerable. I know, that’s not an idea everyone likes, but start with you. Check in with yourself daily. What’s your emotional temperature? Carefully observe your reactions to things that happen or experiences you have, and honestly monitor your motivations and behavior.

The more you know about yourself, and the less you deny or avoid emotions you don’t want to deal with, the more you can become attuned to others.

2) Practice cognitive empathy first.

Get used to listening attentively, carefully, and without judgment. Watch for bodily gestures or cues to how someone might be feeling. Be a detective. Ask questions and clarify as you go to make sure you’re reading the other person correctly. Be curious and inquisitive. In short, listen to understand.

Even if this is quite difficult for you at first, you’ll get better at it over time and come to enjoy it. It will eventually come easily and naturally. All therapists are taught how to do this in formal classes. There’s no reason you can’t learn to do it too if you haven’t already. It’s a matter of consistent practice.

3) Emotional empathy will follow.

Once you get good at empathetic investigating, it’s time to add emotional empathy to the equation.

This will happen automatically as you become more attuned to yourself. When you increase your self-awareness and by exposing your true feelings to yourself (and maybe to those close to you), you find that you feel for others more deeply. The practice of cognitive empathy, along with deeper self-awareness, brings out your natural instincts toward emotional empathy.

Last Note – Listen more than you talk!

Listening with an open and curious mind is the way in. It’s an art, and you can get good at it.

For more help with listening, read this article. You might also enjoy reading Focus by Daniel Goleman, especially “Part 3 – Reading Others.”

That’s all for today! Hope you have a great week!

All my best,

Barbara

_FOOTNOTES

_{Decety, J. (2010). The neurodevelopment of empathy in humans. Developmental Neuroscience, 32(4): 257-267.DOI: 10.1159/000317771
Decety, J (Ed.). (2012). Empathy: From Bench to Bedside. The MIT Press.
Goleman, D. (2013). Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence. HarperCollins Publishers.
Jackson, P. L., Rainville, P. & Decety, J. To what extent do we share the pain of others? Insight from the neural bases of pain empathy. Pain. 125(1-2): 5-9. DOI: 10.1016/j.pain.2006.09.013
Stephens, G. J., Silbert, L. J. & Hasson, U. Speaker-listener neural coupling underlies successful communication. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 107(32): 14425-30. DOI:10.1073/pnas.1008662107}

Welcome to Monday Blog Shorts – ideas to make even Monday a good day! Every Monday, I share a short article with you about a strategy you can use, or new facts or info that informs you, or a new idea that inspires you. My wish is to give you something to think about in the week ahead. Let’s dig in!

Photo by valentinrussanov, Courtesy of iStock Photo

Let’s start with a quote today from Matt Haig found in The Comfort Book:

Pain is selfish. It demands full attention. But each moment is part of a totality. Each moment is a brushstroke in a painting—let’s say a painting of a river—which, when we stand back, can be rather beautiful. I have had moments of pain so strong I wanted everything to end. But standing back, they’re just shadows accentuating light.

Pain is a part of life, and if we use it right, it is “just shadows accentuating light.” That isn’t to minimize the sometimes excruciating experience and depth of it, but finding something of value in it helps.

Let’s dive into things that will get you through it and process it effectively.

1) Pain has its own time.

When you’re in emotional pain, it’s natural to want to get away from it. You might try and minimize, deny, distract or avoid the feeling. Or you might try to hurry it up.

The problem is that those tactics don’t get rid of the pain. It stays in some form or other – if not directly felt, then subconsciously planted where it comes up again and again until you deal with it. It’s best to let it have the time needed to recede.

If you burn yourself on the stove, the pain slowly subsides. You can put ice on it, which helps, but it still takes a certain amount of time to let up. Give it the time needed to play out.

2) It will eventually pass.

All feelings are temporary, even those that stay with you for a long time. How you feel right now is not going to last or be felt with the same intensity down the road.

When you’re in a lot of emotional pain, hearing that usually doesn’t ring true because of the overwhelming nature of it. It shuts out other feelings and dampens hope. Nevertheless, it’s true, and reminding yourself of it gives you some help. You’ll feel different in time, and the pain will let up.

3) Recall similar experiences in your past.

It helps to remember other times you’ve been in pain and lived through it. Depending on the source of the pain, you may find some solutions or help by remembering how you dealt with similar situations before. Maybe you took steps that were helpful, and you can retake those same steps now.

4) Write down your feelings.

When you write out what you’re experiencing, it does several things:

1. It crystallizes. It shrinks down the overwhelmingness of the feeling by limiting it with words. That might sound ridiculous upfront, but let that sink in. When you assign a feeling to language, you concretize it and give it some boundaries, making it easier to wrap your head around it.
2. It externalizes. It takes what’s in your mind out and puts it in front of you where you have some distance and can begin to sort through it.

When we’re teaching our young kids to handle their emotions, the first thing we do is help them assign words to express them. By giving them language, they can regulate them. Writing them out does the same thing.

Don’t worry that writing will make things worse or that you’re dwelling on the negative. In this case, it’s not so. It will help.

5) Accept the pain.

This is the hardest one, I think. Who wants to accept pain? But accepting it is the beginning of working through it.

Don’t suppress. That makes it worse. Feel your way through it, meaning let it have its time as you sift through the feelings and wait for it to subside. It usually comes in waves, and you have to ride each one, resting in between and taking solace. By going through this process, you’ll be able to take something from it that’s helpful. You’ll also prevent it from haunting you as you move forward.

6) Keep this truth in mind.

There’s no good without bad, no pleasure without pain, no gain without loss, no success without failure. They’re all intimately tied to each other.

Our job is to find the joy that rides just up above and permeates everything else. We have no choice. We’ll get the same lessons presented to us until we learn from them and move on. Keep going.

7) You are not your experience.

Even though emotional pain is sometimes totally overwhelming, you’re not your experience. You’re the “I” that has the experience.

Every experience has an effect on how you see yourself, but you have some control over how you make sense of that. You’re more than what happens to you.

This idea comes from Matt Haig’s book, but it’s also an Eastern concept that shows up in many spiritual contexts. It’s a bit lofty, but when you think of it and begin to see it in all your daily experiences, it gives you a different way of handling what comes your way. You gain some distance from what you experience and get a stronger sense of your “self.”

8) Find meaning.

The ultimate goal of pain is to find meaning.

• It may come as you work through a problem that keeps cropping up until you master it.
• It may come as a significant loss that is at first unbearable but eventually paves the way for an appreciation of something you hadn’t recognized before.
• It may open the door to a new direction you wouldn’t have taken on your own.

In all these cases, you gain new insight. Viktor Frankl says it perfectly:

In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering as the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.

General Things You Can Do That Help

1. Don’t isolate. Stay in good company.
2. Be kind and patient with yourself. Don’t beat yourself up.
3. Stick to regular daily routines as much as possible. Get out of bed, shower, eat, go for walks, do the essentials.
4. Don’t worry when you backslide. Just keep going.
5. And if you’re heavily depressed or have a history of depression, anxiety, or some other diagnosis, don’t be your diagnosis. You’re more than that. You’re the “I” experiencing the depression, not the “depressive.” It’s a fine distinction but important.
6. And by all means, seek help. Don’t go it alone. Talk to someone you trust. Seek therapy if needed.

Last Thought

Life is attitude in many ways. The right attitude when in pain is to know:

• There’s no wrong with it.
• You can stand it, even if it feels like it’s crushing you.
• It will let up eventually.
• You can help based on how you look at it and what you do with it.

I’ll leave you with one final quote, again from Viktor Frankl. If anyone knows about emotional pain from the inside out, he does.

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstance, to choose one’s own way.

That does it for today. As always, I hope you have a great week, and I’ll be back to you next Monday!

All my best,

Barbara

Welcome to Monday Blog Shorts – ideas to make even Monday a good day! Every Monday, I share a short article with you about a strategy you can use, or new facts or info that informs you, or a new idea that inspires you. My wish is to give you something to think about in the week ahead. Let’s dig in!

Photo by zoff-photo, Courtesy of iStock Photo

It’s that time of year again when we think about New Year’s resolutions. Starting an exercise program is one of the most popular choices. It’s also one that’s often dropped within the first month, and sometimes less! How many times have you done that? I’m guilty. It’s annoying.

Maybe knowing some of the lesser-known but powerful benefits might give you a reason to stick with it.

Today, I’ll go over four super benefits of exercise and tell you how much you need to do to get these effects. I’ll also give you some ideas about how to stick with it once you get started.

Let’s begin with some fun brain facts.

• Your brain is about 2 to 2.5% of your total body weight, but it uses 20% of your total energy and oxygen intake.
• It’s 73% water! Who knew! This is why you should drink a lot of water!
• It’s the last organ to mature, which happens around age 25. No wonder teens don’t make good decisions sometimes.
• Here’s the kicker: Your brain also begins to slow down at age 24. Seems like a bad joke, right? Fortunately, some cognitive skills do continue to get better as you age, like your vocabulary, or your ability to regulate your emotions, or a specific skill you’ve honed over time.
• Here’s the most important one: Your brain is plastic which means it rewires throughout your life, and you can guide that process with what you attend to and focus on, along with keeping your brain healthy.

Now let’s move on to how exercise keeps you sharp and regulates your mood.

4 Super-Benefits

1) Stress and anxiety management.

Stress and anxiety are best friends. Chronic stress creates an underlying layer of tension that’s with you all the time, and it only takes a spark, like an anxious thought or situation, to ramp up your adrenal system into full-fledged panic and overwhelm. It’s a one-two punch.

Exercise, especially aerobic exercise, has an immediate effect that’s unique to help bring your anxiety down and raise your capacity to tolerate it. Here’s how it works:

When you exercise, you create the same physical symptoms that are caused by anxiety – your heart rate increases, your breathing speeds up, blood pressure may rise, adrenaline is released, and you’re in a state of arousal, just as you are when you become anxious. The difference is that you expect these changes in your body when exercising, and they don’t scare you.

And, when you finish exercising, your body returns to a state of calm and rest. You view this whole process as a positive thing that’s good for you, both physically and emotionally.

With regular exercise, you’re programming your brain to handle these physical changes without fear or worry. And, by practicing that, you get good at automating a similar response to stress. What this means is that:

Exercise raises your threshold to handle stress and anxiety. It trains your body and mind to return to a healthy state of calm after being revved up.

In addition to that, exercise also reduces the levels of the stress hormones – adrenaline and cortisol – in your system.

Now let’s talk about mood benefits.

2) Mood regulation.

The most obvious benefit of exercise for your mood is that it releases endorphins which are natural mood-lifters and painkillers. But what most people don’t know is that aerobic exercise also increases levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin in the brain.

In his book Spark, Dr. John Ratey describes serotonin as “the policeman of the brain because it helps keep brain activity under control.” It regulates activity that influences mood, anger, aggressiveness, and impulsivity, and in so doing, keeps your mood steady.

Anti-depressants that increase serotonin levels are often prescribed to manage depression, anxiety, and OCD, and they are effective in many instances. Even so, regular exercise is a natural mood regulator and anti-depressant that’s effective whether you take anti-depressants or not.

3) Improved attention and focus.

Two other neurotransmitters influenced by exercise are dopamine and norepinephrine. Most everyone’s heard of dopamine as it’s commonly associated with tech addiction. You likely know that every time you look at your cell phone, you get a small hit of dopamine. If you didn’t know that, now you do. It’s what advertisers bank on.

1. Dopamine is associated with learning, reward (satisfaction), focus, and attention. It’s often called the “pleasure” neurotransmitter.
2. Norepinephrine influences attention, motivation, perception, and arousal.

Exercise stimulates the production of both these neurotransmitters.

In Spark, Dr. Ratey described a project conducted in a high school in Chicago where one group of students did an hour of cardio exercise every morning before classes. They walked or ran on a treadmill. A control group did no exercise. The exercising students had significantly higher scores on academic tests than the non-exercising students.

They were up 17% in reading comprehension, and on international test scores for the TIMSS (Trend I International Mathematics and Science Study), they finished first in science and sixth in math worldwide. In comparison, US students as a whole ranked 18th in science and 19th in math that same year.

That’s a pretty big wow! It explains why a friend of mine used to jump rope for 30 minutes before taking exams in college and got much better grades as a result. Exercise pushes up dopamine and increases attention.

4) Increased capacity to learn.

Along with focus and attention, exercise has another benefit directly tied to learning.

It increases the production and activity of a group of molecules called BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor).

BDNF stimulates the growth of new neurons (brain cells) and protects existing neurons while also facilitating the connections that wire neurons together and allow for communication between them.

In other words, BDNF helps grow and maintain our neural networks that are responsible for the various functions of the brain. Dr. Ratey calls it “Miracle-Gro” for the brain. If you don’t know what Miracle-Gro is, it’s a highly effective plant food used by gardeners. BDNF is brain food!

There is a condition, however, which is that BDNF kicks in only when you focus your attention on something. Hold that thought a minute while we summarize.

With regular aerobic exercise,

• You get increased dopamine and norepinephrine to sharpen your ability to focus and attend,
• Increased serotonin to keep your mood steady, and
• Increased BDNF to protect and grow your brain cells.

The real question is, why would you consider not exercising?

How much exercise do I have to do?

“Do I have to run 10 miles a week?”

No. According to several studies and books I’ve read, they all say the same thing. The recommendation is this: 150 minutes of exercise per week. In that 150 minutes, you should do strength training at least twice along with aerobic activity using varying levels of speed and intensity.

More succinctly, you could walk 25 minutes five times a week and vary your speed while walking, and do two 12-minute sessions of strength training.

If you can start there, great! However, it’s more important to stick with it, so start at the most minimum level you need to remain consistent. If it’s 10 minutes five days a week, then do that. You can build up. The worst idea is starting big – you’re more likely to fall off. Start small and get to a comfortable place that’s automated and easy to maintain. Then add on.

That’s all for today. I hope you have a great week, and January is off to a good start for you!

All my best,

Barbara

_FOOTNOTES

_{Arem, H., Moore, S. C.,  Patel, A. et al., “Leisure Time Physical Activity and Mortality: A Detailed Pooled Analysis of the Dose-Response Relationship,” JAMA Internal Medicine 175, no. 6 (June 2015): 959–967. DOI:10.1001/jamainternmed.2015.0533}

_{Beddhu, S., Wei, G., Marcus, R. L. et al., “Light-Intensity Physical Activities and Mortality in the United States General Population and CKD Subpopulation,” Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology 10, no. 7 (July 2015): 1145–1153. DOI:10.2215/CJN.08410814}

_{Gupta, Sanjay. (2021). Keep Sharp: Build a Better Brain at Any Age. Simon & Schuster.}

_{Lieberman, Daniel (2013). The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease. Pantheon.}

_{Lieberman, D. E. (2020). Exercised: The Science of Physical Activity Rest and Health. Allen Lane.}

_{Ratey, John (2008). Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain. Little, Brown & Company.}

_{Tipton, C. M., “The History of ‘Exercise Is Medicine’ in Ancient Civilizations,” Advances in Physiology Education 38, no. 2 (June 2014): 109–117. DOI:10.1152/advan.00136.2013}

Welcome to Monday Blog Shorts – ideas to make even Monday a good day! Every Monday, I share a short article with you about a strategy you can use, or new facts or info that informs you, or a new idea that inspires you. My wish is to give you something to think about in the week ahead. Let’s dig in!

Photo by andresr, Courtesy of iStock Photo

A question that often comes up in therapy is this:

Is it necessary for me to go back through my history and drag everything up that ever happened to me? Can’t I just deal with the present and be done with it? Isn’t the past in the past?

My response is always the same.

The past is in the past unless it’s in your present.

If you’re still plagued by dysfunctional thought and behavior patterns, or emotional reactivity to triggers from your history, then you’ve carried these things into your present and they still exert control over you.

You can’t just think them away. You have to sift through them and pull them out by the roots.

How do I know if something’s been resolved or not?

There are several tip-offs:

1. You’re still emotionally reactive to events, experiences, or relationships you had that caused you pain or created dysfunction.
2. You’re unable to change behavior patterns you know are harmful to you.
3. These patterns prevent you from having healthy relationships, pursuing goals, or creating the life you want.

When you’ve successfully resolved something from your history, you can think of it without feeling bogged down or controlled by it. It’s an experience you’ve had, but it feels more like a distant chapter you’ve moved past and learned from. You’ve found a place for it.

But, when these patterns still persist in your present, you have to address them.

What all this means for you.

Let’s start with what it doesn’t mean.

It doesn’t mean that you need to crawl back into your history and review every event you can remember. That’s not necessary and isn’t productive.

What it does mean is that you can identify what still needs to be worked out by reviewing your present.

The issues that currently plague you likely have their roots in your history. By acknowledging these patterns and reviewing them, you can begin to unravel them and make changes in your present. Once you work them through, you can let them go because they no longer hold power over you.

Since we’re approaching a New Year, this is a great time to take a psychological inventory and focus on what needs your attention.

I would go at it this way.

Take some time to identify a single issue that’s keeping you stuck.

It’s good to start with just one. Pick the one that’s the loudest and causing you the most distress. Examples might be poor relationship choices, ineffective communication styles, self-destructive behaviors, inability to handle money, work performance problems, and so on.

Next, examine the issue with these questions.

1) How does it play out in my life right now?

Get specific about what it looks like. If it’s self-destructive behavior, what exactly do you do? When and under what circumstances? With whom? Be honest and don’t defend.

2) Where did it originate or come from?

Here’s where the past comes in. If you’re awful with money, is this something you learned growing up? Were your parents awful with money? What were the beliefs around it? In my family, most all my siblings have been terrible with money, as were our parents. We all just continued the same denial about overspending that we learned, and all got into debt. It took really looking at how this behavior developed to get on top of it.

3) What feelings or emotional reactions does this issue bring up?

Sometimes there are hidden hurts or pain that need to be felt, and by letting them come up, you can come to terms with them and eventually let them go. Suppressing them actually gives them more power.

4) What are the distorted beliefs that are driving the problem?

For example, if you feel insecure and not good enough much of the time, what beliefs about who you are did you learn growing up? These assumptions are usually quite distorted and require diligent correcting before changing how you feel in the present.

Now list the assets you have.

By assets, I mean emotional, psychological, and social assets. What patterns would you say are healthy and have helped you navigate your life? What are your strengths? Who’s in your corner? Who can you turn to or talk to that could help? In other words, what’s good, and what do you already have to help you meet these challenges?

Take action.

The last step is to come up with actions you can take to work on your selected issue and then decide how you’re going to do that. There are many possibilities such as reading up, taking online courses, engaging in therapy or seeking help from an expert, watching TED talks, or all of them. What’s important is to do something! Do what gives you a sense of momentum.

Things to watch out for.

Experiencing emotional triggers.

When you begin going through this exercise, you will naturally run through experiences in your mind from your history and, in the process, experience emotional reactions to them. That’s fine and necessary.

One caveat: This exercise is not meant to get mired in blaming family members, parents, bosses, or whoever is involved in your history. It’s to help you better understand who you are and how your history has helped shape you.

Recognize where you are right now.

Even though the past asserts itself in your present, you’re not still back there. You’re not that child who lived through those experiences. You’re an adult and what you feel now are memories, not your current reality.

You can review them and feel them, but you have the power to work them out and not be controlled by them. You can build on your good memories as well and feel some gratitude for experiences you had that have contributed to your assets.

Don’t fall “victim” to “victim consciousness.”

If you’ve had a particularly traumatic childhood, or have been victimized, you can get pulled into seeing yourself as a victim and holding on to that status as your current identity.

Your sense of self becomes someone who has and will be victimized to the exclusion of all else. This is dangerous and easy to fall into if your experiences were particularly painful. Always see yourself outside of “victim status.” It’s an experience you had, not a definition of who you are. That distinction is important.

Avoid being overly critical of yourself for current issues.

The habits and behaviors you learned and formulated were instilled in you at the early stages of your life when you were developing. For instance, your brain isn’t fully developed until you’re 25, so what you learned at the age of 10 was learned when you were in a highly developmental state of cognitive growth. The same goes for the development of your emotions, your sense of self and basic ego structure, and moral character.

When we’re developing, we adopt behavior patterns to adapt to the circumstances of our lives. You might develop the habit of hiding behaviors you’re afraid will bring on a harsh response from a parent, and you now find yourself hiding behaviors from your partner, even though the threat of abuse is not there.

This gets into something called the “emotional home.” It would be good to read this article while doing the exercises. It helps explain why some behavior patterns are so stubborn and difficult to overthrow.

A Last Thought

If you like to read, I have a list of books you might find helpful. You can find them on my website. They’re listed by category. If you don’t have time to read or don’t enjoy it, I would suggest TED talks. You can almost always find a TED talk provided by the authors of most psychology and personal development books. That’s a quick way to get the information you need and can use.

That’s all for today. Happy New Year!

All my best,

Barbara

Welcome to Monday Blog Shorts – ideas to make even Monday a good day! Every Monday, I share a short article with you about a strategy you can use, or new facts or info that informs you, or a new idea that inspires you. My wish is to give you something to think about in the week ahead. Let’s dig in!

Photo by Onzeg, Courtesy of iStock Photo

Last week I took you through the “thrive versus destroy” tendencies we all have to wrangle with, and I recommended a way to increase your awareness of where you are on that continuum by examining your daily activities. The purpose was to help you increase your “thrive” activities and decisions.

This week I want to piggyback on that conversation and talk to you about something called “regression in service of the ego.”

That’s a psychoanalytic term that has an involved explanation, but for our purposes today it simply means that sometimes we do things or get in moods that are regressive, but ultimately help us bump ourselves back up. For example:

Have you ever called in sick because you were overwhelmed or tired and needed a “mental health” day? And then you returned to work the next day more refreshed and better able to get things done.

Or you ate healthy all week, but on Saturday, you ate anything you wanted, some of which definitely wouldn’t pass the “good for you” food test, but the next day, you went back to your healthy diet.

Or you worked super hard all day and then plopped down in front of the TV to binge-watch shows that don’t require any thought.

In all these cases, you engaged in a small regression and then recouped and moved back to your good habits.

More importantly, by engaging in a little regression, you actually ended up bumping up your game and were more productive the next day.

But aren’t regressions always destructive?

Regressions would seem to fit into the “destructive activities” category, yes?

But done the right way, they aren’t. They’re respites for short periods that allow you to recuperate.

You take your foot off the gas pedal temporarily and slow down by doing something that doesn’t require any discipline or strain, or maybe treat yourself to something that’s off the usual list of “good activity,” like eating a big piece of chocolate cake with fudge icing! Then you get back on track.

That’s what “regression in service of the ego” means. You regress temporarily to help yourself regroup and then move forward again. The regrouping is an aid to the forward movement rather than a hindrance.

How is this type of regression different from destructive activities?

The regressions I just described were short-lived. They’re not habitual and don’t stretch out over a lot of time. You’re in and out.

Longer regressions are different. For example, if you

• Stayed home for five days instead of just one,
• Or binge-watched TV for days at a time instead of doing work that needed doing,
• Or ate fast food for one week and into another week and essentially abandoned your good eating habits . . .

. . . you would be doing something destructive.

These activities would not be “in service of the ego” but are slippages that can and often do result in a downward spiral.

They’re extended regressions that become destructive because their momentum increases the longer you stay in them. They sneakily shift from simple short respites to unhealthy habitual behaviors, and the more you do them, the more they pull you down. These are the destructive trends we talked about last week.

How do I make sure my regressions are good for me?

It’s tricky. The destructive drive is always looking for an entrance, and if you give it one, it’ll slide in and take hold.

The good thing is, you can always turn things around even when you’ve gotten way off track. Still, it’s good not to let things get out of hand in the first place. Here are some ideas to help you manage that.

1) Be deliberate in your decision to engage in a regression.

In other words, if you’re overwhelmed, and you decide you need a mental health day, then get clear on exactly what that means and what it looks like.

“I’m taking Tuesday off from work, but promise myself I’ll go back in on Wednesday and hit the ground running.”

Then take that day and allow yourself to totally immerse in whatever relaxes you. Don’t take the day and spend it feeling guilty or fretting all day about what’s going on at work. Be deliberate.

2) Get specific about what activities you’ll engage in during your regression.

Using our mental health day example again, what exactly are you going to do with your time? Are you going to read novels and lie around, watch TV, or take a walk? What relaxes you?

For some people cleaning out a closet and organizing stuff makes them feel better because it’s an activity with a beginning and an end and feels like an accomplishment. For others, it’s being passively entertained.

Decide ahead what you’ll do and set up for it. If you just want to wing it, do that, but make sure you don’t spend the whole day deciding what to do. That makes things worse.

Get clear, plan, and then give yourself permission to do what you’ve decided on.

3) Define the endpoint.

This is very important because, as we’ve already determined, regressions can open the door to that nasty destructive drive that’s looking for a way to slip in and take over. One mental health day. One piece of cake. One day off from exercise. Define it in time and quantity, and know exactly when it ends and when you’ll return to your normal activities.

The whole idea behind this type of regression is that it makes things better when you’re finished, not worse. The extra calories one day bumps your metabolism up. The extra rest away from work increases your engagement the next day. The day off from exercise gives your body a chance to recoup so your performance is easier when you return to it.

Progress is not a straight line upward.

Any kind of development or progress is five steps up and two steps back, and then five steps up again. It might be a different ratio like three to two or four to one, but always there is a back and forth. That’s because learning requires trial and error, failures and successes, and high energy followed by rest.

Regressions are one type of backward step. In our case, they’re calculated, short-term variations from the norm to help you take a step back and then start moving forward again with more vigor.

One important note here:

Regressions that are truly destructive should never be an option like indulging in an addictive habit, or wild spending that sets you back financially, or any type of impulsive behavior that has ongoing negative consequences for you.

The key is to choose wisely and allow for brief close-ended regressions that provide a needed respite to get you back on track or renew your dedication to your goals.

Final Note

Today’s blog is the last one for this year. Due to the holidays, I won’t be publishing a blog on December 27th, but I’ll be back to you in 2022 on January 3rd!

I wish you Happy Holidays!

All my best,

Barbara