Choice Point
Let’s take a look at the choice point worksheet again. You can now add the passengers (the difficult or unhelpful thoughts, feelings, sensations, and memories) that show up and get in the way of your healthy habit. For example, when I try to exercise, one of the passengers that shows up is the thought I don’t have time for that, so I would write down “I don’t have time for that” under “thoughts” on the left-hand side of the worksheet. Go ahead and write down common thoughts that show up for you about your healthy habit.
A key point to keep in mind is that passengers show up automatically, and your choice point (that is, your potential moment of conscious choice) is only possible after the passengers show up. Even though you may wish that your passengers didn’t show up at all, the choice point is about what you do after they show up, and not about whether they show up or not. That is, I don’t have a choice about whether I feel tired or whether I think I don’t have time for that. These passengers show up automatically. But I do get to choose what I do after I notice these passengers. Our goal is to slow ourselves down enough when our passengers show up so we can choose to move toward or away from our values in a conscious, deliberate way. The aim is to be able to be more aware of our passengers and our values in order to create more choice points—more opportunities to make a choice to move toward our values. Try to create more conscious choice points by slowing down and noticing your passengers and reminding yourself of your values. Doing so can increase the likelihood that you move toward your healthy habits and your values.
In chapter 1 you added a value in the box under “toward” on the worksheet. In that same box you can now record your healthy habit as a SMART goal. Ask yourself if it’s a “do instead” goal; if it passes the 90 percent rule; if it’s specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time bound? If the answer to any of these questions is no, see how you might change the behavior so you can say yes to all the questions. My healthy habit of “exercise more” isn’t a SMART goal. For example, it’s not specific enough to be measurable. However, if I change the goal to “go to the gym for twenty minutes two times per week” (and I think I’m 90 percent sure I can do this), then I’ve created a SMART goal. It’s specific and measurable (I’ll know I did it if I went twice for twenty minutes). Because I’m 90 percent sure I can do it, it is achievable and realistic, and I know I’m going to try to do it within seven days, so it’s time bound. See if you can do the same for your healthy habit, and record it on the worksheet.
Chapter 4:
If You Don’t Like the Weather, Wait Ten Minutes
The limbic system is an ancient part of our brain that contains a number of automatic processes concerned with survival, including our emotional reactions. Emotions often function as messengers that provide us with important information. Imagine that an emotion is like a delivery person who has a very important package to get to you, and he won’t stop until it’s delivered. Many of our emotions are designed to be uncomfortable because they’re supposed to motivate us to do something, such as move away from a threat. Unfortunately, our modern world often presents us with perceived threats that we can’t get away from; there’s nothing we can “do,” but we still get the emotional reactions. For example, have you ever been angry while sitting in traffic? Or worried about what the future might bring? Congratulations! You’re a well-functioning human being.
If you’ve ever had a cookie or a drink of alcohol or a smoke to deal with a stressful day or a bad mood, then you know that emotions can play a major role in our ability to stick to our healthy habits. Emotion passengers often knock us off our route. In this chapter we’re going to explore our emotion passengers and develop skills to deal with them so we’re better able to stick to our healthy habits route.
Our Fix-It Brain
Remember our wonderful problem-solving brain? It has been a useful tool for humans in our evolution. Unfortunately it likes to work on fixing—or getting rid of—our feelings, which can get us into trouble. Take, for example, my client Anna. She came to me because she felt she was drinking too much. We quickly discovered that she was experiencing a lot of stress and anxiety. And in response to all this, she drank.
Although Anna felt that she was defective, that there was something wrong with her, her mind was actually working exactly how millions of years of evolution had shaped it to work. She noticed feeling anxious and then tried to do something to make herself feel better, which was to drink. This strategy for feeling better actually did make her feel better, but it only worked temporarily. Because she’s a normal human, her anxiety came back. And then, on top of that, she was now mad at herself and criticizing herself for her behavior—for letting her emotion passengers reroute her bus. What we discussed was that the anxiety wasn’t the problem, it was the “solution” she used to get rid of it. This is often the case.
We all end up doing things to avoid feeling bad, and many of our unhealthy habits feel awesome in the short term! They are very effective short term “fixes” for feeling bad. Are there things you do that help you get rid of a feeling in the short run but interfere with your healthy habits? Maybe it’s eating chocolate after a stressful day. Maybe it’s snacking on treats when you’re bored. Maybe it’s drinking or smoking to relax. (You can write your answers on the “What Have You Done to Avoid Feeling Bad?” worksheet, available for download at this book’s website: http://www.newharbinger.com/43317.) There’s nothing dysfunctional about what you’re doing. Humans are hardwired to avoid pain, and whatever you’re doing works in the short run. It’s in the long term that these strategies create problems, because they often divert us from our route and therefore don’t help us build a healthy life that matters to us.
Just Don’t Worry About It!
Not only has our mind been shaped to help us avoid bad feelings, we receive this message in all kinds of ways in Western culture. Loved ones, strangers, ads, the media—they all tell us that if we just tried hard enough, we’d be able to change our feelings, as if we can will ourselves to not feel sad or worried or mad.
Let’s try a thought experiment to see if you can will yourself to not feel anxious (adapted from Hayes 2005). Imagine that you’re in a dunk tank, and the lever that releases the seat you’re sitting on is connected to electrodes taped to your body. If you experience anxiety, these electrodes relay the information to the lever, triggering it to drop you in the pool. In order to motivate you to not feel anxious, the pool is full of sharks. All you have to do to avoid falling into the pool of sharks is to not feel anxious. Could you do it? Could anyone do it? Probably not, despite the awesome motivation. And yet we’re constantly told that we should be able to change our feelings.
We also constantly receive messages to ignore our feelings or to invalidate them. My eight-year-old son’s school sent him home with a handout describing a few scenarios for which he needed to come up with a compassionate response. The first scenario was “Your sister falls down and hurts herself. She is crying. What can you do?” He wrote, “Tell her she’s fine.” Noooooo! I thought. That’s not compassionate at all! I was horrified!
But later that week at one of his hockey games, a kid fell down and the coaches started yelling, “You’re fine! Get up! You’re fine!” I realized that this was what he’d been taught to do when someone was hurt. You don’t have to be at a sporting event to observe this type of behavior. Head over to a playground and wait for a child to fall down. Inevitably a parent will say, “You’re fine.” As parents we say things like this to our kids all the time. We don’t intend to invalidate their feelings, quite the opposite. We’re trying to make them feel better. But the result is we’re teaching kids to ignore, change, or fix their feelings. When it doesn’t seem okay to feel our feelings, we often engage in unhealthy habits to (temporarily) make the feelings go away. Let’s explore another option.
Welcoming an Old (Smelly) Companion
Here’s another thought experiment (inspire
d by Hayes, Strosahl, and Wilson 1999, and Oliver 2011). Imagine that you’ve decided to host a party and invite lots of people. You’re having a great time, but soon your smelly, rude neighbor Brian comes in and starts bothering your friends. You kick him out and go back to the party, but while you’re busy having a good time, he slips back in. You throw him out a second time, and this time you decide to stand at the door to make sure he doesn’t get back in. This works, but while you’re guarding the door you realize that you aren’t enjoying the party. So you decide to go back to the party even though that means Brian will return. And before long he does, but rather than fight with him you decide to just let him be. He’s still smelly and annoying, but you accept that in order to be able to enjoy the party, you have to accept him being there.
In this experiment, Brian is like our feelings. We do all kinds of things (that is, stand at the door) to avoid bad feelings, and often the cost of these efforts is that we don’t get to enjoy life (that is, the party). The alternative is to accept our feelings in order to enjoy life. Acceptance doesn’t mean you like something, want it, or even enjoy it; it’s “taking what is given” (Harris 2008), acknowledging what is, and having a willingness to let it be as it is. Accepting your feelings involves making space for them so you don’t have to fight with them as much. I’m not talking about tolerating feelings, I mean welcoming or embracing them. It’s not just tolerating an acquaintance, it’s welcoming a friend, a companion. The unhealthy habits we do to avoid our feelings are totally normal; however, if you allow yourself to just feel your feelings, as yucky as they may be, you wouldn’t need unhealthy habits. In other words, you’re accepting the message from the messenger but not letting the message take over or change your route.
Here’s another way (inspired by Harris 2008) to think about accepting your emotions. Imagine two bordering countries that disagree on finances, religion, culture, language—pretty much everything. They have choices about how they deal with their differences. They could be at war with each other (fighting each other), they could have a truce (tolerating each other), or they could have a peace treaty (accepting each other). If they are at war, they have to dedicate a lot of resources to this fight and there will likely be casualties. If they have a truce, they would still need to keep up their military resources in case they need to go to war, and they would have to actively monitor the border to watch for signs of danger. If they have a peace treaty, they don’t have to dedicate resources to fight or be prepared to fight. Instead they can dedicate their resources to important things such as education, health, arts, or productivity. The treaty does not, however, require that they like each other or agree to adopt the other’s language or culture. By accepting your feelings, you’re aiming to not just tolerate them (have a truce), but rather to welcome them (have a peace treaty). Imagine what you might be able to do with all the energy you’ve reclaimed by not fighting.
Here’s an exercise to practice this idea of developing a peace treaty with your feelings (adapted from Lillis, Dahl, and Weineland 2014). You can write your answers on the “My Old Friend” worksheet, available for download at this book’s website: http://www.newharbinger.com/43317. Or you can record your answers in a journal or on a separate sheet of paper. Think about an emotion you don’t like to experience, perhaps guilt, anger, sadness, or shame, and then answer these questions:
When do you first remember experiencing this emotion (or something similar to it)?
How old is this emotion?
Do you know anyone who has never experienced this emotion?
Where, when, and how has this emotion shown up in your life?
What have you done to try to avoid this emotion, change it, or make it go away?
Given all these efforts, have you succeeded in permanently ridding yourself of this emotion?
This emotion has been with you for a long time. Rather than fighting with it, could you welcome it like smelly old Brian?
Feelings Are Just Being Feelings
What happens if you take a puppy for a walk and you let the puppy be in charge? What happens to your walk? It’s all over the place! You go smell the grass, you go backward to see a rock, you go look at a tree and pee on it. You’re definitely not getting from place A to place B in a direct manner. In fact, you’re likely to end up in some unintended places.
But should we blame the puppy? No. The puppy is just being a puppy. The problem is we’re not being responsible pet owners. The same holds true for your feelings: anger is just being anger, shame is just being shame, sadness is just being sadness. Problems arise when we let our feelings be in charge of our direction (or take over our bus). Just like allowing a puppy to be in charge, we end up in unintended places when we let our feelings run the show. So, our job as responsible emotion owners is to be in charge of where we go. Gently and kindly bring your feelings with you while sticking to your route. Be very kind to your feelings, just as you would be to a puppy. Remember, you’re not just trying to tolerate your feelings, you’re welcoming them and treating them with the same kindness you would an unruly puppy.
What happens if you leave a puppy alone in your house all day? Disaster! But, again, the puppy was just being a puppy. The problem was that we left the puppy unattended and didn’t check in on it. The same can happen with our feelings. When we don’t check in and keep an eye on our feelings, they can get into trouble. But feelings are just being feelings. It’s our job to keep an eye on them.
How can you keep an eye on your feelings? It involves periodically checking in with yourself to see what you’re feeling. Pause and notice sensations in your body, such as tightness in your shoulders or a churning in your stomach. See if you can be curious about these sensations and feelings, and try to be kind to them when you notice them. Imagine holding and taking care of feelings the way you would a puppy. And then return to what you were doing.
Many of us worry that as soon as we let feelings in, they’ll overwhelm us. We may have been holding them back for so long that we’re worried about a tsunami. By doing the exercise described above and checking in on your feelings, you can let them in a little at a time. There’s a big difference between intentionally checking in on a feeling and having it spring up on you unexpectedly. Why don’t you be in charge of your feelings instead of the other way around? (The worksheet “Check In on Your Feelings,” available for download at this book’s website (http://www.newharbinger.com/43317, can help you practice checking in on your feelings.)
Here’s another exercise to help you get in touch with what you’re feeling without letting the feeling take over (inspired by Flaxman, Bond, and Livhelm 2013, and Harris 2009). A series of questions and an audio recording (“Feeling Object”), both available for download at this book’s website (http://www.newharbinger.com/43317), can help you with this exercise.
To start, imagine a stressful event or person in your life—not the most stressful thing, just something a little bit distressing. Aim for something that’s about a 4 out of 10.
Think about this stressful event or person until you start to notice some feelings emerge. See if you can pay more attention to those feelings. Where do they show up in your body? What kind of sensations are there? Imagine drawing a circle around the place in your body where you feel them most intensely. Perhaps focus on the sensation or feeling you feel most intensely. Imagine being a curious scientist who has never witnessed it before. Examine it with some curiosity…
If this emotion is an object, what shape is it? How big is it? Is it heavy or light? What’s it made of? Is it solid, gooey, or airy?
Imagine this “feeling object” pops out of you and is sitting on a table or the floor in front of you. Examine it with curiosity. Notice it in ways you’ve never noticed before. What’s it like to see it outside of you in this way?
Now, welcome the feeling object back into your body where it belongs. Notice with curiosity any resistance or desire for it to stay outside
of you, and then welcome the feeling object back inside of you where it belongs…
Now I invite you to imagine that with every breath you can make space for this feeling object inside you. Don’t try to make it smaller or to make it go away, just give it more space so it’s not bumping up against you quite as hard. Imagine that with every breath you expand the space around it, however you understand that to be...
What was it like to examine your feelings in this way, to interact with your feeling object, to make space for this feeling object without trying to make it go away in any way? Our goal with our feelings is not to make them go away but to make space for them. They are part of us, but they are not us.
You Are the Blue Sky
What if it was your job to make sure it was sunny and 80 degrees outside tomorrow. That would be a pretty stressful job, right? Well, feelings are similar to weather: we have about as much control over them as we do the weather. Sometimes you can predict how you’re going to feel the same way we can generally predict the weather. For example, if you’re a student heading into an exam, your mood may likely change for the worse. But we don’t have direct control over our mood; we can’t will ourselves to be happy or make ourselves not be worried (remember the shark-tank exercise?). Thinking about feelings the way we think about the weather can help us understand some key skills for managing our feelings.
Healthy Habits Suck Page 6