Coping with bad stuff
How to deal with negative emotions and gradually change them
Imagine a world without emotions. It would be like living in a two-dimensional existence and it would certainly be almost impossible, without care and passion, to have purpose and meaning.
While Mind Fitness will enable you to manage your negative emotions and gradually replace some of them with feelings that are unlikely to disturb and sabotage you, it is in no way a process of losing your emotions.
Even the negative emotions are an important part of life. If we lose someone through either a break up or bereavement, it is right, and in fact vital, that we feel sad. The key is learning to sit with the sadness and not let it lead you into the downward spiral. I (BW) think of keeping the sadness for myself rather than handing it over to the ANTs. It also means that the deep sadness is felt when there is a reason for it; we would not slip into it if we lost a favourite bag. We all have enough ‘big stuff’ in our lives to deal with. Learning not to ‘sweat the small stuff’ is an incredibly useful tool.
We sometimes find that people we work with have cut off their emotional response. Often they have built a wall to protect themselves but, of course, it is keeping out all that is good as well as all that is bad. This may be a valid temporary response to real trauma but even then we must find a way to switch the emotions back on. If it continues, we create negative beliefs to sustain and reinforce it, essentially prolonging the trauma. But with a combination of reframing these beliefs, accepting where we are and sitting with the emotion, we can start to move on. The re-entry to the world of emotions has been likened to the feeling of ‘waking up.’
What is an Emotion?
An emotion is a conscious experience characterised by mental activity and a certain degree of pleasure or displeasure.
Emotions are certainly the driving force behind many of our behaviours, both helpful and unhelpful. Our brain, as you know, is hard wired to look out for threats or rewards. When it sees them, it releases chemicals that travel from our brain and through our body. The emotions we feel are the effect of these chemical messages.
An emotional reaction has many parts:
- Our brain changes what is happening in our body. For example, our heart will beat faster if we’re angry or scared, we’ll get tears in our eyes when we are sad and our voice will change.
- Our brain starts working differently as we ‘look’ to reinforce the emotion – if we’re scared, we will see danger in almost any situation and, if we’re happy, we’ll start to notice things we like.
- Our behaviour will change – we may fight if we’re angry, run away if we are scared and hide ourselves away if we are sad.
The ‘feeling’ kicks in subconsciously and our emotions can hijack our brain, making it very difficult to think rationally. Emotions are incredibly important to almost all of us. The pursuit of happiness has been the grail for many cultures ancient and modern. You are probably reading this book because you want to feel happy more of the time and bad less of the time.
Why are Emotions important?
On the most basic level, emotions are important because they mean that you can enjoy life – love your partner and children, appreciate the things you have and the glorious natural world, relish a contentment in old age and feel a sense of achievement and joy when you do something great or help another person.
They are also incredibly important to the whole Mind Fitness process of change. Our emotions are beacons or markers; if we feel a sense of unease or disquiet or even sadness or fear, it sounds an alarm and we know that we have let in the ANTs. It’s time to focus and calm the noise. We are also able to make changes more quickly and more effectively if our rational thought is accompanied by a deep desire or passion to change. The more that we can invest emotionally, the more vigour we can bring to the change, the more likely the process will be effective. In fact, building new neural pathways is as much about intensity as repetition; if you love going for a run now that you are not smoking, that will help to establish the new behaviour more quickly.
Positive emotions also create the environment that gives birth to insightful thoughts and ideas. It’s not enough to dispel the negative, we need also to bring in the positive. We must allow ourselves to be enthusiastic, curious and thrilled and, if we find ourselves short of these resources, we must commit to nurturing them. It can be done.
Exercise 11.1: Curiosity
This exercise is about using curiosity to fuel a positive perception of the world. Simply write down 10 ‘I wonders’. They can be about anything that interests you.
For example:
- I wonder who built the Great Sphinx of Giza and how they did it
- I wonder what led the Beatles to write ‘Yellow Submarine’
- I wonder where in the world the fantastic coffee in my cupboard comes from
How many Emotions are there?
Just for fun, try to make a list before you read on. Emotions are incredibly hard to describe and define (ask any translator) and it’s likely that, if you and I both described the difference between, say, love and compassion, it would not be the same. And, if you imagine an emotion when you are in a good mood or bad mood, it will probably ‘feel’ different. The subtleties of language are never more apparent than when describing an emotion. It is why poets and artists can make us feel something that we have never felt before. The not exclusive list of emotions we came up with is:
Range of emotions
| Acceptance | Depression | Paranoia |
| Affection | Disappointment | Pity |
| Aggression | Disgust | Pleasure |
| Ambivalence | Doubt | Pride |
| Anger | Homesickness | Rage |
| Apathy | Hunger | Regret |
| Anxiety | Hurt | Remorse |
| Boredom | Hysteria | Shame |
| Compassion | Interest | Sorrow |
| Confusion | Jealousy | Suffering |
| Concern | Loneliness | Surprise |
| Contempt | Love | Sympathy |
Exercise 11.2: Your Habitual Emotions
Using either our list or your own, circle the six emotions that you feel most often.
Of the six, pick the three that seem most different from the others.
Note by these three when you last felt them and in what circumstances. Try to describe in detail how the emotion made you feel.
Negative Emotions
As we’ve said, we can see our negative emotions as warning signs or alarms. They tell us that something is wrong and needs to be challenged or changed. Train yourself, if you can, to be grateful for them. Thank goodness they came along for how would you have known otherwise?
Our habitual negative emotions, particularly our fear and our anger, are states that we have adopted in response to a problem. At some point, probably way back, we moved into them because we saw them, either consciously or unconsciously, as a solution and we didn’t know any other way.
Very quickly, these negative emotions ‘became’ us. We’ve woven a thousand negative thoughts around them and thrown in self-pity and resentment.
We need have no self-recrimination or remorse. It happened. Now that we understand and accept this, we can use the ABC Model to help us to adopt a new response. Enjoying a life where we are not crushed or defeated by these negative emotions is about managing them, not suppressing them. The attempt to do the latter results in harsh mood swings and very little sense of contentment.
We’ll have a quick look at three of the most common negative emotions and then we’ll look at the Rational Emotive Behavioural Therapy (REBT) approach to move negative harmful emotions to less harmful versions of the same emotional state.
Anxiety
The result of our mind evaluating a threat (real or perceived) is fear, producing the emotion of anxiety. Then, once we have entered the state of anxiety, it’s impossible to be rational; our mind interprets everything through the lense of worry and fear. As we have said, it is future-focussed, based on fear of what might happen. As soon as we become aware of the anxiety, it’s important to use an exercise to get ourselves back into a state in which we can think clearly and rationally.
Always bear in mind the wonderful quote, ‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself’ (Franklin D Roosevelt).1 We all understand that bullying is when you take away someone’s peace of mind by making them afraid and, yet, we do this to ourselves all the time. And there is the equally wonderful, ‘Never take counsel of your fears,’ by Stonewall Jackson.2 If such thoughts come into our mind, we can choose not to listen. Imagine how little we would trust an advisor or leader who seemed to be in a constant state of terror!
Anger
In terms of cognitive bias and conditioned behaviour, remember that we learned way back to cry and scream when we needed feeding. Many of us still do this when we have a problem that needs solving.
If you are driven by anger, it is worth checking back to your Self-Image. Those who are most easily angered or offended are usually those with a weaker Self-Image or lower sense of self-value. Use the exercises in Chapter 7 to strengthen and reinforce your Self-Image.
And to avoid anger:
- Don’t expect people to behave in the way you would, or to have your set of rules or beliefs
- Don’t expect more of yourself than you would of other people
Hurt
Even the deepest wounds heal faster when we don’t infect and re-infect ourselves with the ANTs and the negative spiral.
It may be, however, that you are holding on to the hurt. The intensity of any emotion, especially pain, can be addictive. Poets talk of the exquisiteness of pain and we can certainly get a perverse pleasure from experiencing it. If we are not careful, we can trap ourselves in a vain endeavour to prove that we are, at least, alive. And it may feel empty for a short while when the hurt, the pain, loses its sting. But, with the help of a strong Self-Image reinforced with compassion and meaning, the space can be filled with positive emotions.
Exercise 11.3: Releasing Emotions
There’s a great visualisation exercise that we can do to release the negative emotions we are feeling, before we move on to look at how to reframe them.
Close your eyes and stand in an open position, feet shoulder width apart, your arms down by your sides but a few centimetres away from the sides of your body. Make sure that your spine is straight and that you feel centred.
Now imagine that your body is full of nasty emotions. We usually imagine them in the order in which they first occur to us, which often relates to the emotions that are more prevalent at the time. Some people like to imagine the emotions as liquids, gas or colours.
Once you are ‘full’, imagine the emotions draining down through your body and seeping into the ground. Let your muscles soften as the tension attached to the emotion drains away.
Unhealthy Negative Emotions3 as identified by REBT
REBT doesn’t try to banish negative emotions and make us strive for a false nirvana of ecstatic happiness. By learning to identify and confront troublesome emotions we can begin to reframe the way we think, behave and feel. We’ll go through that process step by step, but, first, let’s take a closer look at the emotions.
The positive emotions we feel, such as happiness, euphoria, affection or love, give us pleasure so they clearly aren’t going to cause us issues. It’s the negative emotions that cause us upset and just identifying these is hard because there are many to choose from.
REBT makes the identification process far less complicated by compressing the range of negative emotions to just eight. These are termed as Unhealthy Negative Emotions (UNEs).
Here they are along with their very specific associated themes:
| Unhealthy Negative Emotion | Theme |
| Anxiety | Threat or danger |
| Depression | Significant loss, failure |
| Guilt | Moral lapse, hurting others |
| Anger | Personal rules violated, frustration |
| Shame | Perceived weakness or defect revealed to others |
| Hurt | Let down or treated badly |
| Envy | Covet good fortune of others |
| Jealousy | Threat to a relationship posed by another |
When you are in a difficult situation, dealing with adversity, it can feel very challenging to pinpoint your exact emotional response. It’s vitally important that we learn to do this so that we can start the process of emotional reframing. The first task is being able to recognise emotions from feelings.
Feelings versus Emotions
A feeling is an emotional experience – brief and episodic.
An emotion lies beneath these feelings, at the core. Emotions endure for years, sometimes for a lifetime, and predispose us to emotional experiences, feelings, as well as to thoughts and actions.
We sometimes have to drill down through several feelings to reach the underlying emotion. For example, if a neighbour repeatedly throws loud late-night parties, we might say that we are fed up, annoyed and hacked off before reaching the underlying emotion of anger.
Once we have identified the emotion, we are ready to make changes. The whole Mind Fitness process helps us to be more aware of our emotions so that we are better and sooner able to identify and deal with the unhealthy negative ones that trip us up.
There are other challenges, such as understanding meta emotions – the emotions we experience about our emotions! As an example, Fred may feel anger over an affair he had with a work colleague. The anger, in this case, is directed at himself for his perceived weakness that led to the shame he feels for causing upset to his family and for his uncharacteristic moral lapse.
By identifying the main emotion, in this case shame, we are able to begin reframing that emotion in order to deal with the secondary emotion, anger.
Exercise 11.4: Identifying Emotions
At a specific time (say after a show or meal), ask a friend to tell you the emotions they are feeling.
Focus in on any that are negative. See if you can gradually unpick them and pull them back to one of the eight identified emotions. If necessary, keep asking the question ‘and how does that make you feel?’.
Healthy Negative Emotions
Using the REBT model, the alternative to UNEs are Healthy Negative Emotions (HNEs.)
The term Healthy Negative Emotions may feel a little odd at first. How could negative emotions ever be regarded as healthy? But they can.
This table shows the UNE and corresponding HNE.
| Unhealthy Negative Emotion (UNE) | Healthy Negative Emotion (HNE) |
| Anxiety | Concern |
| Depression | Sadness |
| Guilt | Remorse |
| Anger | Healthy anger |
| Shame | Disappointment |
| Hurt | Sorrow |
| Jealousy | Healthy jealousy |
| Envy | Healthy envy |
At first glance, healthy anger could feel like a misnomer. How could any anger be regarded as healthy? Or jealousy? It doesn’t immediately make sense. We’ve already seen the themes associated with the UNEs. Let’s take a look at each emotional reframing and associated changes in behaviour.
Anxiety to Concern
Anxiety is future-focussed. It triggers our Stress Response. It causes worry and unhappiness. We may find that we’re less prepared to confront adversity when we feel anxious.
Concern allows us to acknowledge that there is a problem, develop understanding that then means we can begin to confront the issues and develop a rationally considered, coherent plan to respond.
Depression to Sadness
Depression is past-focussed. It can cause people to withdraw and disengage from society. The ABC Model by changing rigid demand-based beliefs into healthier preferences, allows us to reduce the extreme symptoms of depression into sadness.
Sadness It’s OK to feel sad. We can sit with the sadness, acknowledge that we are sad about a situation, but we will be able to engage and connect. The emotion of sadness is about acceptance encouraging self-compassion, states that help us to heal.
Guilt to Remorse
Guilt is aligned closely with damning or self-criticism. One unfortunate action is the thing that we now feel universally defines us as a bad person: ‘I’m no good. I did a bad thing and that makes me a bad person.’
Remorse acknowledges the bad act or deed but doesn’t let it define us: ‘I did a bad thing and I am remorseful for that, but it doesn’t mean that bad thing defines me as a bad person.’
Anger to Healthy Anger
Anger (rage) can be blind. Nothing was ever solved in anger. Things are said and done that are later regretted, and revenge is planned and acted out. Anger diminishes our powers of emotional control, causing us to disturb ourselves in the extreme. Aggression and anger go hand in hand.
Healthy Anger (annoyance) acknowledges injustice or wrongdoing, but the reaction is calm though assertive behaviour. Assertion is vastly preferential to aggression. We keep control and can therefore respond to the situation in a firm but measured way. This is a key component of high Emotional Intelligence.
Shame to Disappointment
Shame is experienced when we feel personal exposure. We have been found out. Our shameful secret has been revealed. We have been caught doing something for which we believe others will judge us unfavourably. We may choose to avoid our accusers or detractors and be unable to look them in the eye.
Disappointment allows us to reframe our feelings in a compassionate and self-accepting way. We are able to take a balanced view of the expected disapproval from others and face the situation without being compelled to hide away.
Hurt to Sorrow
Hurt arises from the perception that others have treated us badly or unfairly: ‘You hurt my feelings.’ Their treatment of us is unjust. When we’re hurt, we’re more likely to irrationally overestimate the degree of the perceived slight against us. We revisit previous misdemeanours and build a body of ‘evidence’. We may sulk, wishing to punish the perpetrator with silence or a piece of our mind.
Sorrow acknowledges that an unfortunate situation with another exists, but it’s viewed realistically and rationally so that it doesn’t become overthought. When we experience the less-charged state of sorrow, we can rationally face the perpetrator to calmly work towards resolving the conflict.
Jealousy to Healthy Jealousy
Jealousy is such a destructive emotion. It’s driven people to misery and murder. Often confused with envy, jealousy is anxiety about a threat or perceived threat to an important relationship. Jealousy compels us to question the activities of a suspected errant loved one. We may seek assurances of love and faithfulness, look for signs of infidelity or simply sulk. Marriages break down and close friendships are destroyed due to jealousy. The jealousy may be professional rather than romantic jealousy, applying threat to a professional relationship.
Healthy Jealousy is concern about a threat to an important relationship. It is about balance and rationality. It’s understanding that our partner may be physically attractive to others or may find others attractive, without wishing to act on that. Our partner may chat to someone at a party without that implying romantic or sexual intent. We give our partner space and freedom. We trust unless evidence to the contrary is overwhelming.
Envy to Healthy Envy
Envy The coveting of something that someone else has. Envy, especially social envy, has become a significant societal issue with social media giving unprecedented access to others’ lives. Keeping up with the Jones’s has been superseded by our need to compare ourselves to and keep up with, well, everyone. We see the holidays our ‘friends’ are taking, their house in Tuscany being renovated, the perfect family party pictures and that expensive new car they’ve just taken delivery of. How do they have all that and I don’t? I want that lifestyle. The fact that I haven’t means I’m a worthless failure.
Healthy Envy To be able to desire the possessions of others or their perceived lifestyle, but not to be eaten up by that desire. To allow others to have that which you would like and accept the situation comfortably. Aspire to achieve those things or acquire those possessions if that is what you truly desire, but not through avarice or the need to compete.
How to reframe UNEs to HNEs
The benefits of learning to adopt HNEs is clear. HNEs allow us to be more rational, measured and to stay calm and in control.
The whole Mind Fitness process is likely to bring latent emotions into the realm of your conscious thoughts. Many of these will be positive, which is brilliant; others will be negative, and this is where we begin to work on these.
REBT stresses that emotional problems are based on irrational thinking and that, if we are to address these problems, we need to change the thinking to its rational equivalent.
| A | B | C |
| Adversity | Irrational Beliefs | Unhealthy Negative Emotion |
| Adversity | Rational Beliefs | Healthy Negative Emotion |
And you already know the way that this is done – by using the ABC Model. So this is the last piece in the ABC puzzle.
Using the ABC to reframe Unhealthy Negative Emotions: example – neighbour conflict
Scenario 1 – With Demands and UNEs
A Activating Event
George was suffering another evening of noise from his new next door neighbours. He’d not met them as they’d only been there a week, but every evening, late into the night, they had played loud music. George had had enough.
B Belief
You must not encroach on my world with your loud music. It’s awful that you’re so unthoughtful. You’re utter morons!
C Consequence
George can take no more. He marches round to next door and lets them have it. He tells them what he thinks. He’ll show them. A vicious argument ensues, with insults and threats traded. The neighbour tells George to get lost (or words to that effect) and slams the door. They turn the music up louder!
Emotional – Anger, anxiety, hurt
Behavioural – Uncontrolled aggression, shouting, swearing, making threats of physical violence
Physiological (symptoms) – Pounding heart, head hurting, breathing heavily. George feels like he’s about to have a heart attack.
Scenario 2 – With Preferences and Healthy Negative Emotions
A Activating Event
George was suffering another evening of noise from his new next door neighbours. He’d not met them as they’d only been there a week, but every evening, late into the night, they had played loud music. George feels that the time is right to confront the problem.
B Belief
I would prefer that we find a way to live comfortably next door to one another. Loud music from next door every evening is not acceptable. I suspect that they’re not aware of how thin the walls are rather than being malicious.
C Consequence
Emotional – Healthy Anger, Concern, Sorrow
Behavioural – George pops next door, calmly introduces himself in a friendly way and goes on to explain that the connecting walls are very thin. He smiles and asks that they keep the music levels down. The neighbour is mortified and apologises profusely. She and her partner didn’t realise. George invites them over for get to know you drinks at the weekend. They accept and apologise again. The music is turned off.
Physiological (symptoms) – George feels some anticipation in the form of mild butterflies as he knocks on the door, but he’s going to be assertive, not aggressive, so he feels in control and will do his best to find compromise.
Exercise 11.5: Reframing an Unhealthy Negative Emotion
Select a UNE that you feel or have recently felt.
Identify the irrational or rigid belief that is causing the emotional problem.
Follow the process used in the example above, changing the irrational to a rational belief, the UNE to its healthy equivalent.
Complete the table below:
The positive emotions
As we have said, positive emotions are there for you to use in negotiating the path to a happier and more productive you. If you are working on a stronger Self-Image, then invest emotionally in this. It is not just important that you think well of yourself but that you love yourself. It sounds trite, but emotions are what makes the relationship between you and your mind dynamic. If this still feels too big a step, then love aspects of you if you can – your voice, your hands, your sense of humour until you have so many that you make a compassionate kaleidoscope of the whole you.
Exercise 11.6: Intensifying a Positive Emotion
Start by sitting down in a comfortable position with your eyes closed.
Take a moment to identify a time when you felt joy or love. Spend two minutes recalling the time or experience. As we have said, every emotion manifests itself physically so try to be as detailed as you can, as you recall.
Look at the kind of joy that made you laugh or smile or jump up and down. Try to connect the feeling with the action; if you’re not certain what I mean, think about the purring of a cat or the way that a dog wags its tail.
Now allow the emotion to intensify and the action to swell or grow. If it was the dog, he may now be panting or chasing his tail around in a circle.
Once you have really invested in the experience, try to think of how you are feeling now that you are recalling it. It’s a great place to return to when you need a bit of a boost or when it feels harder than usual to be grateful for the everyday things in your life.
Happiness
For us to really employ our abilities to be happy, it’s vital that, as individuals and as a society, we move away from the prevailing idea that suffering is somehow good, that it is the way to the light. We even think that if we expect the best it will somehow trip us up, that we are ‘tempting fate’. Or we think that if we imagine the worst then anything else will seem good in comparison. It won’t! Expect the worst and it’s likely that your brain will focus on this and do it’s best to deliver it. Instead, expect the best, the very best that you can imagine. When we are happy, we fulfil our individual potential, as well as our potential to help others. We think better, perform better and are healthier when we are happy.
So, what is this wonderful feeling called happiness? Dr John A. Shindler4 describes it as a ‘state of mind in which our thinking is pleasant a good share of the time’. That seems good to us.
The essential thing, as you will by now have realised, is that happiness is an attitude, a mental habit. You can acquire it by:
- being in the moment
- having a positive Self-Image
- employing gratitude and compassion
- not allowing in the ANTs when you sit with a negative emotion
- moving negative, unhelpful emotions to more helpful versions of the same state
- challenging and changing the unhelpful beliefs that lead to negative emotions
Abraham Lincoln5 said, ‘Most people are about as happy as they make their minds up to be.’
We would say remember the importance of being needed, of feeling that you are making a difference. Make sure that at least some of your goals are worthwhile and that they tie in with your beliefs and your meaning.
Show that you’re happy! There are few things in life more contagious. Let it affect as many people as you can – it’s not a cake with just enough to go around.
Emotional Intelligence
We have referred to Emotional Intelligence a few times already in this chapter. Not too long ago, IQ, the intelligence quotient, was just about the only measure that people paid any attention to. IQ refers to a person’s knowledge, memory and reasoning ability when scored against a standard comparative measure through the completion of a set test. But IQ forms just part of the intelligence picture. There are a myriad of subtleties around a person’s overall ability and aptitude that a pure IQ test cannot identify or rate. More recent academic studies have identified human attributes and personality components that, combined with IQ, better determine true potential.6 The emergence of Emotional Intelligence, referred to as EI or EQ, incorporates the softer, interpersonal skills and emotionally based talents that add temperament and character to personal aptitude.
Of course, we all have the ability to increase our EQ and, with it, our effectiveness due to Neuroplasticity, which we covered in Chapter 3. These are exactly the skills that are built through Mind Fitness. You’re learning to enhance your EQ by reading this book.
Although there are several academic definitions of EQ, there are key areas of crossover. These are the common components:
- Self and social awareness – you are aware of and realistic about your own emotions. Do you rise to anger easily? Would you say that you’re a jealous type? Distrustful? Do you become easily anxious in adversity? Do you react well to constructive feedback and not default to personalisation leading to feelings of hurt? Do you know your strengths? Your weaknesses? Do you understand how your qualities affect others? What are your goals? What are your values? Are your goals in line with your values?
- Social skills – your ability to interact and engage cooperatively with others. Can you effectively influence people to work collectively and to move in your direction? Do you understand what motivates others? Do you use your social skills to develop productive relationships?
- Self-regulation – do you use your heightened self-awareness to reframe your unhelpful emotions? Does that help you to think and take control before you speak, to resist acting immediately on kneejerk emotional impulses? Adaptability is a highly valuable personal asset.
The comedian Craig Ferguson set out a checklist of three simple questions. Think:
- Does this need to be said?
- Does this need to be said by me?
- Does this need to be said by me now?
This very insightful approach can save so much upset and regret.
- Motivation – the will to act and the drive to succeed. Not at any price or in any way, though. That’s where empathy is so important.
- Empathy – understanding the views and feelings of others. How would I feel in their shoes? What would motivate me if I were them in this situation? What is it I need to say now to make a difference? How would I like to be treated in these circumstances?
All these are skills you will have been developing through the book. As you enhance your EQ, you open a new door to a more effective, less stressful life. You’ll find that you’re better able to accept criticism and use it to your advantage to affect positive change. You’ll become more authentic, adhering to your principals because you develop a greater understanding of your values and personal goals. You become the best version of you. You learn how to successfully Unlock You!
Awareness of Self
Awareness of self is key to any significant changes. The problem often is not our unhelpful beliefs – we know how to change them using the ABC Model – but our lack of awareness of them.
Take a moment to be aware of all the patterns that have occurred in your life. We are likely to have made the same mistakes over and over again, partly because of our cognitive bias and expectations that caused us to choose badly in the first place, and partly because it has become our habitual behaviour, our route of least resistance.
Exercise 11.7: The You That Others See
Choose three people that you trust and explain to them that it’s extremely important that they are honest.
Ask them how they see you. If they were going to describe you to a good friend of theirs, what would they say?
Write the description down so that you can think about it afterwards.
This is sometimes an uncomfortable exercise because the way that others see us can be a fair distance from the way we see ourselves, but it’s well worth doing. It may be that there are positive qualities that you had not expected or realised that you possess and, if there are negative aspects, it gives you the opportunity to change the way you speak and behave. You can work to change the way you respond to other people, to bring their image into line with the positive Self-Image you are working towards and the person you want to be.
Awareness of Others
Awareness of others can help our journey to a happier state in a number of ways.
As we’ve said, we often expect people to react and respond to circumstances in the same way as us. Life becomes a whole lot easier if we realise that, in most cases, when there is conflict, the other person is not trying to make us suffer, they simply understand and interpret the situation differently from us. It is their truth. If we can credit them for being sincere, it gives us a fighting chance of coming to a shared understanding. It’s good to ask ourselves, ‘How does this appear to her?’, ‘How does she feel about this?’
Being aware of others guides us to an understanding that is essential in building and sustaining relationships. Most breakdowns of relationships, personal and professional, come at least in part from miscommunication and misunderstanding.
Try to keep the big picture in your mind; care about the result rather than who’s right.
Exercise 11.8: Deep Listening
In Mind Fitness, we call listening with effort and energy ‘attending’.
Part A – choose a conversation that you are going to have with someone during the day. It’s best if it is someone you know fairly well but who isn’t a very close friend.
Really listen to what they say, ask questions to find out more.
Afterwards, write down what you know about them/learned about them.
Part B – choose a conversation that you are going to have during the day with a close friend or relative.
Really listen to what they say.
It’s likely that you won’t have updated your opinion of them and the way you see them and respond to them for a very long time.
Afterwards, write down what surprised you/what you learned about them that was new.
Exercise 11.9: Walking in Their Shoes
Close your eyes and spend one minute considering a recent event or situation that has happened to someone that you know well. Now play through the event in your mind, as if it is happening to you.
If you have time, speak this ‘story’ out loud or write it down, still using the first person ‘I … ’.
It’s a great exercise for the development of empathy as well as awareness.
Questions and Answers
- How do I know if what I mean by happy is the same as anyone else?
What you mean by happy one day in one situation will not be the same as what you mean by happy in another situation, so, yes, it is likely that another person’s version of the emotion will be different again. But perhaps that doesn’t really matter. We can tell if another person is feeling sadness or joy and we can still play our part in helping them to have a positive experience. - If I have experienced extreme negative emotions, will I always be prone to experiencing them again?
As with any experience, once we have had it, the engram is established in our brain and there is a neural pathway. It is a route we have travelled. If we have experienced that negative emotion many times, it may have become a habitual path.
We can make the change as with any other by developing new habits and building new pathways. It’s not easy if it’s a route that had been emotionally charged but it’s absolutely possible. Try to make as many changes as you can to your lifestyle, altering habits and behaviours that, in your mind, are linked to the emotion.
If you know that the first time you felt depressed you were living in a rural village, perhaps make it easier for yourself by staying in the city for the period that you make the change, and use Adaptive Behaviour as much as you can. Begin new activities in new places, if this is possible. Surround yourself with new people and new ideas. Think about the things that give you a feeling of support and make sure these are built into your life.
Most important, be aware but not fearful. Know that you are strong. Expect the best but know that, if the worst came, you would experience it in the moment and come through it. You have done so before.
Conclusion
Some Mind Fitness workshop attendees express concern that, if they move from UNEs to HNEs, if they, say, lose their anger and aggression, they’ll end up being doormats to strong-minded or difficult people. The absolute opposite is true. By utilising HNEs, we can stay in control and form considered, rational, assertive responses to life’s challenges. Having the ability to apply HNEs instead of defaulting to UNEs is, quite simply, a life changer. It takes a little time and practice to go from intellectual understanding to emotionally embedding your new responses, but the day you realise that you’ve automatically responded in a considered, rational, measured way to something that previously would have caused you upset is a day of personal liberation.
This is the chapter in which we have looked at happiness. Key to remember is that acting positively will make you feel positive. Have a day when you determine to be cheerful and kind to everyone you meet; act only with compassion; think only with compassion.
Through the Mind Fitness process, one thing that is certain to become stronger is your capacity to enjoy life. Remember that you don’t enjoy anything unless you are paying attention to it. Don’t let the good stuff pass you by; think about how differently the chocolate tasted when you were eating it mindfully. Look around your house. There is probably a host of objects that are connected to memories. Take a minute to recall each one and why you wanted to buy it or how it was given to you. There is no point in having these things if you do not enjoy them.
And remember not to judge yourself or others. A mistake does not require an emotional response – only a course-correct.