15th January 2020
How to escape a negative headspace
We’ve all been there, even the most positive of us and its debilitating. We find ourselves moaning at the first opportunity, blaming others or ‘the system’ for your problems and just generally dragging yourself down. It feels inescapable and is the first step towards depression.
It’s not that you’re a poor coper, you just have a poor strategy with which to cope. All you need is a new strategy. I’ve written before about how your emotional muscles are muscles just like any other and they must be exercised! So, I’ll now give you a way to exercise them but it comes with a warning. It takes time!
Two men were building a cathedral and a friend asked them each individually if they liked what they’re doing. The first one said ‘I come here every day, I don’t get very far, brick after brick I lay and I just have so far to go, I can’t see the end in sight’. The other man says, ‘I LOVE my job, I come here every day and make progress, I look back to see how far we’ve come and I look forward to the challenge of this calling, I am building a cathedral and it takes time but it’ll be worth it’.
The first man had weak emotional muscles! The second man had strong ones. How they got to that point is a separate story but the moral of this story is the same. We need a powerful strategy to improve our mindset and coping mechanisms. This is what to do.
1) Write down something you feel incredibly grateful for. A moment in time, a memory, with your family or children, a Christmas time, a family outing. Just something that you feel incredibly grateful for and put yourself right back there. See it as if you were there, feel it, remember the smells, the tastes, the touch and live it as if it was now. And if you feel a smile creep upon your face, let it flow. Do this for 1 minute.
2) Write down a second moment, again, something you feel so grateful for, that perhaps didn’t need to happen. Do this for 1 minute.
3) Write down a third moment and again, see it, visualise intensely and feel it as if you were there, right now. Let it fill you up.
4) We all love coincidences, and we love them because it reminds us that life happens for us and not to us. Think of a coincidence that changed your life. You were on a way to a meeting and you met the love of your life there, or a random meeting with a stranger exposed you to an idea that changed your life. Do this for 2 minutes.
The second three things to do is think of three things you want to accomplish. Spend a minute focusing on each and it could be a daily goal, weekly goal or even a life time goal but here is the difference: think of them as if they’re already yours, as if you have achieved them. What does this feel like? What does this mean to the people around you and how will that make you feel? Go spend a minute on each then get up and get after those feelings!!
The real secret to this is to do it DAILY! We must train our emotional muscles every single day and in three month’s time, you see how much your entire life has changed.
