When starting the day, it's good to have a sense of purpose and a clear head. We want to utilise the daylight hours well, be productive and get through without drama or crises. Ideally it would be great to avoid discord and even better if we can share some happiness along the way. For many people, though, it proves too often to be a different story.
With temptations everywhere to use crutches for emotional fragility, food and alcohol being popular choices, it's not hard to see how addiction can take control of our waking hours. Brains are super-sensitive to pattern adoption, so anything can become addictive. All our reactions, potentially, will replicate if we pursue them regularly enough, including the way we interact with other people. We can spend a lot of time walking into traps of our own making without having the slightest idea that we create them for ourselves.
To overcome this tendency to keep on crawling from the wreckage, we need first to take account of triggers igniting the train of events leading to obsession being realised on a regular basis. We can't be happy if we are stressing out about things, and we can only be the best version of ourselves when we are content with who we are in our own skin.
6 points to have in mind, then, when you set out to catch those wrecking balls;
Recognise a regular pattern. Does a certain event set off an emotional response in you? Getting home and expecting an argument can lead to one materialising very quickly. Seeing a job left undone can fire up a ready-meal sense of indignation - someone will take the blame. Being asked a question (again) about a menial task can incite instant irritation - whose head is going to get snapped off this time? Being aware of these patterns opens the door to changing our responses, which gets us more than half-way to solving the problem.
Consciously decide what kind of person you would like to be when faced with these challenges. As they crop up regularly, we can find ourselves systematically turning into monsters with no outlet for our rage except the one closest to us, which can be a colleague, partner, friend or anyone familiar in fact. We don't usually behave so cantankerously in front of strangers - use this to your advantage in reminding yourself of who you really want to be.
Prepare for each trigger in advance. Now that you've taken the time to recognise it's there, see the pattern for what it is and think differently about your approach to it. Walk in with flowers, call a meeting to determine better courses of action, delegate mentors and work-buddies to quell those insecurities people often struggle with. Using your time well can impact positively on how others use theirs!
Praise yourself for every challenge well met. Your brain will be pushing for the old habit to be restored (neurones prefer the path of least resistance!), so to overcome this (in other words, to fight the addiction) it's important to give your brain a reward for doing things differently. A box to fill with post-it notes each time you successfully navigate a tricky situation, a pack of gold stars to stick on your computer, anything that gets your conscious mind into the zone of This Is a Good Thing.
Be cautious about the things you convince yourself are true. Very often, our self-speak gets overrun by gremlins telling us the worst about people, places and predicaments, assuring us that 'it's always going to be this way' and 'it's never going to change'. In fact whenever you find yourself thinking the words 'always' and/or 'never', consider it a possible red flag for negative thinking. Make sure you stay wary of gremlins, maximising your chances of optimising positivity.
Praise others whenever possible. Giving out positive messages also tells your brain that being generous with good affirmations is allowed. You are capable of being as lovely as the next person, no matter how much provocation may come your way, Remember that other people are wanting to be kind, too, and their confidence is linked to the way we behave towards them. Our confidence is lifted by little soupçons of success.
Looking at the wide range of issues potentially faced in Being Our Best can produce a sense of overwhelming, a feeling that it can't be done. This is the brain's way of defending against change. What we find, in pushing for change, is that it's not as hard as we thought it would be and once a new pattern is established, we look back and realise that there was no effort involved at all. What happened, in effect, is that we recognised a pattern and sought to change it, gave ourselves an opportunity to change it and persevered against the panel of gremlins determined to make us imagine the worst. After the event, it's hard to recall what made us believe it was going to be so difficult.
Our brains are amazing - they can perform unbelievable feats, and they can also be subject to incredible levels of self-defeatism. We are not going to achieve perfection, we are likely to encounter difficulties and all of us are flawed. Don't be floored by your flaws, it's much more beneficial to see ourselves as holistic beings and recognise the necessary balance of strength and weakness, give and take, plus and minus in our lives. Empathy involves appreciating the mirrors we all share person-to-person, along with the individuality that ensures no two people can think exactly the same way as each other. Yes, life is tough, but it wouldn't be a lesson if it wasn't, and our job is surely to learn how to do things better than we've done them before.
Take care, have fun - your world turns in your hands once more every day.
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