Losing Perspective, and Your Big BUT
Have you ever been so triggered that you lost your personal power?
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When triggered, you lose your perspective, your grounding, and your ability to see both sides. You literally and figuratively, lose your mind. Once this happens, you can’t help view most everything through a very negative lens.
When triggered, we lose executive decision-making power, and ultimately, get in our own way. We lose our power. Here’s how… I’ll use the example of it raining on your long-awaited-vacation.
We are attached to the “shoulds” instead of what is. By focusing on what should have happened, we give away our ability(power) to reason and act effectively. “It shouldn’t have rained on my vacation and now my trip is ruined. I am going to be miserable.”
When the going gets tough, we (often) try to make a quick exit. In the midst of pain, emotional drain, or a tough situation, our instinct is to run. We leave the scene to avoid pain. To stay, endure, and deal with the situation—do the heavy emotional lifting—is “emotional maturity”. Developing and flexing our emotional maturity muscles get us strong, capable, and moving toward regaining our power.
We apply judgment. If you are ruminating on how awful and bad the situation is, that’s normal. However, you are most likely not the only person in the equation. Your negative mood/perspective/attitude might be the worst part of the situation for others. Also, the situation might be (very) good for someone or something in the end. Again, emotional maturity. Make peace with it. Reframe your thinking and your story. Get out of your own way, and enjoy your vacation despite the rain. Please suspend judgment.
We let abstractions become our reality. If you’ve gone on two back-to-back rainy vacations – your reality becomes “every time we go on vacation it rains”. We cannot live life to the fullest with this kind of thinkingThis kind of thinking prevents us from living our lives to the fullest.
Three FIXES:
Accept the reality for what it is. Find the good in the situation. Reframe.
OLD: “We would have had fun in Sedona, but it was raining, so we were miserable.”
NEW: “We went to Sedona but it was raining. We made the best of it and hiked through the mountains instead.”
Get rid of your big “but” and insert an “and”.
OLD: “We would have had fun in Sedona, but it was raining, so we were miserable.”
REVISED: “We went to Sedona but it was raining. We made the best of it and hiked through the mountains instead.”
NEW/BETTER WITHOUT THE BIG “BUT”: “We went to Sedona and it was raining, so we decided to hike through the mountains anyway to see nature at its best—the colors were saturated, lush, and amazing.”
Resistance to a situation robs us of our ability to ask the question, “How do I move forward? or “What do I want to have happen now?” When we get caught in blame and resistance, we prevent ourselves from enjoying life. Acceptance gives us our power back!
For the record, I have been to Sedona in the rain. We hiked 5 miles to our campsite…in the rain. We set up tents…in the rain. We were miserable…in the rain. I was miserable…in the rain. I was quite cranky, taking it out on the others. And then, something amazing happened – well, it did for me anyway. I made a choice. I decided I wanted to have a good time despite the rain, and accepted the situation for what it was. Like it or not, it was raining! We swam (in the rain), went on exploration hikes (in the rain), played games (in the rain), laughed at the great future stories we would tell about this crazy weekend, and enjoyed the teamwork building a make-shift awning to protect our fire created.
And “coincidentally”, once we fully accepted our fate and made the choice to have fun, the rain stopped.