It is shiny day, isn't it, and it is a lovely life?! A very beautiful life.
I know what you might have said now: how come it is a lovely life with all these problems that I have experienced so far and those which I will go through on the future! Or you might label me as: wealthy, lazy, etc.! If he does not have problems, then he should be doing nothing in life! (Do not worry I experience many).
Let us have a moment to dig deeply beyond our very conscious mind, slightly towards the subconscious; the place where we can access some of the invisible thoughts. Please consider this question, and I know you will be brave enough to answer it:
Do you fear get deeply happy? Do you feel worried from enjoying a lovely time without worrying about the coming problems? Do you prefer to keep your mental psychological bodyguards working all the time, even in your dreams?
You might be surprised if I tell you that so many, if not most of, the people I asked them this during workshops say: YES! Many people recognize this experience.
Although you might not find it easy now to feel deeply happy and relaxed, you can and you will be able to overcome this state.
It happens because our past contains considerable harmful experiences which caused pain and disappointments. Unfortunately, they taught us math and science, but not how to solve and adapt to our problems so that we can overcome the psychological burden of them. So we perceived them larger than they actually were.
To adapt and to prevent further pain in the future, we lower our expectation from life, and we hire an alarm officer inside our psychological system, who job is to alarm us when we are to deeply relax or enjoy the moment, so that we keep our level of expectations low from life and from people, in order to prevent potential unexpected pain.
Your alarm officer is very committed and disciplined, does not sleep, and does not stop working. He is doing his job of warning you from being deeply happy, when you are about to exceed certain level of happiness which bring to you relaxation.
His job is not to let you relaxed enough so that you stay in the urgency mode to face coming unknown problems – from his point of view.
Alarm Officer is not able to read the future, but he knows your past very well. Whenever you become overly happy, he brings to you the alarm. If you try to challenge him, he brings supporting evidence from your past and try to tell you that you might face similar situation, so you are better staying alarmed. Unfortunately, we believe him and get back again to urgency mode.
This causes us to reject current and coming positives. It is a sort of automatic thought that is triggered when we are about to relax.
The alarm officer has only been taught about your problems, and so he has only one statement that he keeps saying and arguing about with you. He says:- "since you have faced painful problems in the past, for sure, you will face similar ones on the future, and pain is coming anyway, so stay in the urgency mode".
When you believe the alarms of the Alarm Officers, your body stays in the alarm mode and consequently generate the sort of hormones that suite urgency situations: cortisol and adrenaline. Those hormones are harmful on healthy body functioning if they are stimulated over the long term, and causes blood pressure, heart diseases and other chronic diseases related to stress.
As for now, you feel that your alarm officer is your best faithful employee that maintains your psychological wellbeing. In fact he is not. Your alarm officer, needs to be retrained, developed and coached to learn when and how to alarm you so that you can enjoy your life. For now, he is a block to your happiness, optimism and causes to you a lot of destructive consequences. To name few:
- Keep your worried that the worst is coming
- Let you have only few amount of happiness and relaxation
- Keep you from trusting, loving or feeling intimacy with people
- Causes bad dreams, nightmares, and negative daydreaming
- Keeping you pessimistic and suspicious
You might be spending a lovely vacation, in one the most beautiful lands in the earth, with all who you love, but not being able to deeply relax and feeling optimistic about the coming days because of this Alarm Officer.
So it is the time to retain him. I will discuss few causes to this maladaptive thought an how to overcome them. Use them to retain your Alarm Officer:
§ First lesson:- more pressure on the muscle the less it can carry more or better
The assumption is that if you stayed alarmed and awaked, then the problems you expect (without evidence) will not surprise you, and you can stand up the war readily and quickly. You assume that the level of disappointment will be less, and the factor of surprise will not let the enemy (the problem) to win.
The contrary is correct. The more you keep holding the weight, the less you will be able to carry more weights placed on you suddenly. You will have been already exhausted, tired and waiting for a break. Such a defensive mental position, keep your autonomic nervous system in an alarm stage, thus you consume more energy, and stimulate you body to generate cortizol and adrenaline that weakness your body overtime, and let you less able to process information effectively in problems solving and decision making situations.
So, the longer you are in defense, the weaker you are once the problems rise. It is like the cold war between the USA and Russia. They spend a lot of time, money and mental effort, and then most of weapons they developed have never been used. This was a waste to nations' energy which could have been directed to better scientific and social development to solve problems which both countries are facing now.
Somebody will tell me, what about risk management? Well, rejecting the positives is not about risk management, but rather risk escalation. It escalates the amount of problems you face. Because the process a called selective attention. It means that people are more likely to collect information about something they expect, like and motivated to find. What happens is that you will exacerbate signs of problems, perceive them larger than they really are, and start taking actions or daydreaming about the harm you might face and this let you more unbalanced, confused and worried. Sometimes, you will take proactive actions that will turn the signs or a real problem.
§ Second lesson: - serious problems develop gradually and I can be notified fairly early about them, why to worry?
In reality what we call serious problems, do not strike us suddenly. We see them escalate gradually, until they become critical. This is natural pattern of creation (gradual development stages). The assumption of suddenly striking problems which are serious is not real; it is a myth in our mind, which sometimes, loves to believe unrealistic stories like Harry Potter, Alaa Aldin, or the famous movie "300".
So my friend: relax as you will be notified early enough for serious problems. Silly problems can be handled without all such guarding and urgency.
§ Third lesson: problems are not catastrophic
Rejecting the positive is about perceiving life's natural discrepancies from normal (or what you expect to be normal) as catastrophic events which damage your life – my life is all about problems.
Life's natural discrepancies from normal (which we call problems) are normal, natural, and necessary for you to live, grow, develop and invent.
We need to admit that sometimes we capitalize on our capabilities and come up with talented ideas, only when problems rise. Problematic situations, place enough challenges to us to utilize our full potential. It happens to you, does not it?
Perceive and rethink the many problems you faced and passed, the level of experience you gained, the level of self-confidence and maturity you developed.
So, accept problems, perceive them are opportunities for unleashing your capacity. Maintain your life going as you do not need to stop it until the problem disappears. Just work on it.
§ Fourth lesson:- Learn to relax and be happy gradually
Try to learn how to relax.
1. Start with determining to feel happy and enjoy what you have for 5 minutes.
2. Then gradually expand the time frame in which you decide to relax and enjoy life.
3. Expand it more an more.
Your officer can not learn not to alarm for too long at the beginning. But you can train him to wait for sometime until he gets used to it.
§ Fifth lesson:- be specific about what to worry about – no more vagueness
Now we will teach our Alarm officer to concentrate only on apparent problems we have now, or the problems which we can most likely predict specifically. We need to teach him that he has not right to keep us in the urgency mode for something not specific, serious enough. No worrying based on vague assumptions anymore. Only specific situations will take my attention fair enough.
§ Sixth lesson:- The equation is different, so where is the evidence of reoccurrence
Your alarm officer do not have evidence from the future, he can only refer to the past, and assume that it will happen again. Asks him what is the evidence that a serious problem will happen again life the past. Every experience has three elements: you, situation, and people. I am different than before, stronger, experienced, knowledgably, and people in the future and situations will never be the same as before because I am on a different life conditions than before. The people I deal with are now different like me as they become more mature and experienced. It seems that the three elements of the equation have changed. Your past stories will not work anymore to worry me.
§ Seventh lesson:- be action-oriented and keep a challenges log
Instead of worrying only, when I have a problem or when I expect a problem, write down, and formulate an action plan to solve it, to avoid it, or to live with it if it can not be solved (like the mood of you grandfather).
This will have many advantages:
First, it will remind you that you do not have many problems or even problems many times.
Second, it will focus your attention on solving the problem rather than worrying.
Third, it will be a good history for you, it will remind you overtime, that you have passed many problems in the past, you are capable, strong, and qualified to live a happy life.
Fourth, it will lower your stress level, as you will feel more on control in your life. Science and my professional experience tell me that what make us feel in control and more relaxed not the disappearance of problems, but rather the actions we do to work on them.
Thomas Edison once said:
"One might think that the money value of invention constitutes its reward to the man who loves his work. But speaking for myself, I can honestly say this is not so, . I continue to find my greatest pleasure, and so my rewards in the work that precedes what the world called success".
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