Time to get off the hook: turning emotions into allies
Do you know how to enjoy work and life in general as we do not? If your Monday looks like the same memes, Friday pleases, and colleagues and clients periodically suggest thoughts of self-harm, then the book that will be discussed in this Friday article may come in handy.
In 2016, Susan David, a psychologist and business coach from the United States, summarized her twenty-year experience in counseling and theoretical insights in the book “Emotional Flexibility: How to Learn to Rejoice in Changes and Enjoy Work and Life”. The concept presented in this work became one of the most discussed novelties and gathered a lot of regalia: Amazon declared it the best book of 2016, and the concept of “emotional flexibility” introduced by the researcher was awarded the title of the idea of the year according to Harvard Business Review. In a nutshell, this idea can be expressed as follows: success is determined by the way we build interaction with our inner world and, first of all, emotional responses. At first glance, it sounds like something extremely abstract on the topic of personal growth, but in fact, many theses are universal and quite suitable for daily use at work and in everyday life. We have read and outlined the main ideas for those who have little time but a lot of motivation.
Emotions are an instant physiological response to important signals that we receive from the outside world, a mechanism for synchronizing our internal state and behavior with the situation. They represent a natural orientation system, thanks to which we not only survive, but also achieve success.
At the same time, as everyone knows perfectly well, one cannot completely rely on emotions. Sometimes they present a situation in a distorted form, confuse and push on undesirable actions. So how do you handle a landmark system that constantly fails? Many people prefer to try to turn it off completely, others set filters, and others believe it unconditionally.
David offers an original approach to managing his inner life - emotional flexibility, which involves conscious acceptance, introspection and breadth of thought.
The main secret is to consider emotions precisely as warning signals that the security system gives us. Ignoring these signals is not productive, but we must not forget that they need to be deciphered and interpreted, rather than calling directly for action.
Emotional flexibility refers precisely to such gaps between the feelings that the situation causes in us and the behavior that it dictates. It is important to capture this moment, connect rational thinking and make the right decision. But it is more complicated than it seems.
Why? Because rigidity is inherent in our thinking - the tendency to give out template reactions to the stimulus, bypassing the stage of analysis. This tendency is especially pronounced in scenarios where the hook is involved - some kind of event or experience with which we have a lot of negative experience and defeatist attitudes.
Our brain not only remembers events, but interprets them in a certain way, reveals patterns and turns everything into accompanying emotions. Thus, from simple facts, judgments are gradually formed, and then whole plots. Naturally, the broader and more radical generalizations we make, the less they usually correspond to reality. Worse, they are often negative and harmful.
The chain can be, say, this: “At this pace, I will not have time to finish by the deadline”> “I also delayed work last week, I always run out of time”> “Half of the department works faster than me, I do not stretch”> “Do not was to move into this sphere, still nothing works, and I’ll drag myself in the tail "> of the installation" I am a bad worker "," I am slow-witted "," Nothing shines for me in sphere X. "
When the script is formed, we will try to apply it wherever possible, in the first encounter with a suitable trigger (for example, time pressure or criticism). When this happens, the "automatic mode" starts: we no longer think, but simply reproduce the finished chain of reasoning and experience.
The hook consists of three components:
All this is a direct consequence of the specifics of our thinking. People like to create mental categories and distribute objects, phenomena, and even those around them. Categorization is generally a useful mechanism that avoids information overload. Thanks to her, we use empirical knowledge to cope with the routine with minimal effort.
However, when we rely too much on hard, predefined categories and adapt to them, we begin to produce standard reactions to new events, without thinking about how they fit. People caught on the hook of a certain way of thinking perceive reality distorted, a wide context of the situation passes by them, which leads to rash decisions.
As soon as the brain switches to automatic mode, it takes effort and a lot of flexibility to get out of it. Accordingly, for those who rely too much on ready-made algorithms, there is a danger of never leaving the “go with the flow” mode and missing out on the many options available to the receptive mind.
There are four hooks that we come across most often:
Hook No. 1: Thinking badly
Decisions are based on assumptions, hypothetical consequences of actions - a person seems to relieve himself of the phrase “I thought ...”.
"I thought it was not interesting to anyone, so I said nothing."
"I thought that they would figure it out on their own, and did not intervene."
Hook # 2: Talking Monkey
This is the name of the well-known “internal dialogue” with the image of a real interlocutor who exists only in our head and for which we ourselves come up with cues, objections, and possibly insults. The conversation is fictitious, but the emotions that it causes in us are real. This is a great way to set yourself up for a worse outcome, inflate a problem and lose a lot of time and energy. The talking monkey throws us out of the present, not giving us neutral space for creative thinking and not allowing us to focus on what is happening at the moment.
Hook # 3: Old Ideas You Have Already Grown From
It happens that certain behavioral algorithms are developed as a protective reaction to the surrounding reality. At some point, a person finds himself in a different life situation, where they are no longer needed and not effective, but continues to reproduce outdated stereotypes. Often this is a symptom of an old, untreated injury. For example, many children from toxic families, when they grow up and begin to build relationships with partners, adhere to those safety rules that they developed for themselves in childhood - not to open completely, to avoid conflicts, not to show weakness.
Hook No. 4: Excessive directness
Here we are talking more about the desire to get out of the dispute "right" at all costs. Sometimes we forget that the best outcome of the dialogue is a compromise and mutual understanding, and we persistently continue to bend our line to the victorious end, although the conversation has already ceased to be productive and is turning into a normal quarrel.
This question is part of a broader and more fundamental problem: how to relate to your feelings in principle? The way we are accustomed to reacting to the emergence of some kind of emotion directly affects the resolution of the situation as a whole - whether we go along the beaten path or act according to circumstances.
Different experts offer different options for a basic list of emotions. David accepts the following:
As we can see, most of them (five out of seven) are negative. Consequently, unpleasant experiences will inevitably form an essential part of our emotional life.
Among the strategies that people apply to negative feelings, the following two are especially popular:
Clogging . In an attempt to free himself from the hook, a person leaves his emotions unattended - he pretends that nothing is happening and is trying to be distracted by other impressions.
The problem here is that, brushing off unpleasant feelings, it is impossible to understand what caused them, which means that it will not be possible to find any solution. Serious changes and personal growth are always accompanied by deep and strong emotions, and those who refuse them are forced to stay in one place for years. In addition, avoidance strategies — conscious efforts not to do something (for example, “not think about it”) consume no less resources than active actions. And finally, suppressed emotions do not disappear - they accumulate and sooner or later take their toll, and not at all as you expected (the so-called emotional displacement). It turns out a paradox: sealers seek to gain control and save energy by suppressing, but in the end they have neither one nor the other.
Winding up. Here the situation is the opposite: a person cannot let go of the situation, experiencing and analyzing it ad infinitum. At first glance, it may seem that he is on the right track - after all, awareness and acceptance of emotions is taking place - but the coiler is “wallowing” in experiences that intensify with each new round, and never reaches the stage of productive actions.
So, both of these strategies do not work in the long term, although they can “relieve symptoms” for a while. They can be used in individual situations, but in no case can not be turned into familiar mechanisms.
What approach then should be considered productive? The next chapter is devoted to the answer to this question.
The first step toward emotional flexibility is this: face your problems, come to terms with them, and find a way to coexist peacefully. If you treat your demons with sympathy and interest, as part of themselves, they lose their strength.
“Compassionate” means accepting your thoughts and feelings not as inevitable or unambiguously correct, but as a natural result of the influence of past experience and the current situation. The acceptance of what is is an essential basis for control and change. And this does not mean that you need to try to see only the good - just the same invaluable awareness of your weaknesses and weaknesses provides an opportunity for growth.
Acceptance of our feelings and desires as given should not be considered a one-time action, it should become a permanent state for us. Any feelings, reactions, impulses have a right to exist. The changes discussed above will concern concrete actions, not emotions - forces should not be spent on struggling with momentary desires, but on making decisions that correspond to our values.
Note : it will not be amiss to also work on your emotional vocabulary - the ability to notice, distinguish and name a variety of feelings. It is impossible to accept emotion if you do not understand what you are experiencing.
Numerous experiments show that one of the effective ways to work out your feelings is through written self-expression (in other words, splashing sore on paper). Why? Because in this way we take the next step towards emotional flexibility - we distance ourselves from our emotions. Translating feelings into words, we get the opportunity to look at them from the side and gradually move from experience to analysis.
Distance - this is the creation of the gap between the stimulus and the reaction, which was discussed in the first chapter. Such a gap can be used to fully appreciate the context, recall your goals and values and choose a line of behavior that is relevant to them.
To be hooked means to see only one answer, one that impulses tell us. Moving away from the problem, we, in full accordance with the laws of perspective, get a wider overview of opportunities, and hence greater flexibility. If we consider each thought as a thing in itself, we will not fall under its control and will be able to choose what to do with it - develop, perceive it as a guide to action or set aside. Such a skill is called meta-look - a look from above.
The author offers the following distance techniques:
All the techniques described so far have served one purpose: to keep oneself from making thoughtless decisions dictated by momentary emotions. Turning off the autopilot, plunging into a situation and looking at it through the eyes of an outside observer, we free up space for thoughts of a different type. What then should be the basis for decisions?
Following your own path is the art of living, relying on your personal set of values: that is, beliefs and principles of behavior that give meaning to life and bring satisfaction. The next step in achieving emotional flexibility is to identify these values and learn to be guided by them in making decisions.
The most difficult thing here is to prevent the substitution of what is important to us with what is “supposed to be.” Often we need some kind of guidance, we find them in the surrounding or in the conventional wisdom, which broadcasts the cultural space. There is a process of so-called social infection.
Not understanding our true desires, we run the risk of replacing them with strangers and actually living life on autopilot.
The author emphasizes that the values in her understanding are not about rigid rules of life, but a personal set of guidelines for focused activities.
To get an idea of your own set of values, you should ask yourself these questions:
When you realize what is important to you, the gap between true feelings and actions begins to narrow. Values protect us from being infected by negative patterns and give impetus to the right decisions in small everyday dilemmas. Without them, developing willpower is difficult and futile.
Adapting your behavior to your chosen values is a more evolutionary process. than revolutionary. It does not occur due to a radical revolution, but consists of many small everyday changes - mini-adjustments. The effect of them gradually accumulates, and as a result, the course of our life changes dramatically.
Mini adjustments have three main areas of application. You can change:
1. Settings
Attitudes are basic ideas about the world and our place in it, which determine how we interact with it. They can be either very broad (“People do not change”, “Women are more stupid than men”), and private, relating to a specific person and her self-perception (“I am not a creative person”, “I can’t do without a drink”). With a change in attitudes, the line of behavior also naturally changes — adaptation to the “new” reality takes place.
2. Motivation
Motivation like I want always works better than motivation like I need. Even if an unpleasant decision is fully consistent with our values, you will not go far with bare willpower - you need to connect your own desires. To some extent, it is simply a matter of correctly formulating the goal: it should reflect our true interests in such a way as to generate interest. An incorrectly formulated goal is based on external suggestions, negative attitudes or a sense of shame.
Cf .: "You have to lose weight, otherwise I won’t pull the sally into the mountains in the summer" and "You have to lose weight, otherwise it is disgusting to look at me!"
I want-motivation pushes us to look for alternatives, and suggests reasons not to follow the temptation ("Actually, I don’t really want sweets"); necessary-motivation reinforces the temptation, creating the feeling that we are oppressed and constrained ("And so I don’t eat anything tasty, but what's the point?").
Note : it’s easy to fall into the trap of “tortured positive” here. Sometimes in a situation there is nothing that could appeal to our “want”. If this happens often in a certain area, perhaps there is a need for serious changes.
3. Habits A
habit is an automatic response to an often occurring situation caused by an external factor.
Long-term changes are always a matter of habit. At a certain point, we stop each time making an informed choice in favor of something and we put this or that behavior pattern into the “default” option. In fact, this is the same autopilot that was discussed at the beginning of the book, only in the case of positive changes does it work for us. Habit not only guarantees the reproduction of action, but also frees us of mental resources.
How to form a habit?
So, we got off the hook, outlined the range of values, began to introduce mini-adjustments in accordance with them, and gradually introduced the necessary actions into the habit, accustoming ourselves to play them on autopilot. Everything seems to be fine, but if in our lives such automatic actions begin to prevail, this leads to a lack of growth, boredom and rigidity - that is, to exactly what we tried to get away from at the very first stage.
A similar state, when nothing is left for us in a certain area that can be considered a challenge to our abilities and all tasks can be performed with our eyes closed, is called supercompetence. It leaves a feeling of routine and predictability and does not lead to prosperity, even if we are engaged in what is included in our values. The opposite of this state of affairs is situations of super-complexity, when we are constantly in tension and forced to give all the best 150%, which suppresses creative thinking and depletes the psyche. Emotional flexibility implies a constant balance between these two states. The next step is to follow the principle of the balancer.
Balancer principle- This is a search for an interchange point where the comfort of simple, familiar situations is balanced by intense interaction with the unknown, and even stress. This point determines the area of optimal development in which we could live to the limit of abilities - not wallowing in routine, but also not tormented by a sense of powerlessness.
The main obstacle here is our desire for comfort, that is, in fact, for security. Leaving the comfort zone is always associated with uncertainty and risk, and evolutionary mechanisms encourage us to avoid the unfamiliar and potentially dangerous. Gaps in understanding the situation always cause subconscious fear. For us, a coherent, holistic picture of the world is so important that we can go against our own interests, so as not to “break the pattern”.
for example: people with low self-esteem gravitate toward those who have a low opinion of them, as they seek confirmation of their attitudes. Success inspires them with anxiety, which may lead to self-sabotage.
Therefore, difficulties must be introduced into one's life consciously and in a controlled manner, maintaining a balance between complexity and skill. Experiments show that in the development of any skill there is a so-called stability zone: a segment in which a person can feel super-competent, but the development possibilities have not yet been exhausted. The desire for continuous complexity of tasks, openness to new information allows you not to get stuck on a smooth plot.
How to get out of the stability zone?
***
Commentary by the compiler : The ninth and tenth chapters are devoted to the application of the described techniques in specific contexts (professional activities and parenting) and do not add anything new in terms of theoretical foundations. In the full version of the book you will also find much more examples from life and detailed metaphors - the text, in the best traditions of American literature on self-help, is generously diluted with entertaining content. We also left a few paragraphs outside the synopsis, which deal with particular problems that are more relevant for Western realities and worldviews (the yoke of “positive thinking,” stressophobia).
If we talk about personal impressions, the ideas that David expresses in different parts of the book are not striking in their novelty. About the vaccinated scenarios that a person lives over and over, say, Bern wrote in detail, the toxicity of suppressed emotions is also a common place in psychology. However, the author very naturally weaves the various techniques, principles and solutions into a single coherent approach, simplifying them a bit and adapting them for everyday use. Indeed, there is a desire to try, especially since the technique is very, sorry for the pun, flexible - it does not require large investments of the resource and you can try it on any trifle.
In 2016, Susan David, a psychologist and business coach from the United States, summarized her twenty-year experience in counseling and theoretical insights in the book “Emotional Flexibility: How to Learn to Rejoice in Changes and Enjoy Work and Life”. The concept presented in this work became one of the most discussed novelties and gathered a lot of regalia: Amazon declared it the best book of 2016, and the concept of “emotional flexibility” introduced by the researcher was awarded the title of the idea of the year according to Harvard Business Review. In a nutshell, this idea can be expressed as follows: success is determined by the way we build interaction with our inner world and, first of all, emotional responses. At first glance, it sounds like something extremely abstract on the topic of personal growth, but in fact, many theses are universal and quite suitable for daily use at work and in everyday life. We have read and outlined the main ideas for those who have little time but a lot of motivation.
Chapter 1: From rigidity to flexibility
Emotions are an instant physiological response to important signals that we receive from the outside world, a mechanism for synchronizing our internal state and behavior with the situation. They represent a natural orientation system, thanks to which we not only survive, but also achieve success.
At the same time, as everyone knows perfectly well, one cannot completely rely on emotions. Sometimes they present a situation in a distorted form, confuse and push on undesirable actions. So how do you handle a landmark system that constantly fails? Many people prefer to try to turn it off completely, others set filters, and others believe it unconditionally.
David offers an original approach to managing his inner life - emotional flexibility, which involves conscious acceptance, introspection and breadth of thought.
The main secret is to consider emotions precisely as warning signals that the security system gives us. Ignoring these signals is not productive, but we must not forget that they need to be deciphered and interpreted, rather than calling directly for action.
There is always a gap between the stimulus and the reaction, and in this gap a person has freedom of choice.
Emotional flexibility refers precisely to such gaps between the feelings that the situation causes in us and the behavior that it dictates. It is important to capture this moment, connect rational thinking and make the right decision. But it is more complicated than it seems.
Why? Because rigidity is inherent in our thinking - the tendency to give out template reactions to the stimulus, bypassing the stage of analysis. This tendency is especially pronounced in scenarios where the hook is involved - some kind of event or experience with which we have a lot of negative experience and defeatist attitudes.
Chapter 2: On the hook
Our brain not only remembers events, but interprets them in a certain way, reveals patterns and turns everything into accompanying emotions. Thus, from simple facts, judgments are gradually formed, and then whole plots. Naturally, the broader and more radical generalizations we make, the less they usually correspond to reality. Worse, they are often negative and harmful.
The chain can be, say, this: “At this pace, I will not have time to finish by the deadline”> “I also delayed work last week, I always run out of time”> “Half of the department works faster than me, I do not stretch”> “Do not was to move into this sphere, still nothing works, and I’ll drag myself in the tail "> of the installation" I am a bad worker "," I am slow-witted "," Nothing shines for me in sphere X. "
When the script is formed, we will try to apply it wherever possible, in the first encounter with a suitable trigger (for example, time pressure or criticism). When this happens, the "automatic mode" starts: we no longer think, but simply reproduce the finished chain of reasoning and experience.
The hook consists of three components:
- Internal barrel organ (the same patterns and settings that we repeat at every opportunity)
- Cognitive fusion (a kind of video sequence to an internal monologue: memories, images)
- Emotional shock (negative feelings that this experience causes us)
All this is a direct consequence of the specifics of our thinking. People like to create mental categories and distribute objects, phenomena, and even those around them. Categorization is generally a useful mechanism that avoids information overload. Thanks to her, we use empirical knowledge to cope with the routine with minimal effort.
However, when we rely too much on hard, predefined categories and adapt to them, we begin to produce standard reactions to new events, without thinking about how they fit. People caught on the hook of a certain way of thinking perceive reality distorted, a wide context of the situation passes by them, which leads to rash decisions.
As soon as the brain switches to automatic mode, it takes effort and a lot of flexibility to get out of it. Accordingly, for those who rely too much on ready-made algorithms, there is a danger of never leaving the “go with the flow” mode and missing out on the many options available to the receptive mind.
There are four hooks that we come across most often:
Hook No. 1: Thinking badly
Decisions are based on assumptions, hypothetical consequences of actions - a person seems to relieve himself of the phrase “I thought ...”.
"I thought it was not interesting to anyone, so I said nothing."
"I thought that they would figure it out on their own, and did not intervene."
Hook # 2: Talking Monkey
This is the name of the well-known “internal dialogue” with the image of a real interlocutor who exists only in our head and for which we ourselves come up with cues, objections, and possibly insults. The conversation is fictitious, but the emotions that it causes in us are real. This is a great way to set yourself up for a worse outcome, inflate a problem and lose a lot of time and energy. The talking monkey throws us out of the present, not giving us neutral space for creative thinking and not allowing us to focus on what is happening at the moment.
Hook # 3: Old Ideas You Have Already Grown From
It happens that certain behavioral algorithms are developed as a protective reaction to the surrounding reality. At some point, a person finds himself in a different life situation, where they are no longer needed and not effective, but continues to reproduce outdated stereotypes. Often this is a symptom of an old, untreated injury. For example, many children from toxic families, when they grow up and begin to build relationships with partners, adhere to those safety rules that they developed for themselves in childhood - not to open completely, to avoid conflicts, not to show weakness.
Hook No. 4: Excessive directness
Here we are talking more about the desire to get out of the dispute "right" at all costs. Sometimes we forget that the best outcome of the dialogue is a compromise and mutual understanding, and we persistently continue to bend our line to the victorious end, although the conversation has already ceased to be productive and is turning into a normal quarrel.
Chapter 3: How to get rid of the hook?
This question is part of a broader and more fundamental problem: how to relate to your feelings in principle? The way we are accustomed to reacting to the emergence of some kind of emotion directly affects the resolution of the situation as a whole - whether we go along the beaten path or act according to circumstances.
Different experts offer different options for a basic list of emotions. David accepts the following:
- Joy
- Anger
- Sadness
- Fear
- Surprise
- Contempt
- Disgust
As we can see, most of them (five out of seven) are negative. Consequently, unpleasant experiences will inevitably form an essential part of our emotional life.
Among the strategies that people apply to negative feelings, the following two are especially popular:
Clogging . In an attempt to free himself from the hook, a person leaves his emotions unattended - he pretends that nothing is happening and is trying to be distracted by other impressions.
The problem here is that, brushing off unpleasant feelings, it is impossible to understand what caused them, which means that it will not be possible to find any solution. Serious changes and personal growth are always accompanied by deep and strong emotions, and those who refuse them are forced to stay in one place for years. In addition, avoidance strategies — conscious efforts not to do something (for example, “not think about it”) consume no less resources than active actions. And finally, suppressed emotions do not disappear - they accumulate and sooner or later take their toll, and not at all as you expected (the so-called emotional displacement). It turns out a paradox: sealers seek to gain control and save energy by suppressing, but in the end they have neither one nor the other.
Winding up. Here the situation is the opposite: a person cannot let go of the situation, experiencing and analyzing it ad infinitum. At first glance, it may seem that he is on the right track - after all, awareness and acceptance of emotions is taking place - but the coiler is “wallowing” in experiences that intensify with each new round, and never reaches the stage of productive actions.
So, both of these strategies do not work in the long term, although they can “relieve symptoms” for a while. They can be used in individual situations, but in no case can not be turned into familiar mechanisms.
What approach then should be considered productive? The next chapter is devoted to the answer to this question.
Chapter 4. Turn to face yourself
The first step toward emotional flexibility is this: face your problems, come to terms with them, and find a way to coexist peacefully. If you treat your demons with sympathy and interest, as part of themselves, they lose their strength.
“Compassionate” means accepting your thoughts and feelings not as inevitable or unambiguously correct, but as a natural result of the influence of past experience and the current situation. The acceptance of what is is an essential basis for control and change. And this does not mean that you need to try to see only the good - just the same invaluable awareness of your weaknesses and weaknesses provides an opportunity for growth.
Acceptance of our feelings and desires as given should not be considered a one-time action, it should become a permanent state for us. Any feelings, reactions, impulses have a right to exist. The changes discussed above will concern concrete actions, not emotions - forces should not be spent on struggling with momentary desires, but on making decisions that correspond to our values.
Note : it will not be amiss to also work on your emotional vocabulary - the ability to notice, distinguish and name a variety of feelings. It is impossible to accept emotion if you do not understand what you are experiencing.
Chapter 5. Distance
Numerous experiments show that one of the effective ways to work out your feelings is through written self-expression (in other words, splashing sore on paper). Why? Because in this way we take the next step towards emotional flexibility - we distance ourselves from our emotions. Translating feelings into words, we get the opportunity to look at them from the side and gradually move from experience to analysis.
Distance - this is the creation of the gap between the stimulus and the reaction, which was discussed in the first chapter. Such a gap can be used to fully appreciate the context, recall your goals and values and choose a line of behavior that is relevant to them.
The choice is the availability of room for maneuver.
To be hooked means to see only one answer, one that impulses tell us. Moving away from the problem, we, in full accordance with the laws of perspective, get a wider overview of opportunities, and hence greater flexibility. If we consider each thought as a thing in itself, we will not fall under its control and will be able to choose what to do with it - develop, perceive it as a guide to action or set aside. Such a skill is called meta-look - a look from above.
The author offers the following distance techniques:
- Live the process. Categoricality is rigidity, tune in to dynamics and constant development.
- Note the contradictions. Understanding that seemingly incompatible thoughts coexist in your mind (“I am worth nothing” - “I am not appreciated”) undermines their authority and discourages accepting them as a guide to action.
- Laugh. Humor helps to accept the problem and look at it from an unusual point of view.
- Refer to different points of view. Think about how the situation would look on the part of another person, a robot, a dog, and so on.
- Call a spade a spade. There is no need to smooth and adjust something - remember that, paradoxically as it sounds, you do not have to agree with your own thoughts, which means that you do not need to fit them to the standard.
- Talk about yourself in the third person. This is a cheap and angry way to immediately mentally get out of the situation.
All the techniques described so far have served one purpose: to keep oneself from making thoughtless decisions dictated by momentary emotions. Turning off the autopilot, plunging into a situation and looking at it through the eyes of an outside observer, we free up space for thoughts of a different type. What then should be the basis for decisions?
Chapter 6: Follow Your Way
Following your own path is the art of living, relying on your personal set of values: that is, beliefs and principles of behavior that give meaning to life and bring satisfaction. The next step in achieving emotional flexibility is to identify these values and learn to be guided by them in making decisions.
The most difficult thing here is to prevent the substitution of what is important to us with what is “supposed to be.” Often we need some kind of guidance, we find them in the surrounding or in the conventional wisdom, which broadcasts the cultural space. There is a process of so-called social infection.
Not understanding our true desires, we run the risk of replacing them with strangers and actually living life on autopilot.
The author emphasizes that the values in her understanding are not about rigid rules of life, but a personal set of guidelines for focused activities.
- Values are voluntary, not imposed from the outside.
- Values are a process, not an end goal (that is, “I want to get the Nobel Prize” is not a value).
- Values guide, but not limit.
- Values are active, not static.
- Values bring us closer to what we want, free us from social pressure and help us accept ourselves.
- Finally, values are sharpened for practical application.
To get an idea of your own set of values, you should ask yourself these questions:
- What is most important to me?
- What kind of relationship do I want to build?
- What do I want to do in life?
- How do I feel most of the time? What situations energize me?
- If all anxieties and all stress miraculously disappeared from my life, what would it be, what new activities would I have?
When you realize what is important to you, the gap between true feelings and actions begins to narrow. Values protect us from being infected by negative patterns and give impetus to the right decisions in small everyday dilemmas. Without them, developing willpower is difficult and futile.
Chapter 7: Do not stop there: the principle of mini-adjustments
Adapting your behavior to your chosen values is a more evolutionary process. than revolutionary. It does not occur due to a radical revolution, but consists of many small everyday changes - mini-adjustments. The effect of them gradually accumulates, and as a result, the course of our life changes dramatically.
Mini adjustments have three main areas of application. You can change:
1. Settings
Attitudes are basic ideas about the world and our place in it, which determine how we interact with it. They can be either very broad (“People do not change”, “Women are more stupid than men”), and private, relating to a specific person and her self-perception (“I am not a creative person”, “I can’t do without a drink”). With a change in attitudes, the line of behavior also naturally changes — adaptation to the “new” reality takes place.
2. Motivation
Motivation like I want always works better than motivation like I need. Even if an unpleasant decision is fully consistent with our values, you will not go far with bare willpower - you need to connect your own desires. To some extent, it is simply a matter of correctly formulating the goal: it should reflect our true interests in such a way as to generate interest. An incorrectly formulated goal is based on external suggestions, negative attitudes or a sense of shame.
Cf .: "You have to lose weight, otherwise I won’t pull the sally into the mountains in the summer" and "You have to lose weight, otherwise it is disgusting to look at me!"
I want-motivation pushes us to look for alternatives, and suggests reasons not to follow the temptation ("Actually, I don’t really want sweets"); necessary-motivation reinforces the temptation, creating the feeling that we are oppressed and constrained ("And so I don’t eat anything tasty, but what's the point?").
Note : it’s easy to fall into the trap of “tortured positive” here. Sometimes in a situation there is nothing that could appeal to our “want”. If this happens often in a certain area, perhaps there is a need for serious changes.
3. Habits A
habit is an automatic response to an often occurring situation caused by an external factor.
Long-term changes are always a matter of habit. At a certain point, we stop each time making an informed choice in favor of something and we put this or that behavior pattern into the “default” option. In fact, this is the same autopilot that was discussed at the beginning of the book, only in the case of positive changes does it work for us. Habit not only guarantees the reproduction of action, but also frees us of mental resources.
How to form a habit?
- Make the desired solution the most obvious or least demanding (keep fruits at home, not chocolate, do not connect unlimited Internet to your phone). The environment will decide which pattern of behavior you choose in a hurry, on your nerves, or after a long, tiring day.
- The principle of the trailer: add a new action to the existing pattern of behavior (if you want to practice more in a foreign language - include a foreign blog in the list of sites that you view at breakfast). Over time, it itself will turn into a habit, and you will not have to significantly change the existing routine.
- Self-programming: prepare in advance for predictable obstacles, build schemes 'if-then' (“If there is a temptation to rearrange the alarm clock, I get up right away”). So, when you encounter a trigger, it is more likely to trigger a planned reaction, rather than a spontaneous one.
- Shade the overall positive attitude with thoughts of difficulties. Practice shows that the optimal approach is mental contrast, a mixture of optimism and realism. If you focus too much on thoughts of success, you lose motivation for real actions to achieve it. On the contrary, if you create a realistic mental trajectory from the current situation to the desired outcome, on which there are obstacles, too, you will be pre-configured to overcome them.
Chapter 8: Do not stop there: the principle of balancer
So, we got off the hook, outlined the range of values, began to introduce mini-adjustments in accordance with them, and gradually introduced the necessary actions into the habit, accustoming ourselves to play them on autopilot. Everything seems to be fine, but if in our lives such automatic actions begin to prevail, this leads to a lack of growth, boredom and rigidity - that is, to exactly what we tried to get away from at the very first stage.
A similar state, when nothing is left for us in a certain area that can be considered a challenge to our abilities and all tasks can be performed with our eyes closed, is called supercompetence. It leaves a feeling of routine and predictability and does not lead to prosperity, even if we are engaged in what is included in our values. The opposite of this state of affairs is situations of super-complexity, when we are constantly in tension and forced to give all the best 150%, which suppresses creative thinking and depletes the psyche. Emotional flexibility implies a constant balance between these two states. The next step is to follow the principle of the balancer.
Balancer principle- This is a search for an interchange point where the comfort of simple, familiar situations is balanced by intense interaction with the unknown, and even stress. This point determines the area of optimal development in which we could live to the limit of abilities - not wallowing in routine, but also not tormented by a sense of powerlessness.
The main obstacle here is our desire for comfort, that is, in fact, for security. Leaving the comfort zone is always associated with uncertainty and risk, and evolutionary mechanisms encourage us to avoid the unfamiliar and potentially dangerous. Gaps in understanding the situation always cause subconscious fear. For us, a coherent, holistic picture of the world is so important that we can go against our own interests, so as not to “break the pattern”.
for example: people with low self-esteem gravitate toward those who have a low opinion of them, as they seek confirmation of their attitudes. Success inspires them with anxiety, which may lead to self-sabotage.
Therefore, difficulties must be introduced into one's life consciously and in a controlled manner, maintaining a balance between complexity and skill. Experiments show that in the development of any skill there is a so-called stability zone: a segment in which a person can feel super-competent, but the development possibilities have not yet been exhausted. The desire for continuous complexity of tasks, openness to new information allows you not to get stuck on a smooth plot.
How to get out of the stability zone?
- Make a choice in favor of a stranger, not comfortable.
- Select the applicable options. At this stage, we connect the values and determine how relevant one or another skill is for them. The applicable option works in the current conditions, but at the same time brings us closer to the future that we want for ourselves.
- Evolve with every step. Difficulties should become a habitual, integral part of life.
***
Commentary by the compiler : The ninth and tenth chapters are devoted to the application of the described techniques in specific contexts (professional activities and parenting) and do not add anything new in terms of theoretical foundations. In the full version of the book you will also find much more examples from life and detailed metaphors - the text, in the best traditions of American literature on self-help, is generously diluted with entertaining content. We also left a few paragraphs outside the synopsis, which deal with particular problems that are more relevant for Western realities and worldviews (the yoke of “positive thinking,” stressophobia).
If we talk about personal impressions, the ideas that David expresses in different parts of the book are not striking in their novelty. About the vaccinated scenarios that a person lives over and over, say, Bern wrote in detail, the toxicity of suppressed emotions is also a common place in psychology. However, the author very naturally weaves the various techniques, principles and solutions into a single coherent approach, simplifying them a bit and adapting them for everyday use. Indeed, there is a desire to try, especially since the technique is very, sorry for the pun, flexible - it does not require large investments of the resource and you can try it on any trifle.