Lessons

Lesson Info

Shifting Your Perception

Last time about working on this part of the model where you know what's coming in and how can we get some stuff off of our plates by deleting, deferring and delegating? Now we're gonna focus on okay there's stuff still left on your plate I can't change your life I don't have a magic wand I can't take it all off of there and there's stuff on there that still there? If it's sitting there, how could you? How can you really maximize your energy around what's still on your plate? Some of this stuff on your plate you're is energizing for you and I we we talked a good bit is we did that paper plate exercise that some things are both taking your energy and giving you energy? Those are the things you smile when you look at that you're going to do today but there's lots of stuff you don't and what can you do? Where is your power to get back some control of how much energy you spend? You can't take it off your plate but she can control a little bit about how much energy you spend. I was working w...

ith a client who was just a really busy professional on dh a good good person and she was going after work as a physician long long work hours after work to go visit her mom who had alzheimer's this's just so draining because there's so many different emotions wrapped around this, and she realized that she was starting to resent it the day before, it was a drive out there and coming home from it, completely exhausted, and she wanted help and I so we talked it out a little bit of said, so why are you going on dh? She said, because I should go. Why are you going it's that was not going to fly with me? Because it's the right thing to dio some while we're getting closer. Why are you going? Because I feel like when I go and I sit with her, even if she doesn't recognize me anymore she's able to take in some of the love and the minute those words came out of her mouth, you could hear her energy change, you could hear her drop down into her why and let go of the resentment. So from there, then we brainstorm some ways that she could drive in the car and make this a more positive experience. She allowed that to be the time that she listen to a junk novel because she never had time for that, so she built in some positive to go with it, but mostly she let go of draining this huge amount of resentment that she was. Doing over and over and over again and I don't know about you all but I'm I've certainly done that with things I play out the same silly energy drain over and over it's not like the thing changes but I think you know it's like okay, I'm going to hate it again this week maybe I should hate it again this week it's so exhausting so those are the things we're going to talk about in this segment what can we do with what's left on the plate so that our perception changes so we change? Is that it's like we're changing the glasses we wear when we look at that thing so we're not putting on the the dark and gloomy glasses oh knew this is what I have to do today so that's just going to make me feel miserable and we put back on far more neutral glasses okay? I have to do this and I'm doing it because it ties to my purpose and that's okay? So I don't need to feel exhausted just thinking about doing it. This is a pretty old quote from f scott fitzgerald the world only exists in your eyes your conception of it you can make it is big or small as you want, teo thiss is our power in the in the world of medicine I've seen that I've had the privilege of being in people's intimate lives and in there is this space where you see beautiful people struggle with what looks like impossible things, and they do it with spirit, and they I've seen young children with horrible diseases have this lovely spirit and up energy and give to others around them, and then I've seen people with a hangnail proverbial with the hang now just be miserable. So somewhere in there is the space we can play with where we assign what we're going to do about this, how much we're going to feel sometimes we get triggered into something that has nothing to do with it and learning to recognise that as important as we go through all of these, you hear the awareness is an important part of this, but let's, look at your plate now and just kind of noticed something that maybe you look at and think, wow, you know, I'm tired of saying ug about that I'm tired of looking at it every single time I'm resenting it, and I can't delete it, I can't delegate it, I can't defer it, but I want to spend less of me on it every time because it's exhausting to keep spending me on it. So in the workbook, we are up to page nineteen and looking at some different ways that you can use to decide how to spend your energy. And we've talked about inner critic and we're going to dive into that a little bit more because inner critic and our emotional reactions to things are very tied into this when we resent something, what are we feeling when we resent doing something what's the emotion that's under that like anger can be and what usually triggers anger? What when do we feel anger for a lot of people's when wei don't feel in control of something? Anger is one of those sort of push emotions and that's often a good hint that if we're feel like we need to do this, we probably feel like somebody's doing it to us there's a parallel there that you know if we're if we're feeling it it's happening to us, we feel out of control in some way and that tends to feed are feeling inadequate somehow in this situation what? I don't know why we flipped that, but we do it really, really well, you know we feel out of control, there must be something wrong with our own mission control there must be something north of us and a theme comes up over and over we're not good enough that may make us even more angry that may make us really defeated some of the terms that we've heard we all have different emotional reactions to that we might have different emotional reactions depending on what that thing is you know in some areas of my life where I feel more empowered I might get angrier because I don't I'm not I'm not I haven't been drained by it in other areas where I might already feel a little bit drained or I don't feel like I have skills or resource is then I might feel defeated so that we have these different reactions when we recognize them when we bring ourselves up to that awareness we check in and we start to notice our reactions then we can pick him again and that gives us a lot of power so this is um this is a looks like what's a small segment of the stress management but this is the part where you really have the most power nobody can tell you how to feel or think kennedy for me one of my favorite mentors on this is nelson mandela I mean who could have been in a worse situation and how he chose to reframe it to think of his enemies and the people who were keeping him in prison yet that was his choice he exercised his right to choose and that's so inspiring and I you know, some days I'll compare that to my meltdown over something little and think well then that'll just feed my inner critic well you know certainly not nelson and belt mandela by any stretch of the imagination today cindy you know you're freaking out over something stupid but we all do that and yet another space for compassion and then to come back to that choice it's a game it's a flow it's a plane in and out of this space where we have choice so I want to talk about the mindset who are you what's going on in your mind when you have that ability to choose when you feel in control of what your mindset iss what kinds of things come to mind for you all? Where are you when you're at your best? Um productive calm warm, authentic nice entered center to come I love that about you guys present present so you know, bringing baggage or projecting anything and just like working with what you've got in the moment you know I love that and that fits into you know, what's the data I have right now I'm right here with this data I'm not adding all my stories of last time this happened I we're like yeah, yeah or what if it really works out to be a lawful it's? Yeah, how about for you, simon those as well as, uh focus creative inspired happy, nice, nice you know, there's a lot of research on happiness now and I think a lot of the community at first thought that was fluff, you know, do humans need to be happy and there's some debate in the world of that happy like happy go lucky in the moment um variable emotion is not as important as that deep happiness that I'm in a space where I'm connected and connected to my what gives me real satisfaction and as we explored earlier that's usually when we're living our values it's usually when we're living our purpose and we're using our strengths to do it um so finding that space can really be powerful in creating the mindset that I'll let you find that space for the thing that's in front of you so it it is somewhat of a cycle you khun realize you're off center and then you know and you've learned and you train yourself to get back to center more often so you can feel it when you're off and you can come back to it so you know when you go to buy a diamond they talk aboutthe seas of a diamond cut clarity color etcetera so I have some seas of mindset starting with clear are you really clear about what this thing is that's bothering you what's what is something I'd love to hear from online audience or from running you something that sits on your plate and bothers you cleaning cleaning okay yeah it's a thankless job isn't it because it just get dirty yeah yeah okay something else that just sits there and you think I resent doing this I'm spending emotional energy and in addition to physical energy on it well just think of something where you you feel that that extra hug and keep it in mind and we'll play with it as we go through this so besides being clear about what you're feeling about it this mindset where you feel clear is really important you're not in the weeds you're not murky you're not sort of spinning between different ideas you're just clear this is when we are at their best were pretty clear aren't we? We know who we are and what we want to dio we're not distracted by things we're not living in the past or the future we're in the present as you said, we're clear and we're calm because if your physiology is busy doing that fourteen hundred chemical reaction to a major stressor you can't think straight we've talked about how it takes the blood straight from your frontal lobe to your legs you can't think straight so get yourself clear get yourself calm use one of the cool down to power up techniques to get that mindset back that you're going to get to be creative with and get curious curiosity lives in the frontal lobe so getting curious turns your brain on and curiosity is kind of a fun way to go through life anyway um I think probably every one of us read curious george do they have curious george in australia? I only read it we'll have to read her a book curiosity did not kill the cat. Curiosity keeps us alive it's are interacting with our environment, it's lightening up away from should tze and into what ifs or it's lightening up away from this is so dang serious too. Wow, here's a piece of data about my life. I wonder how that actually fits in not this is a life and death decision tomorrow whether I joined this group or I joined that group, when we get curious, it becomes all research and then the next c takes a little bit more of your courageous because if you're in the mindset that's going to choose your life, it's going to take some courage, it's going to take re alive courage for you to speak that toe, own it to act on it and courage is something we developed by experimenting with it and playing with it, we don't always feel it. We have to calm ourselves down first to get to it because we're not going to feel courageous and if we're off center, if we're already freaking out, courage is a muscle that we use and then the next one compassionate and you can guess where I think that compassion should go first, start with you start with being in a place where you're gentle with yourself, we have some empathy for yourself, but in many situations that compassion khun spread out so when you're in the state of the seas the diamond you're as resilient as a diamond one of the hardest materials known on earth you're clear calm, courageous, compassionate and curious all of those seas put together make you really resilient and this is a mindset you can adopt as you look at the challenges that are ahead of you often we need to flip it them we see this thing we start to react to it and we forget that we have this choice that we can choose a response instead of a reaction but we may want to actually do the work first to get in this mindset because then we'll be able to choose more wisely so um maybe the example of the blood work we could go through this again and so like I have to give blood work pretty regularly just to make sure that everything's on schedule and so my mindset even like the week before I have to give blood is the opposite of any of this about that we'll make let you make the opposite list uh so as I'm feeling the the stress of that the clear I would say I would be thinking of clarity of why I'm doing it or clear don't you think that I had first just clear your hell I see ok ok get out of the swimming all right get out of the quicksand yeah, okay so and that could be done with like the clear and calm could be helped with the breath work you know? I mean, I've done some visualizations with some people and we've really just actually imagined in the beginning just seen some light seen some light appear allow it to clear way allow the dizziness and the the quick sand and all of the spinning plates or whatever you feel when you feel stuck just let some light in fuse in there let it open up and clear up a little bit I like does that make sense? I like that, yeah and then use your physiology to calm you know you're not common that state so you can use your breath work because of this beautiful mind body connection and the fact that we actually more neurons going in this direction through a vagal nerve we can we can use our breath work alone to help our mind calm down and you know, at the moment that we feel we feel the ugg or we feel the stress we got, we don't feel that separation of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual we feel all in meshed in and, you know, we're stuck so we can really pull those tease him apart a little bit and just recognized I'm in that place that's why we worked on the awareness exercises I'm starting to get in that place so now I want to back up and cool down and use your physical being to help your emotional being in that moment or help your mental being say you're stuck you can't focus use your physical being to help your focus clear as well um, there are a number of techniques that are in the workbook the cool down to power up techniques and they all work here there there's lots of new mind body techniques and some interesting explanations something called brain jim that looks at, you know, the actual movements that we make can change our brain waste um fascinating ted talk and I may not remember her name fascinating ted talk lasting is kutty c u d d y unjust, the position we take with our body and what how that gives confidence emotionally so we can play with this when we're not feeling it play playing see, but the point is to get yourself out of this stuck space and into the mindset that's going to be helpful for you into the mindset that gives you the power of choice does that make sense or you are and I'll tell you one of the last ones that almost this is not a c couldn't make it into a sea some how grateful appreciative they didn't start with saying it is impossible for our minds toe hold anger and appreciation at the same time isn't that cool now it doesn't mean that we don't have sort of a quilt of feelings about another person in fact the more we know another person in their life like a relative or a significant other the more we have that quilt of emotions around them but because our mind really only can hold mostly one thing in a time it's really difficult to be grateful and frustrated at the same time and that's kind of fun so it gives you a tool that's why in the heart math um many visualization that you do where you focus on your breath and then you focus on something that gives you a positive emotion it kind of wipes the slate clean for that moment of the negative one it doesn't make the problem go away but it wipes the slate clean and gets you back to the mindset that's gonna find them problem solution and that's that's fun to dio you want to do that for just a minute go go back through the think of something that's frustrating you just think of something that's really weird for just a moment and then go ahead and close your eyes and put a hand right on your heart and take a couple of long slow deep breasts and bring to mind something that gives you an inner smile it can be a place you love to be a person you love to be around it can be your dog smiling dacha something that gives you in her smile and just bring it to mind and breathe in the feeling that it gives you in that heart area feel that that deeper inner feeling of appreciation, let it just fill you with each breath. And as you exhale, let it spread it's a wonderful feeling, isn't it? It's, soft and deep and happy, and it spreads really easily. Then go ahead and open your eyes. You'll tell me what was frustrating you. I got three smiles. Yeah, mentor, younger kids and some life decisions, that one of them is making it's frustrating.