Hey everybody, how are you? I’m great, I’m getting ready to visit
my son and daughter-in-law this weekend, which means I will be
going to MSP and flying for the fourth time in two months. And I
have to tell you, flying used to be incredibly stressful for me.
When I met Joe I really went from someone who got on a plane,
you know, once in a blue moon to flying once, sometimes twice in
a month.
And looking back on it, I can’t believe, really, I can’t even imagine
how much time I was spending in airports. And I got to go to all of
these incredible places, but I will tell you, I hated – I hated the
logistics of it. I hated figuring out what to pack and the drive to
the airport and worrying about traffic.
I remember all the time sitting in bumper to bumper traffic, trying
to get to the airport, and just being frantic about whether or not I
was going to get to the airport on time. And then I would get to
the airport and it wouldn’t be any better, right, because then I was
waiting in these crazy long lines and going through security
checkpoints and just feeling like I was constantly rushing to wait.
And this was all before I got on the plane, before I had to worry
about squeezing my bag on board and what kind of legroom I was
going to have and who I was going to be sitting next to. It was so
stressful, but you know what, I always had a treat waiting for me,
always. I always had a bag of Cheez-itz and a very mediocre
cocktail that I would give to myself once I made it through
security. It was my reward.
And those crackers and cocktail would take the edge off all of the
stress and all of the frustration and all of the anxiety and
annoyance of air travel. And because I was on the road all of the
time, this just became my routine; it became my habit. Braving
the airport meant looking forward to that moment when I could
finally sit down and finally order that cocktail and just give myself
a little relief from the stress of traveling, by giving my brain an
influx of dopamine.
Now, Friday when I head to the airport, there will be all the same
unpredictable traffic and the same long lines and all of the rushing
to wait, and the potential for delays, and inclement weather and
lots and lots and lots of cranky people. But you know what? Going
to the airport doesn’t stress me out anymore.
And the reason it doesn’t stress me out anymore is because of the
think, feel, act cycle. But there’s something even better; because it
doesn’t stress me out anymore, because I am no longer swimming
in anxiety, stress and annoyance, I am also no longer constantly
on the hunt to find relief.
That’s what food and drink was for me. It was a relief from how I
was feeling. And this is what I want to talk to you about today; I
want to talk about the idea of relief because that is what the habit
of skipping arm workouts and overeating can so easily turn into.
Relief from your day, relief from how you feel, relief from stress,
from anxiety.
But more importantly than this, I really want you to understand
why, why you continually feel like you need something to lessen
the discomfort of your life. Now, you may not be traveling to the
airport, you may not be traveling at all, but I know that most of
you have something in your life that you feel like you consistently
need relief from. It might be your commute or your job or your
boss or your kids or your spouse or your family or your home or
your to-do list; there is something there.
There is something there that you can readily point to, some part
of your life that you feel like, I just need a little relief, I just need
to be able to take the edge off. And I will tell you that most of you
are putting a lot of mental energy into trying to fix these things.
How can I fix my commute, how can I fix my job, how can I fix my
husband or my kids or my house or my to-do list? How can I fix
all of these things that are stressing me out? And what I want you
to know is this; this is the wrong place to direct your energy.
You want to direct your energy to that which you can control, and
these things are outside of your control. And what I mean by
control is this; it’s like trying to fix the airport so that you won’t be
stressed when you travel. And, you know, as soon as I say that,
you know that would be ridiculous, right? Yet so many of us do
this, instead of focusing on what is happening, we end up fixated
on how things should be happening.
There shouldn’t be lines, there shouldn’t be delays, there
shouldn’t be bad weather or baggage restrictions or cranky people
or rude flight attendants or rude passengers or rude anyone,
right? So many of us, essentially, walk around saying, I can’t have
a good travel experience until everything changes to my liking; the
airlines and the TSA and the planes and the people, they all need
to improve in order for me to have a stress-free travel experience.
And you know what? You might be justified in thinking this way.
You might have a lot of evidence to support these conclusions. But
good luck with that. Good luck with getting everything at the
airport to work the way you think it should. And this is what most
of us are doing with our lives, right. What we’re telling ourselves
is, well I can’t do my arm workout or eat better until everything
and everyone in my life changes, until it all works the way it’s
supposed to.
I thought this forever, and it kept me so stuck, because guess
what, I couldn’t control those things. The only thing that I really
could focus on trying to control, right, was me. That was within
my control, but all of my focus was external. So now, I’ll tell you, I
really love using the example of airports with my clients, because
it’s such a perfect, perfect example of where we are really not in
charge, right. It’s so clear from the get go that we are not in the
driver’s seat when we fly.
We are not in charge of the traffic or the weather or the lines or
the TSA or the airlines, really anything. All we can be in charge of
at the airport is ourselves. We can be in charge of what’s
happening in our mind. What are we thinking, what is our brain
focusing on, where is our mental energy? Everything else,
everything else outside of us is outside of our control.
But guess what, if you focus on what is in your control, if you
focus on the think, feel, act cycle, then you can start to turn down
the volume on your stress and your anxiety and your frustration.
And here’s the thing, if you are able to feel less stress, less anxiety,
less frustration, then guess what? You will need less relief from
external things.
You will need less relief from those crackers and cocktail. Or
maybe it’s your phone or Netflix for you. You won’t be so in need
of that influx of dopamine to try to cover up how you actually feel.
Now listen, there is absolutely nothing wrong with screens and
having food and drink to take the edge off of how you feel. There
is nothing wrong with it, so I really want to be clear. And I say this
all the time, the only thing that matters is this; do you like the
results you are getting?
I promise you, if having food and drink and scrolling has become
your go to solution to feel better during the day, to take the edge
off, right, if that has become your go to solution, you are going to
quickly notice that all your stress and all your anxiety and all your
frustration, it doesn’t seem to go away, right? It just seems to pop
back up the next day, it doesn’t let up.
And so the pull to turn to screens or to eat and drink, the pull to
give your brain an influx of dopamine in order to try to cover up
how you feel, it just grows and grows. And this, this is the bind
that you are in, because you are in a bind. You already know you
want to sculpt your arms, but changing your overeating, lifting
weights instead of scrolling Facebook, not having that go to of
relief, what it feels like to most people is just opening up the door
to feeling more and more negative emotions.
And here’s what I will tell you, you are opening up the door to
feeling more of your negative emotions, unless, this is really
important, unless you learn how to use the think, feel, act cycle.
Without this cycle, you are just giving up a little bit of relief and
then having to sit there with negative emotions that you don’t
know how to change other than putting all your energy into
getting the world to function the way you want to, the way you
think it should.
So here’s what we’re going to talk about today; we’re going to talk
about three important pieces of this; number one, why distracting
yourself with screens or overeating to take the edge off isn’t
sustainable in the long run. Number two, what is really creating
all of your negative emotions? And number three, what you can
start to do right now to change this cycle so that you will not
constantly need to look in your external environment for relief.
You can start to change the cycle on your own.
Okay, so let’s start with number one; why distraction, wether with
screens or overeating to take the edge off of how you feel is not
sustainable. So when I talk about this idea with people for the first
time, the idea that scrolling on screens or having food is really a
quick and easy fix to change how we feel, right, to feel less
insecure or awkward or stressed or anxious or frustrated or bored,
whatever it is, a lot of people will say to me, well if it works, who
cares?
And it’s a reasonable question, it really is. You’ve heard me say,
and I will say this over and over again, the only thing that matters
is whether you like the results that you’re getting from your
habits, right. So if you like the results that you’re getting, who
cares, right? But I will tell you that there is a piece of this to
consider. I want you to think about the idea of a negative emotion.
So stress or anxiety or frustration or insecurity or awkwardness or
boredom, whatever it is, whatever you are taking the edge off of, I
want you to think about it as a physical part of your body. I want
you to imagine that it’s like you broke your leg and the only
treatment that you sought out, the only thing you did to make it
better was to take a pill every time you felt the pain, right? Every
time you felt the pain, maybe you took Hydocodone.
Now here’s the thing, taking that pill would work. That pill would
lessen the pain of a broken leg, but you would never get to the root
cause and really fix what was really wrong; which is a broken
bone, right. What would end up happening is you would have to
indefinitely keep taking these pills, right, keep taking pain relief in
order to take the edge off this bum leg of yours, right.
If you never look at the root cause, you can’t ever start down the
path of actually healing your leg because you’re not actually
looking at what’s wrong with it, you’re not actually looking at
what’s broken; you’re just continually trying to dull the pain. And
I will tell you, it is not sustainable. Eventually your body will start
getting used to the pain relief, it will get used to the Hydrocodone.
And you’ll find that it will take more and more and more to make
what you’re feeling go away.
So think about it this way, right. Think about your negative
emotions this way; if you are just taking the edge off all the time,
you are not getting to the root cause of why you’re creating it, why
you feel this way in the first place. And that is why turning to
screens or overeating to take the edge off how you feel, screens or
eating as your sort of go to way to cope with a negative emotion,
isn’t really sustainable.
If every day you are feeling stressed out and anxious and
frustrated, right, and you are making a B-line to the kitchen to
grab crackers and a cocktail so that you can get a little relief and
feel better, it will give you a little relief in that moment. But you
aren’t dealing with the underlying problem, which is why you feel
the way you do. Not only that, you will find yourself starting with
one handful, one glass and then maybe another handful, pouring
another, and then, as your brain starts to get used to this level of
dopamine, maybe you go for a third. Then what used to be one
handful and one glass to take the edge off can easily turn into two
and then three and then, maybe before you even know it, the bag
and the bottle.
So many people say, I don’t even know how I ate the whole bag, it
just happened, I didn’t start out that way. And meanwhile, you
never get to the root cause of your pain; you just keep covering it
up. And this is where the think, feel, act cycle comes in. Your
thoughts are always the root cause. This is where you are creating
your pain and this is also where you can start to change it.
Understanding the think, feel, act cycle and understanding how to
use it is the one place where you can focus, you can be in control
and you can start to practice something different.
So this brings me to point number two; what is really stressing
you out? And I will tell you what is really stressing you out is
always your thinking. Now, a lot of you are hearing me say this
and you don’t like hearing it, and it doesn’t sound like good news,
right. It sounds like okay, so this is all my fault? So I’m to blame
for this?
Right? But the truth is, number one, no one has ever shown you
this cycle and how it works and how to understand it and how to
use it. But two is actually really fantastic news, because what it
means, if what is really stressing you out is your thinking, if what
is really creating your negative emotions is your thoughts, then it
means you can start to notice what you are thinking. You can start
to understand how these thoughts are making you feel, what
emotions they are creating and, by extension, how it’s making you
act, what you are doing when you feel this way. And then decide,
okay I understand this cycle, I can see it at work, now do I want to
start changing it?
Now please, please do not hear me as saying that you can just
snap your fingers and think new thoughts, it doesn’t work like
that. This is a skill that you have to learn, you have to practice;
you have to master it, right. Like any skill, you do not just hop on
a bike for the very first time and ride away, you will fall off, right.
You might need training wheels at first. You have to keep getting
back on the bike and trying, that’s how you learn a new skill.
So do not hear me as if this is just slapping on positive thinking,
right. And I will tell you this, positive thinking won’t work because
your brain will reject it. It will feel false. And if it feels false, if it
feels unbelievable, it is not going to create a different emotion for
you. But seriously, learning the think, feel, act cycle, it’s truly why
airports no longer stress me out.
Airports have not changed one bit, right? In fact, you can pick up
any newspaper or turn on the TV or go online and you will find
tons and tons of reports of how air travel is getting worse. I mean,
how many YouTube videos have you watched of terrible things
happening in airports or on airplanes. Yet somehow, I feel better.
How is that? How is it that airports seem to be getting worse?
That’s all the information that we’re getting, air travel is just
getting more and more difficult, yet somehow I have gone from
feeling stressed and anxious and annoyed and kind of frantic
every time I was traveling, to feeling so much better.
I will tell you, the only thing that changed was me. I was what
changed; my understanding of how my own think, feel, act cycle
was creating all this stress for me. Seeing it in action, noticing that
I was walking around thinking, oh I hate this, this is so annoying,
these people are so rude, I’m going to miss my flight, what am I
going to do, what about my connection? Am I really sitting next to
this person? All of that was creating so much emotional distress
for me.
And I was creating all that emotional distress and then turning
around and being like, jeez I could really use some Cheez-itz and a
cocktail. I really need to take the edge off, right. I would get
through security and just B-line for the first place where I could
get snacks and a drink.
Listen, I know that what I am telling you goes against everything
you have been conditioned to believe, I know that. That is why I
think airports are such a great example for you to really think
about this with, because you would have zero problem rounding
up scores of people who would agree with you that yes, airports
are inherently stressful places. They make people crazy.
Everything about them is set up to bring out the absolute worst in
humanity.
You would have no problem finding people who would agree with
that. Who would tell you that, no, airports, that’s what makes
people crazy, that’s what stresses them out, right, it’s not their
thinking.
The problem with that, the problem with going down that path is
that it leaves you totally and completely disempowered to change
how you feel. In essence, until airports change, you are stuck
having terrible travel experiences, and it is such a disempowered
place to be. That is why shifting and understanding that it’s your
thinking, right, it is the think, feel, act cycle at work that is
creating the negative emotion for you is so powerful.
Because the truth is this, you can read a million articles and go
online and see how terrible air travel is. Right, and how it’s getting
worse and everything that’s wrong with it and everything that
should be done to fix it and hear scores and scores of people
talking about how miserable they are when they travel. Or you can
see the fact that we are able to go to the airport and fly places as
this amazing feat of human ingenuity and invention, right.
The fact that I can go to the airport Friday and it will take me 2.5
hours to fly from MSP to North Carolina is amazing. I really want
you to think about this.
And that really brings me to the third point that I want to talk
about today, which is what you can do to start changing the cycle
of creating all this negative emotion and then finding yourself
looking for relief from the stress that you are creating. Looking for
relief from how you feel.
So I was working with a client recently and she was just learning
this work, she was just starting to practice noticing her thoughts.
And that alone was really brand new for her, because remember,
this is a practice, most of you have never been taught how to
observe your thoughts with any distance, right. Most of us just feel
like we’re kind of at the mercy of them, and we don’t even think of
our thoughts as something that we can necessarily observe or that
they’re optional, right? Most of us, myself included, for a long
time I just accepted everything that I was thinking as
unquestionably true, right, so there’s nothing to do about it
because it was just the way the world was.
So the think, feel, act cycle really takes you in a different direction.
She was practicing this and she was telling me – I love this
example. She was telling me that she was at Whole Foods the
other day. She was getting her lunch and it was really crowded. So
she was at the prepared food island, you know, those sort of
islands in the middle that they have all the different prepared
foods that you can choose from. And she was trying to make a
plate of food for herself, but of course, so were a lot of other
people.
And she noticed herself thinking, because she had started to
practice paying attention – okay, what am I thinking about every
situation? She noticed herself thinking the thought, oh humans
are so rude. And I love this, I love this example. I love this thought
because, you know what, I myself have thought it so many times,
right. Humans are so rude, they are the worst. But she
remembered the think, feel, act cycle, so she was aware of what
she was thinking. And then she asked herself, hey what am I
feeling right now?
And she noticed that she was feeling annoyed. So suddenly, she
wasn’t just going through the motions of getting her lunch, but
she was actually watching her brain assess what was happening
and noticing how that was connected to how she felt. So she was
starting to really connect the dots between her thoughts and how
her thoughts create her emotions.
So we were talking this over and I said to her, okay, so when you
were standing in Whole Foods trying to make your lunch and
feeling annoyed and thinking to yourself, oh, humans are so rude,
how were you behaving? What were you doing?
And she had to pause and think about it for a second. And then
she said, well I guess I was kind of huffy and maybe I wasn’t really
making eye contact with people, I was just really focused on
getting my own food as quickly as possible. And I think, when I
got to the register, I was kind of abrupt with the woman behind
the counter. I just wanted to get in and out of there as fast as
possible. I just wanted to get away from this situation that was
stressing me out.
And so I said to her, so you were being kind of rude, huh? And she
paused and then laughed and said, ‘yeah I guess I was. I was
thinking everyone was so rude and feeling annoyed, and then
turning around and being kind of huffy and abrupt, I was being
rude myself.’
And so, you know, she started to understand, okay that was the
think, feel, act cycle at work. And we talked about, okay how
would you then shift this situation? You can’t make Whole Foods
less crowded, you can’t change other people’s behavior; you can’t
make everybody else in the prepared food line all of a sudden
super polite. But what you can do is shift your perspective. You
can change your thinking and start to see if you can just see the
situation in a different light.
And immediately she was like, yeah but some people were being
rude, Kristine. Immediately her brain was like, I don’t want to
change my thoughts; I like this thought. And you know what, I’m
sure that it was true. I’m sure that there were people who were
being rude, but who cares, right? Some people are rude; there will
always be rude people in this world.
The question that I always ask myself is, do I want those people to
be in charge of how I feel? And I reminded her, you know what,
your brain likes to save energy. Your brain likes to think the
thought that humans are so rude, because it’s easy to think;
probably because you have thought it many times before. This
isn’t the first time your brain has thought this particular thought.
So it will take energy to shift your perspective and your brain will
resist that at first. Your brain will say no, this is really how it went
down; this is how it was. But it’s so worth it if you want to feel
better and not let what’s happening in Whole Foods dictate how
you feel. So we started brainstorming, and what I did is ask her
how might someone else, who’s in the exact same situation, they
were in your shoes, they were in the same crowded Whole Foods,
they were trying to get their lunch, they were encountering the
same rude people who were also very rushed, but they weren’t
feeling annoyed... Right, I asked her if you can think about
someone else in the same situation who wasn’t feeling annoyed,
what do you think they may have been thinking?
How would their think, feel, act cycle look differently? And she
really had to stop and think. This wasn’t just something that came
really easily; she had to really stop and think and consider alright,
same situation, different think, feel, act cycle, what would they be
thinking?
And she also had to get to a thought that maybe she could use and
that felt believable, and I love what she came up with. What she
came up with was, well maybe they would be thinking we’re all
just trying to do our best. And she really liked that thought. It felt
so much better for her, right, the idea that she could walk into
Whole Foods and see all this chaos and the rush of people and just
think, okay we’re all trying to do our best right now, created a
totally different think, feel, act cycle than when she was thinking,
humans are so rude.
Right? You think a different thought, you feel a different emotion,
and then you’ll end up acting differently. So if you want to change
your arms, if you want to stop needing to take the edge off all of
the time, how you feel, all of your negative emotions, you have to
be open to the idea that your thoughts are creating your emotions.
You have to be open to the think, feel, act cycle instead of placing
the blame on everything and everyone outside of you.
And I will tell you, this will be a shift that some of you may resist
at first, but it is such a powerful place for you to be, because
noticing your thinking and shifting your perspective is an area you
can always control. It takes practice, for sure, but it is always
accessible to you.
And I will tell you, when I go to the airport Friday, it’s going to be
a lot less stressful for me because I have practiced over and over
again noticing my thoughts and noticing what I’m thinking and
how that’s creating what I’m feeling and then how that generates
how I’m acting and how I’m behaving.
And if I do notice myself getting frustrated or annoyed or stressed
out – because here’s the thing, I’m not just this perfectly zen
person all the time. If I do notice myself having a negative
emotion, I always have a place to look. I always have a place to
focus my attention and ask myself, okay, what are you thinking
right now?
When I can do that, when I can use the think, feel, act cycle, I have
found that I am no longer in a place where I am always searching
for things in my external environment to give myself relief from
how I’m feeling, because I don’t feel so negative all the time. And
that, my friends, is so important.
This is a crucial piece if you want to change your arms.
I know this was a little bit of a longer episode today, let’s hope you
guys stuck it out with me. Keep those emails coming. You can
always send me a note at
[email protected], and I will
catch you guys next week.
