As I mentioned in my previous dispatch, I took a trip to the Grand Canyon and thereabouts. It was a great trip in many ways. I connected with my son, and I asked him why we were having such a great time. He said, “Because you used to drag me on 10-day camping trips in the deep wilderness and now we drive from place to place and sleep in hotels.” Ah. Yes. Life Coach Lesson one: be a bit less intense sometimes, the people around you appreciate it.
But that’s not what I’m here to share today. I want to get into something that really changed how I feel and it might be helpful to you as well. As dedicated readers might have detected, your free life coach was in the dark place the past month. That’s something a paid life coach would never admit. Who’s going to pay hundreds of dollars AN HOUR to get advice from someone who feels terrible? Not me!
So on this trip I had a chance to meditate and to really examine the thoughts that were bumming me out. As it happens, there was a story about something that happened that pissed me off. In my version of events, someone had taken something from me, some responsibilities of mine were gone. I turned this over and over in my mind. This betrayal, this theft, this robbery.
But then I started to slowly allow different perspectives in and questions emerged:
Hadn’t I really given this thing away and the other person merely received it?
Wasn’t the decision partly mine?
Wasn’t my life in some ways better off without these duties?
Couldn’t it be possible that the final decision was made by someone for reasons that had nothing to do with me?
All those things were actually true. I realized something. Life is so complicated and big that there are often multiple ways to view a situation and each of them can be true. If this is the case, then why had I settled on the version of events that I was turning over and over in my mind? Then I realized something appalling.
When there are multiple ways of viewing a situation, my mind chooses the one that will make me feel the worst.
My mind! That devil. It’s like a compass, but instead of magically pointing at true North, it always orients me toward true Despair. That’s the benchmark, the metric that my mind determines what to believe. Not truth, but pain, is the ultimate criterion.
Then came my third revelation: I was reciting this painful version of events in my mind over and over like a prayer. I was like one of those guys with beards at the Wailing Wall nodding back and forth chanting a prayer of misery to myself. I was praying, in reverse.
So, how did I get out of it? I saw my mind as having ruts carved into stone like those old tracks on the Oregon Trail.
Whenever I had a spare moment, my thoughts slotted right into those ruts. It was almost as if I had no choice. I had to actively hoist my mind out of the routine and speak to it as if I were speaking gently to a baby: No, remember? That’s not exactly what happened. Your life is better now. You gave that away. It was hard to lose it, but there will be more. And losing that thing doesn’t mean you are a loser.
Then my mind would try to slip right back into the bad story, like a toddler that insists on running onto the freeway.
Eventually, I felt the ruts fade away. The painful version of events lost its primacy as THE TRUTH in my universe. The needle began to wander. And wouldn’t you know it, that ‘truth needle’ wiggles and wobbles, always testing any story in my mind for its capacity to immiserate.
The needle began to wander. And wouldn’t you know it, that ‘truth needle’ wiggles and wobbles, always testing any story in my mind for its capacity to immiserate.
So I have to be conscious of what I’m believing about the world around me and my place in it. And I can’t trust myself to determine what’s real. But if I feel immediately worthless, I can be especially skeptical of what I’m believing.
There are people who blithely dodge the lash of reality without even hearing it crack above them. That is not and has never been, my problem.
This is not a prescription for denying hard truths, by the way. There are people who blithely dodge the lash of reality without even hearing it crack above them. That is not and has never been, my problem. My problem is that I take that lash by the handle, turn it upside down, and whip myself with it over and over. I’m not Pollyanna, I’m Eyeore.
Free Life Coach advice is not one size fits all. But some of it, sometimes, may be of use.
So check your needle, friends, and if it’s wiggling hot toward misery, give it a nudge. Over and over and over. Don’t pray in reverse. Allow for a slightly less cruel version of your life to be true.
On the same page as you as we author our lives together,
I remain your most loyal,
Free Life Coach,
Sean Sakamoto
It's hard when your own mind is your enemy.
I am in need of much assistance to determine what is real, I rely on friends and HP for that but I’m not always willing to do so.