Get out of the doldrums when staying there doesn't serve you..
And teach your children or your students to know that there is a choice to be made, and how to choose wisely.
And I hope they - and you - and I
Go well
When you have major changes going on in your life, or you’re just frustrated about where you are, it’s easy to get trapped in a cycle of depression, bad moods and frustration. I know, I’ve been there … and when I’m not careful, I still get there more than I want to.
But when I’ve had a particularly hard time, I hit these moments where I’m in a foul mood, or I’m just feeling paralyzed, and I’m just stuck. Sometimes I just stew in that and stay there, but sometimes I actually get intelligent and pull my way out of it.
I’m going to outline the framework that I’ve been using successfully to really get myself resourceful and motivated (and in a better mood) when I’m feeling stuck. Hopefully it will help you, too, and if you do I truly hope you’ll share it with others.
First Up: Using A Framework to Escape From Paralyzing Emotions
When we feel bad, it’s hard to “feel good” again. You can’t just wish yourself better, and when you’re in a stuck place, you don’t generally have the mental energy to pull out. Willpower doesn’t help, and “positive thinking” sure as hell doesn’t help. But falling back on a framework of steps does help, because we humans function well when we have a set of steps to follow.
The reason for this is that steps take the emotion out of our situation and give us direction to simply act. Duck and Cover. Stop, Drop, and Roll. When you know with certainty what to do next, you’re in a much stronger position to take action, even when you’re panicking. (And it doesn’t have to be words, either – just think of Lamaze breathing, which expectant mothers practice well ahead of time so they can slip back into it during the stress of labor.)
You can call these verbal step-by-step tools anchors if you want, because they’re ways to anchor your emotional state to a time where you knew what to do and you felt prepared. So I’m going to lay out a framework that you can use as your own anchor when you need to reset your mood, and while it’s seven steps long, it’s hella effective at getting the job done.
The seven steps form the acronym ACT FAST, and I picked that because I felt that it was a pretty empowering term as it forces you to presuppose you have a workable course of action. So let’s dive in.
A: AGREE With Yourself That You Don’t Want To Be In This Mood Right Now.
This seems hokey, but it’s important for this reason: Once you agree with yourself that this is not the right mood for you, you’re revoking permission to stew in your own juices and keep the “pity party” going. Think about it: When we’re mad, the thing we hate the most is when someone tries to cheer us up, because on some level we want to be mad and stay mad, or be depressed and stay depressed.
And that’s not always a bad thing. Maybe we want to stay sad because on some level we know we need to hang out in this mental state and really look at what’s making us sad, to really connect with it and deal with it instead of pretending it doesn’t exist. Maybe we want to stay mad because we’re not finished processing our emotions and figuring out what our situation means and what we’re going to do about it.
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go well