Do your really know yourself?
Or like so many are you so caught up in life that you have overlooked what is really important when it comes to being resilient?
Don’t worry–you’re not alone if you haven’t given this much real thought: It took me years to even spend some time on this so I could share it with you.
Real coaching is about helping you clearly identify and come to terms with what is going on inside of you: it can be the difference between feeling off for an hour and crashing for days on end.
The following is an exercise that you can conduct yourself or through a coached session (powerful)–take some time to write it down to help solidify the exercise, even come back to it if necessary.
Adversity is necessary, but we can shift it to Resilience if we have a better understanding of what is going on within us and have the tools to help at our disposal. For you to better manage what is happening within; it is necessary to identify some key areas that re-occur in your life and career.
Through adversity life has gifted me a lot of time to reflect on what was really going on inside of me all these years. Like so many I had never bothered to just stop for a bit and come to terms with myself. Cancer wards are humbling places for inward reflection: and this is where I started to think about it: What else do you do with an IV drip hanging out of you?
As with many I wrestle with the whole spectrum of the human experience–some of it good, and some of it bad.
It’s a side of ourselves that we all must confront at some point–the negative emotional chain reaction that occurs when we are “triggered” The consequences of one of these episodes can be hours or even days seething with anger, feeling depressed, anxious or any other unhelpful state of mind.
Adversity comes in many forms, and this is certainly one of them.
Part of being Resilient is becoming familiar with your “interiority”–your beliefs, perceptions, emotions, attitudes, our emotional triggers, and our habits.
Identifying your triggers and associated responses is the first step to take towards limiting what I call “trigger time”–this is the time you spend in an unhelpful or unproductive state of mind because of being triggered.
Emotional triggers can include rejection, criticism, feeling helpless or a loss of control in our life or career.
These little cycles (or loops) can be visualised below in an easy to remember tool I like to call a TRIGGER LOOP (or Habit Loop)–credit Dr Judson Brewer.
At the heart of this powerful tool is a Trigger, Behaviour, and a Result.
The “Trigger time” is the total time from the trigger through the emotional response and back to your normal state.
As easy as this sounds, reflect for a moment on how much being triggered is part of your life experience–I know plenty of people (and clients) who lose days stuck in a trigger loop which cascades into full-blown emotional fallout (sound familiar?)
The secret behind this tool is the insanely powerful act of observing your own behaviour.
It prompts you to identify your own Triggers, Behaviours and Results in a simple and useful way.to identify
Stepping outside of a Trigger Loop and observing your own behaviour can be the first step in reducing and then breaking a loop cycle.
Once you are in a habit of doing this, you can then start challenging yourself on your “trigger times”.
If the same thing triggers you often–track your times.
Once you track: reducing these cycles is entirely within your reach.
As an exercise think of just one trigger loop that regularly troubles you:
- Trigger.
- Behaviour.
- Result.
Now reflect on your own trigger time–Hours, Days?
As with much of what I coach, this takes regular practise–so focus on one trigger loop and become familiar with the process.
The more you use it the more you can reduce your times and get on with your life!
