Play/Pause...Stop!

A tiny tape recorder resides in my head.

It's constantly chattering away. The favorite tapes are - self doubt, fear of failure/rejection and constant worry! It's most active when I try to fall asleep at night and wake up in the morning. It also chatters away when I'm alone but usually gets drowned out with all the other distractions the world presents.

I've been trying to get rid of it. I've tried many things and here are some which are working for me:

- Morning Pages
I came across Morning Pages on Julia Cameroon's website - www.theartistsway.com. She designed it as part of a creative discovery & awakening course called the artist's way. Morning pages are 3 pages of conscious writing first thing in the morning. They can be about anything that comes to your mind and are for your eyes only.  I complete 3 months of morning pages on the 14th.
When I wake up in the morning, my head is full of thoughts, fears, to-do lists etc. Sometimes it gets  overwhelming. Now I reach for my diary every morning and scribble away. It makes me feel a lot lighter and stops the chattering - I have taken it out of my head and poured it into the diary.

- My best-friend: my breath
I was introduced to the concept by PG. It is about being aware of your breath. It's a great tool to come back to the present moment. After a few days of practice you will experience the chatter stops as soon as you start to become aware.
Your breath is your best friend and will stay with you till your last minute. Make a connection with it, become aware of it and find yourself always in the present moment. I highly recommend it. I try to practice it all the time - when I'm alone, while driving, on the metro, while trying to fall asleep.

- Cut it
As soon as I realise the negative thoughts creeping in, I tell myself aloud 'Cut it'. To amuse myself, I snap my fingers as if they were a pair of scissors. Then, I try to think about something I like - the beach at Phi phi, the trees at Lodhi garden or just AM's morning smile. This conscious thought replacement comes with a lot of awareness and practice. But nothing worth having comes easy in life.

I have my patterns. Every now and then I give into the chatter and don't 'Cut it'. But I forgive myself for it because it's not easy to 'fight your own mind with your own mind' (this phrase - courtesy PG). I allow myself to fail  once in a while as long as I know I'm making progress.

That's my story. What does your tape recorder play? I would love to hear what  you do to make it stop or play the good stuff. Do share it with me in the comments section.

Home-state!

Maybe a part of you doesn't want to be happy. Maybe that part makes you feel comfortable in the unhappy state.

AP suggested this during a conversation. I rejected the outrageous suggestion. How could it possibly be? I want nothing more in life than to be happy. I even have a blog about finding happiness. The thought perturbed me. I needed to get to the bottom of this. Could this be true? Do I really not want to be happy?

That's when I stumbled upon Sonja Lyubomirsky and her insightful research which helped me understand my precarious situation. She is an authority on happiness research and has a 5-year $1million grant from the  National Institute of Mental Health, USA to conduct research on the possibility of permanently increasing happiness. According to her research, happiness springs from 3 sources. She explains it so well that I'm quoting her verbatim for the explanations.

- Genetic set point
 50% of the happiness is resultant of our genetic set point (set point means your base level of happiness). Lyubomirsky says:" The set point for happiness is similar to the set point for weight. Some people are blessed with skinny dispositions. Even when they're not trying, they easily maintain their weight. By contrast, others have to work extraordinarily hard to keep their weight at a desirable level, and the moment they slack off even a bit, the pounds creep back on. So those of us with low happiness set points will have to work harder to achieve and maintain happiness".

- Life Circumstances
According to Lyubomirsky, "only about 10 percent of the variance in our happiness levels is explained by differences in life circumstances or situations--that is, whether we are rich or poor, healthy or unhealthy, beautiful or plain, married or divorced, etc. One of the great ironies of our quest to become happier is that so many of us focus on changing the circumstances of our lives in the misguided hope that those changes will deliver happiness. Research shows that trying to be happy by changing our life situations ultimately will not work because of a very powerful force that psychologists call hedonic adaptation." I already have a post on the concept. Check it out if you haven't already read it.

- Intentional Activities
The remaining 40% is determined by our intentional activities. Focused effort in this space can increase your base level of happiness. Lyubomirsky says, "We can't alter our genetic set points, and changes in life circumstances don't have a lasting impact on our happiness, but we can increase and sustain our happiness through intentional activities.If we observe genuinely happy people, we shall find that they do not just sit around being contented. They make things happen. They pursue new understandings, seek new achievements, and control their thoughts and feelings.In sum, our intentional effort-ful activities have a powerful effect on how happy we are, over and above the effect of our set points and the circumstances in which we find ourselves. If an unhappy person wants to experience interest, enthusiasm, contentment, peace and joy, he or she can make it happen by learning the habits of a happy person."

Reflecting on this theory and my patterns, I have come to accept that the low, worrying, unhappy feeling is my 'home-state'. It is the programming in my genetic code! Hence, I keep finding ways to go back there. It's natural because everyone feels most secure and happy in their home.

But there is a part of me that wants to change that. It wants to adopt a new home-state. It's possible. All it needs is a daily concerted effort and commitment.

Patterns!

Serial Quitter.

I came across this word while reading a book and it stayed with me. We seemed to connect and I decided to adopt it as a part of my identity.

I'm  constantly looking for and taking on new activities. I have a need to fill my life with new activities. The programming in my head tells me that if I'm engaging in quality 'things-to-do' then I'm moving closer to my ultimate goal. I feel a sense of panic if I'm not 'constructively' involved all the time. In fact, I was once advised that, 'You are a human being and not a human doing, so just learn to be.' One more thing to learn to do ;)

At any given point, I am busy with at least 3- 4 projects. These days I am learning Spanish, attempting twenty laps at the swimming pool, learning make-up on youtube, figuring out what I want to do next with my life, planning a holiday, trying to finish reading the 6 books I bought last week...

Projects ( I like to call them projects as it sounds more important than the regular sounding activities, hobbies etc.) require patience, commitment and hard-work  to accomplish. These aren't my strengths!

This is where my patterns kick in. I started because I believed it would take me closer to happiness, but as there is no instant gratification, I become frustrated, I quit, I brand myself 'good for nothing' and trash my self-esteem. After much serial quitting I have been able to identify my pattern and accept it.

Now, when the frustration starts to build up, I just let that project be. I have realized that if I keep at it my impatience will get the better of me. I will give it up never to try it again and curse myself all night. So I have learnt to just let it be, telling myself that I'm taking a break from it and will come back to it later. I know once I've been on a break for a while, my mind will again come back to believing that doing this will make me happy. When that happens I go back and start again. I won't beat myself down anymore with the self-judgment that I'm no good!

Have you been able to identify your patterns? Are you killing your self-esteem by constantly judging yourself  basis everything you try to do? It takes time and effort to identify and accept these patterns. I would love to hear your story. It might help us all learn something about our patterns.