[2022-10-20] Empowering story
As I've been adding entries to my Categories listing, I realized that many fit under a heading I call Perspective. These posts often speak about changing the way we see a given set of circumstances, for example, viewing our flaws and imperfections as beautiful (Kintsukuroi), making the best of a situation (When life gives you vinegar), or seeing tough experiences as something that will help us overcome adversity in the future (Perspective). I did a lot of reframing in the past two years as I dealt with two cancers.
In today's edition of his weekly newsletter, James Clear poses a question about this very subject:
Without altering the facts of the situation I am facing and without ignoring the reality of what must be done, what is the most useful and empowering story I can tell myself about what is happening and what I need to do next?
As Clear suggests, this mental shift is not about changing the facts or avoiding them. It is about coming up with a perspective that allows us to reclaim our power and to identify what we can do—indeed, what we must do—to keep moving forward.
One of my favourite ways to do this is to recognize all the past storms I've weathered and to remember that I made it through those and can make it through the one I'm in as well. In Mental health self-care, I shared a selection of ideas from Self magazine's 50 of Our All-Time Best Mental Health Tips to Help You Feel a Little Bit Better, including this one:
Make a list of all the hard or uncertain times you’ve already gotten through. If you’re reading this, you’ve survived 100 percent of your bad days. Surviving isn’t always easy—usually, it’s not—but reminding ourselves of this can encourage further resilience. Plus, if you’ve gotten through that, who’s to say it’s impossible that you’ll get through this too? So write down the hardest times you can recall. Perhaps you can use some of that same resilience now.
It's easy to think that the circumstances in which we find ourselves are the most challenging we have faced in our lives—a life-threatening illness, the loss of a loved one, conflict at work. Sometimes that's true, but often it isn't. (For example, I've said numerous times that going through treatment for cancer was less taxing than being the head of health communications during a pandemic.) The point is not to compare one problem to another; it's to remind ourselves that we can get through this issue, just as we've gotten through other issues before. The next step, as Clear recommends, is to think about what we can tell ourselves to keep making progress.
