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Hi, it's Lynn, your adulting coach.
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How often do you get one of those automatic no's?
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You've made a suggestion. You've offered an option? And the answer is no. Here's how to deal with it.
It's the best solution I've ever found. It's from Susan Jeffers, whose book Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway inspires me every day. It has sold more than 15 million copies. It's dynamite. So let me give you a quick overview of her entire book and encourage you to read it yourself. You'll be inspired, and you will be empowered to help get past those automatic no's that we often experience with our autistic graduates who are trying to increase their independence, but are afraid.
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What we want to know first is that this is not a psychological problem. It's an educational one. We can shift our thinking, we can feel the fear, hear the doubt that comes out, and act anyway.
We want to open the door by moving from the pain, the paralysis, and depression that's created by the state of anxiety, to power, energy and excitement. And we can do this together.
In the first chapter she goes over what are we afraid of? And the answer is always, "I will handle it. She outlines three levels of fear.
- The first is those that are happening, versus those that require action. I'm getting older. That's going to happen every single day, versus I need to have enough income to fund my retirement.
- The second level is afraid fear of being rejected. I may go out in the world and produce a practice in a program but not everybody's gonna buy it. Oh, that's scary.
- And the third is not being good enough. Well, maybe if they don't buy it, it's because it's not good enough.
These are all legitimate fears, and we can answer them with, "I'm just going to do it. I'll handle it. Whatever comes up."
In the second chapter she outlines you can't make fear go away. Here's where we need to feel fear and act anyway. And I add a second step in the middle there. feel fear, hear the doubt and act anyway. Fear will never go away. As long as we're growing. Our brain is going to offer us those automatic doubts. That's its job to keep us alive and it's done a nice job of that.
So here's what we need to do to deal with all the doubt that comes up. The only way is to do something. Yes, do something.
But the trick is to right size it. Let's make it the step that we are comfortable doing that maybe pushes us a little bit, maybe not totally into panic but a little you know, right on the edge of our comfort zone.
We can retrain our thinking to find that very next step and push through. That is less frightening than living with a helpless feeling that nothing is going to get better.
This is when we work on our belief. We want to move from pain to power. I am powerful and loving is a wonderful mantra to practice whenever we get a chance and particularly right before we're going to sleep to train our brain that we can make our lives better.
We need to move from:
- I can't to I won't.
- I should to I could.
- It's not my fault. To I'm totally responsible.
- It's a problem to it's an opportunity.
- I'm never satisfied to I want to learn and grow.
- Life's a struggle to life's an adventure.
- I hope to I know.
- If only to the next time.
What will I do? Next time I will handle it. It's terrible. It's a learning experience. We can choose which thoughts are going to work best for us and which which to practice.
Here's the thing though, whether we want it or not, it's yours. It's our life to create. We need to notice the payoffs that keep us stuck in inaction. Why are we not acting? It's always in our thoughts. We need to understand that feeling comfortable lasts for a while, but it's not a good long term strategy. A long term strategy is to do the stuff that we find painful and get to the other side of it. The way through is to just do it.
I love to ask those three questions.
1 What's going on? What are the facts?
2 Now what? What's the story I'm making up about it? What are my thoughts that create my emotions?
3 And then now what, what am I going to do about it and what is the result?
First we notice where we are and then we notice where we want to go. And then those two sets of answers of the three questions tell us what we need to do next.
We want to choose our thoughts on purpose. I know this whole idea of positive affirmations can ring just a bit woo-woo and a little insincere.
But if we have really considered that positive words will make us strong. negative words will make us weak. We've been taught that negative words are truer than positive words. Here's an idea. I don't care if it's true or not. I'm going to make it true. Positive words move us from pain to power one tiny step at a time when.
When they don't want to let you grow. Let go. What we resist persists, believe that our loved ones want what is best for us and they will love our growth.
We want to stay in that healthy middle where we are assertive in a healthy way. We don't want to be passive and we don't want to be aggressive. We want to stay right in that nice middle and the best victory is when every one wins.
Here's how. We make a no-lose decision because often we're just afraid to make the decision. The answer is to lighten up.
I love her no lose map. We have a choice: we either win or we learn. The no lose decision making model is we focus on winning or losing. This one will get us further. We focus on this model. We do our homework. We established our priorities. We trust our intuition. We listen to what the voice of doubt is in our head. We record those words look at which ones are working and not working for us.
And we just lighten up after we've made the decision. We throw away our perfection picture. We accept total responsibility for the outcome because every little step we're taking will have an outcome. We don't protect ourselves, we just course correct. Security is not in having things. It's being able to handle things.
"How whole is our whole life?" she asks in chapter eight. And when we divide our life into the 10 domains and fill each day with multiple experiences working on them, we have pain and uncertainty and work. But we're not overwhelmed by it because we have confidence that we can take the next step. We know it's important to us. We're managing our thoughts so we're not distracted and we've broken it down into smaller steps so we get the payoff faster. Perseverance and patience with our attitudes in each domain will get us where we want to go step by step, every action counts.
In her ninth chapter, she says just nod our head and say yes. There's the automatic No. We just have to get to an automatic yes, we need to let go of resistance and let in the learning that adversity offers us saying no creates a victim saying no means to block to fight to resist opportunities for growth and challenge. Saying no creates tension exhaustion wasted energy emotional upheaval, or even worse apathy. We've seen all of those saying yes, is an antidote to those day to day disappointments, rejections and missed opportunities. It is the miracle tool. For fear.
In Chapter 10, she emphasizes that we need to choose love and trust that we give from a place of love. If all of our giving is about getting. Think of how fearful we become genuine giving is not only altruistic but also makes us feel good.
Those who fear can't genuinely give but operate from a scarcity mindset. They think there isn't enough love, money praise or attention. But when we give from a place of love rather than expectation, more comes back to us. When we give away thanks information, praise time, money and love. We can get through our fears.
In chapter 11, she outlines filling the inner void with, "I let go and I trust." What we are doing is we're focusing on the spiritual part of us. That's how we experience the joy, the satisfaction and the connection that we seek. We use our mind to focus on our strengths and ignore that inner chatterbox. Actually, I'm not sure I wanted to ignore it. I think we want to record it and notice what it's creating, and then figure out what thought works best for us.
In chapter 12, she says there's plenty of time. It's all happening perfectly. Let's make ourselves powerful in the face of our fears. Impatience is the biggest pitfall, as it is only a way to punish ourselves. There is no timeline for building the life we love. We're going to do it every day for the rest of our lives. There are two kinds of experiences, those that come from our strengths and our higher selves and those that teach us something. Let's connect with those strengths. And reduce our fear. We become more satisfied in spite of the struggles that we face every day.
So in conclusion, Susan Jeffery suggests that the more I practice the tools the better I live affirmation saying yes to the universe, positive thinking, taking responsibility, making no loose decisions, pain to power, vocabulary, choosing love and trust, learning to give and radical acceptance. Those all help us to feel fulfilled on our way. To build the life that we love.
Come on inside The Art of Adulting. These are the skills we practice together.
Bye for now.
