A dear friend of mine, since we were 16 years old, lives in London with her husband. She just found out this week that her husband has to have open heart surgery (!!!!) on Friday. This came out of no where. Her husband is healthy and fit. This is a shock to everyone. She texted me (knowing that my baby had open heart surgery at 4 months old) while she was trying to make sense of the crisis bubbling up around her and hearing from people who are telling her that the first week out of surgery is the worst.
Cue the coach! This is exactly where I came in to help her shift her mindset from unhelpful, doomsday thoughts that were taking over every minute of her day and night to helpful thoughts that gave her hope.
This experience reminds me of why it is so important to do the almighty and all powerful mindset work when we are NOT in a crisis, because we surely will be in a crisis at some point, and we want those helpful neural pathways to be activated and in overdrive so we can cope with... whatever we have to cope with.
I didn't know the power of mindset work until later in my adult life. Now that I know, I can't help myself; I have to share this way of thinking with everyone I meet whether I am talking to myself, my kids, my friends, my yoga and qi gong students or my clients. This is an underdeveloped super power that we all have the capacity to deepen if we focus on it.
The simplest first step is to slow down long enough to challenge your "unhelpful" thoughts. I
In a crisis, some of the typical unhelpful thoughts sound like:
--This is never going to work out.
--I wish this never happened; this is a disaster.
--I'll never get out of this mess.
--Why did this have to happen to me in the first place.
None of those thoughts are helpful, even though they may be factually true, BUT NONE ARE HELPFUL, which is why the first thing to do is recognize the unhelpful thought and dismiss it. You can replace unhelpful thoughts with helpful ones whenever you want. For example, I don't know how this is going to work out--and yet I am hopeful that it will. What if things worked out better than I had planned--even if I don't know exactly how they will?
Pretending that you don't think/feel the way you do is not the point or the practice. Just "put it out of your mind" advice is a version of toxic positivity that is not effective. Instead, be honest and be brave. Be honest, knowing that you might be scared, AND be brave in saying that you have what it takes to: ask for support, give yourself "grace space" to get through a challenge that you've never faced before, be perfectly imperfect and perfectly human as you navigate uncharted waters and difficulties.
Life is complex. There is no cheat sheet or hack for how to deal with unexpected news, like walking into open heart surgery or the great unknown. It doesn't exist. Instead, we have to make it up as we go. Not a problem, if you make it a practice to choose helpful thoughts and dismiss unhelpful ones (on repeat).
xo Coach Karen :))
P.S. If mindset shifting work is what you are looking for so that your vision of your precious life can come into focus, then you know what to do! Book a call with me, and let's see if getting you from HERE to THERE, together, makes sense!
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