The habit of rehearsing unhappiness

This year I have chosen self-care as a choice-full conscious intention and one aspect of this is “not rehearsing unhappiness.” This means

not rehearsing difficult conversations

not imagining what’s going to happen in the future

not ruminating over the past

In other words just noticing how it is now – noticing the planning, ruminating, rehearsing.

I just had a some real examples of of the habit of rehearsing unhappiness and my attempts at transforming this “old-as-I-can-remember” habit.

A leading international teacher left an email asking for a conversation about something she read on my website. All the worst “I’ve been called to the School Principal’s office thoughts rushed into my mind!” Oh no, what have I done? Have I made a mistake? Have I broken a rule? And hot on the heels of these thoughts came visceral feelings of shame, fear, embarrassment, anxiety – literally I could feel tears welling, my heartbeat rise, heat and tension around my heart – followed by a pattern of harsh containment of the emotions and an inner defensiveness.

So I made a real effort not to try and predict, or worry. Each time one of these thoughts showed up I would just acknowledge it, “Hello fear, I can feel you clutching my heart tightly. I can sense how you want to protect me.”

Turned out she just wanted me to word my acknowledgement of her work in a slightly different way and to congratulate me on my website as it was based on the principles of a marketing course of hers I had signed up for & completed. She was also checking if she could refer further course participants to my site as a great model.

The next example came when as I prepared to go back to work after my summer vacation.

For the whole last week of my vacation I noticed a sense of heaviness in the pit of my belly and thoughts worrying about being able to handle the budget cuts that were coming, the pressure for increased outcomes and creating new and competitive ways of delivering our services in a shrinking market. Ohh…not comfy. And no fun to bring work into my vacation.

Serendipitously, I was co-facilitating a 4 day residential course on Focusing on my last weekend and one of my guest presenters  ran a workshop on inviting in a caring-feeling presence in Focusing. Oh, so beautiful. To invite this feeling of holding tenderly “all of me”. There are lots of words for a caring-feeling presence but what came for me were the words “wholly accepting”.

I can feel this presence in my whole body and when I connect with it I feel supported, connected to my deepest values and aspirations, ok about my foibles, responsive rather than reactive.

So, to cut a long story short, I started to hold my awareness of  “my habit of rehearsing unhappiness” in the tender space of my wholly accepting presence. Such cool relief.

The last part of this that is most wonderful is that I am learning to not  try to predict what people will do or say (another little habit). So now I am more able to hear what they are actually saying rather than filtering it through my predictions. As my inner relationship with myself softens & widens in the field of acceptance – it comes as no surprise that my interpersonal relations do the same.

Now, I ask myself,

“Are these thoughts/words/actions bringing happiness or misery into my life?”

“How can I stay connected to my wholly accepting Presence and feel it in my body?’

Two simple and sustainable questions that really wake me up.

They’re working.