Meet to Moan or Engage to Inspire
It was Eleanor Roosevelt who once said, “Great minds discuss ideas, mediocre minds discuss events, and small minds discuss people.”
This is something I like to remind myself of on a regular basis when I begin to lose myself to stress. Fight-or-flight is the mind and bodies response to stress which, as humans were evolving, would have been induced through instant survival situations but in our modern world can be brought on by a myriad of factors. This ancient programming makes us think about the worst-case scenario, we are then best prepared to survive. And though I understand this mechanism of my mind, I still sometimes fall for these catastrophic thoughts. It is our survival make-up that makes us focus on the ‘I‘ and not the ‘we’, when we focus on ourselves, we feel disconnected and alone. We start to feel resentment, anger and loneliness and tend to talk about people rather than with them. These are all knock on effects of stress.
Here are some strategies I use when I notice that I am falling into a stress-induced mindset:
Calm my mind with 5 minutes of slow breathing. Breathe in and count to 5, hold your breath and count to 5, breathe out and count to 5… and start again with breathing in for 5.
Take a walk in nature to get a grip on reality. I also ask myself whether this is a stress response and where the stress is coming from. Am I being run by the survival programme and are these thoughts only my mind coming up with the worst-case scenario to protect me? Then I thank myself for my mind and body doing its best to keep me safe. I am grateful for the protection but in this case, it is not relevant to my survival, it is only a work situation, and I am not going to be eaten alive.
Write down my thoughts. I often visualise my thoughts as a water vortex. I imagine that my thoughts build up speed and pull me down. When I write down my thoughts onto paper it helps me put them into perspective and it stops the fast flow of negative thoughts. This helps to identify the trigger stimulus and once I have found it, I can ask myself why this is a perceived threat.
I ask myself whether I am focusing too much on the ‘I’ and forgetting the ‘we’. The focus on ‘I’ is fear based and the focus on ‘we’ is based on love. Then I remind myself of my favourite Closed sweatshirt which has the motto ‘MORE AMORE’ printed onto it.
I have learnt to be more careful with my thoughts and words. I perceive thoughts as energy which can move at incredible speed, like a vortex or a whirlwind. Picture in your mind two whirlwinds encountering each other. That is one big storm brewing. That is why I have started to ask myself whether I am going to ‘meet to moan or engage to inspire’. My thoughts have the potential to spiral down into a pit of moaning and complaining or the strength to be uplifting and inspirational. I aim to choose the latter.