In addition to the power of breath, to bring us back to a calmer, slower, restful state there are other ways we can support ourselves in challenging times and crisis.
Susan David (2017), the author of Emotional Agility refers to our mind as a meaning-making machine, that we use to make sense of the billions of bits of stimuli and sensory information we are bombarded with every day. In these days of live updates, breaking news notifications and group chats the bombardment is real.
We take all of this input and do our best to make sense of it in what *we believe * is a cohesive narrative. But we are in fact, as David puts it, “an unreliable narrator”, often biased, confused, or deceptive.
This sense-making and story-telling happens really, really quickly. When we believe we’re at risk, we tell ourselves a story so quickly, we’re often unaware that we’re doing it.
Brene Brown (2019) says that when something hard happens, our brain begs us for a story. If you give your brain a story, it rewards you with calm. Crucially though, the brain is so set on removing the ambiguity and uncertainty you’re facing that it will reward you regardless of the accuracy of the story.
According to Patterson, Grenny, McMillan, Switzler (2011), after we tell ourselves this story, regardless of its accuracry, our body then responds with an emotion and then we act accordingly. My adaptation of their model is as follows:
Observe or receive input
Sense make and story tell
Feel the feels
Swing in to action
So, knowing this, and thinking about the impact that might have, can you either try and catch yourself in the early stages of the process, when you’re just starting to form the story and query it?
I’ve been really empowered with the prompt from Brene Brown of “The story I’m telling myself right now is…”. I often use this to journal some reflections down in a notebook or just open the notes app of my phone. When I’m with someone I trust, I can verbalise it, give my story some oxygen, see what it sounds like outside my own head and decide what I want to do with it before I allow too many feelings to curl up around it and trigger me into action.
Or, if you’re reflecting afterwards, can you walk back through the process from action, to feeling, to story to observation or trigger and look for possible patterns in your sense making and story telling?
If you’re interested in finding out more about applying this and other great approaches to your ability to receive feedback, sign up for the waitlist for The Art of Receiving Feedback Online Course here.