TGIM: Dinner Party

Welcome back to Thank God It’s Monday! I have worked 70 hours in the last five days and I did not prioritize my newsletter or my workouts, and that’s just life sometimes. But I thought today would be a good time to share a quick tool I’ve been practicing that may help us all on our journeys to becoming better humans.

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We all have traits about ourselves that may not be representative of our best selves because we’re human. Some of us get hangry, some get road rage, some get easily distracted in conversation, and some emotionally eat. And most of us probably have more than one trait that’s “under construction.”
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When we engage in this behavior that may not contribute to becoming the person we want to become, we further get frustrated because it feels reflexive. It’s easy to slip into a cycle of unideal habit, frustration, further engaging in unideal habit, more frustration, etc…

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The more we resist the urge to do this reflexive behavior, the more frustrated we get. In the end, we become despondent about the whole situation and attribute the action to a personality flaw or an intrinsic part of our character. Like a child being told what they cannot do, we don’t listen to our own instructions very well.
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Instead, the tool I have been working on adding to my toolbox is learning how to better invite that part of our personalities in. If we were sitting at a theoretical table in our minds, we could invite that less ideal part of our personalities to sit down at the table with us.
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By personifying the part of our personalities that we don’t feel contributes to who we want to become, we can better have a “conversation” and understand what the function of that attribute is. Ed Mylett spoke about in his podcast how he even gave his less ideal personality trait a name to add that extra layer of separation between who he wants to be and who shows up when that personality comes up.
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To put this into perspective, say you get super aggravated when you’re sitting in traffic. Part of it is reflexive, your heart rate goes up, and probably your blood pressure too. But if you’re able to invite that reflexive angry aspect of your personality in and observe it instead of resisting it, you can better defuse the situation. Invite that personified anger to sit down at the table and ask it about its intentions. On a macro scale, how worthy is the situation of evoking anger? Will it matter in the long run? Will it be fruitful? How can it be resolved? Is it a result of expecting reality to be different from your expectations?

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Being able to separate it from our rational minds helps us better examine the issue at hand from a “third-party perspective.” It helps prevent conflating these behaviors with who we are inherently. It discourages the perspective of someone automatically needing to lend to anger, frustration, or impatience. Instead, the situations incur these transient personifications that can be examined, interviewed, and then disbanded.
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People like to use personality traits as an excuse. But realistically they are emotions that can be both controlled and released. Children who are not very emotionally regulated have a challenging time controlling these emotions, and we’re supposed to be better at it. But sometimes these emotional tendencies get the best of us.

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Instead of getting more frustrated when something like that happens, invite that typically unwanted trait to come in and examine it. After all, it is a part of us and deserves attention because it is in some way trying to keep us safe. But don’t let it run the show. Hear what it has to say and relinquish it.

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That is all of the energy I have left in my brain cells so hopefully you got some value out of this tonight. If you found some value in this, please share it with a friend you think would enjoy it! And let me know if you’d like to be added to get TGIM. Or visit https://walshwellness.weebly.com/ for older editions and if you’d like to subscribe.

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This week my podcast recommendation is from Noah Rasheta’s Secular Buddhism Podcast, “184 Emotional Equanimity and Antifragility.” It’s funny that this episode came up this week because I am also reading a book about antifragility (like we talked about recently our brains tend towards what is familiar and what we’ve seen recently). Antifragility is the concept of improving from a stressor. For example, when a muscle is stressed, it grows. It’s a cool concept and this podcast was a great topic.

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With that, good night!

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Until next time,

Shannon