Lightning Process & Dancing
My dancing skills are infamously bad!🕺🏻
At school dances, the teaches would look at me dance and assume I MUST be drunk. I was so bad that I was often called aside to be breathalysed!
Then during my University drinking days I had an interesting experience. As designated driver one evening I jumped up on the dance floor to cut loose. Seeing my lack of co-ordination & bold unconventional moves, a good friend grabbed my car keys – refusing to let me drive.
“There’s no way I’m going to let you drive in THAT condition.”
As annoying as the experience was I could see he was being a good friend. He had my back.
Thanks friend. But I’m good. 👍
He wasn’t doing it TO me. He was doing it FOR me.
Years on I think about that in my work with emotions.
EMOTIONS
Do you believe emotions are happening TO you or FOR you?
Is fear, for example, happening to you or for you?
From a neuroscience perspective it’s happening FOR you and seeing anxiety in this light can be a useful perspective for making change.
The brain triggers a fear response to protect us. To keep us safe. To keep us alive.
Why then would we call fear a ‘negative’ emotion?
It’s happening FOR us.
Through life experiences we learn WHEN to trigger it and like my old friend some times it gets it wrong.
So it may be inappropriate but NEVER negative.
Calling emotions ‘negative’ makes our valuable allies for survival, our enemy.
They are our protective friends.
So the question to ask is simply …
Is it appropriate for this moment or not?
If we are responding inappropriately for this moment with the combination of knowledge & skills, we can access the extraordinary flexibility of the brain to change.
“Thank you brain!”
“It’s all good.”
“I’ll take it from here.”
No battle and this awareness makes change SO much easier.
It brings understanding & self-compassion.
PAIN, FATIGUE & STRESS
What about other experiences?
✅ Do you believe pain is happening to us or for us?
✅ Do you believe fatigue is happening to us or for us?
✅ Do you believe stress is happening to us or for us?
By understanding these responses as neurologically protective, we can shift from labelling these things as positive or negative, good or bad, real or not.
We can simply ask –
“Is it appropriate to this moment?”
If we are responding inappropriately for the moment we can learn to access the extraordinary power of the brain to change.
No battle and this awareness makes change so much easier.
It brings understanding & self-compassion.
Suffering from Chronic Pain, Fatigue or Stress?
Is it time to stop fighting?
Are you ready for understanding, self-compassion & the skills to make changes?
While I can NOT help you become a better dancer I CAN help you in even more important ways.
Interested? Curious? Ready?
Simply click here & we can arrange a time to chat.
Warm regards
Ian (Travolta) Cleary 🕺🏻