Chapter 10
Riding the Wave
Tyler came into a session one day very upset. He’d been marked absent so many times for gym that if he missed it once more he was going to fail. Failing the course would mean he’d have to make it up during his senior year or he wouldn’t be allowed to graduate. That was enough motivation to allow him to own the task of showing up for class, but it didn’t stop him from hating it. All through the class he was thinking task-avoidant thoughts like Why should I have to waste a whole period playing dodgeball or doing laps? and getting angrier and angrier.
Tyler’s outrage at being forced to attend a class he thought was unnecessary is a good example of how our task-avoidant thoughts come with some very compelling negative emotions attached. When a task is in direct conflict with one of our core values—in Tyler’s case, it was his independence—we feel bad. The negative emotions vary depending on the core value that is threatened, but they include anxiety, boredom, irritation, confusion, and embarrassment, to name a few. These emotions can also be experienced as physical sensations, like tightness in your chest, an upset stomach, or a rapid heartbeat. While your underlying beliefs and task-avoidant thoughts trigger your procrastination, your negative emotions and feelings are what enforce it.
When we experience negative emotion, our natural reaction is to move away from whatever is causing it. There is a good reason for this. Negative emotions signal threat. Our fear of bears tells us not to approach and pet them. Avoiding activities and tasks that feel threatening has helped us survive for thousands of years. Negative emotions serve us very well until we begin to serve them.
Emotions can be relied upon as a guideline, but not as a boss. In a complex modern world, negative emotion is often an unreliable indicator that a task is a real threat. Tyler’s anger at being pressured to go to gym wasn’t a reliable signal that his independence was threatened. In fact, going to gym was a necessary step toward Tyler’s future independence. In this case, Tyler’s feelings were an obstacle rather than an aid.
When you decide to own a task that threatens your core value, although you may be cultivating a new root belief that you can handle the threat, you are still going to feel like something is wrong. That is the central dilemma for each of the four types of procrastinators.
The Perfectionist: I’m not sure I can do this correctly. If I try and I fail, I’ll feel anxious, afraid, humiliated, and confused.
The Warrior: This is boring. If I keep doing it, I’ll feel irritated, powerless, and restless.
The Pleaser: If I tell them what I really think, I’ll feel apprehension, guilt, and shame.
The Rebel: This makes no sense. If I do it, I’m going to feel angry, helpless, and frustrated.
No matter how determined you are to own a task, when negative emotions flare up, you’ll want to put off the task to make those emotions go away. That’s the only way they’ll go away, right?
Wrong. What we forget when stuck inside the procrastination cycle, avoiding and distracting ourselves from negative emotion, is that all emotions have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Your fear of making a mistake or displeasing somebody, your boredom with an unstimulating task, your rage at being told what to do, are all normal emotions that our bodies and our minds have whipped up for us. But they don’t last forever. And you can handle them.
I grew up in Hawaii and going to the beach was a regular activity for our family. I remember as a little girl wading into the surf and seeing an approaching wave that was higher than my head. Instinctively, I stiffened up and braced myself, only to be slapped down by the wave. I scrambled to shore, coughing up water, much to the delight of my older sister.
After she was done laughing at me, my sister showed me how to dive straight into a wave and let it wash over me. She showed me how to relax my body and float on top of the waves. Eventually, I discovered that I could swim right along with a wave and ride it in to the shore.
Emotions are like ocean waves. You can try to resist them and be slapped down again. Or you can learn how to ride them and get things done. How much more could you accomplish if, rather than avoiding unpleasant emotions, you rode them like a surfer does a wave?
To understand how to ride the wave of negative emotion, let’s look at what you’re probably doing now, which is much like what a novice does when wading into the ocean for the first time. When faced with uncomfortable feelings, it’s natural to tense the body. We hunch or slump, and we breathe more shallowly, trying, in effect, to resist the feeling. While this may bring some short-term relief, the next wave is building momentum, and you are right in its path.
Emotions are relentlessly persistent. How often do we tell ourselves, I’ll do this later, when I feel like it? But we never end up feeling like it. In fact, the more you suppress a feeling now b y avoiding a task, the more likely it will be to rear its ugly head the next time. When the uncompleted task comes back to haunt you, negative emotion rises again, strong as ever. Our resistance only postpones the pain.
If resistance is futile, then how do we “ride” a wave of emotion? Fortunately, you have a built-in tool for that: your breath.
Breathing for Balance
The next time you begin a difficult task that you’ve decided to own, rather than tensing up and resisting whatever emotion you are feeling, try this simple technique. Open your mouth and breathe in. Draw the air deep into your lungs so that your belly expands. Straighten up and fill the tops of your lungs, too. Make lots of space for the emotion. Then, as you breathe out, imagine yourself giving up control of the feeling.
This technique, called diaphragmatic breathing, is how you ride a wave of emotion. Here’s how it works: When faced with any kind of threat, not only physical threats but also threats to a core value, your nervous system goes into what is known as the fight-or-flight reflex. This reaction is characterized by negative emotions and physical changes like sweating, dry mouth, a faster heartbeat, and faster, shallower breathing. It is unlikely that you notice these symptoms; they happen automatically. And because they are beyond our direct control, we tend to deal with them by avoiding what has triggered them. If it’s a threatening task, we put it off.
If you’ve decided to own the task, however, you’ll want to ride this wave, and your breath is how you stay balanced on your board. When you breathe deep into the belly, slowly and deliberately, you send a message to the brain that says, I can handle this. Breathing deeply and purposefully in response to a negative emotion, in effect, tells your body and brain to relax and allow the feeling to run its course. You will not be acting to stop it. You are cultivating one or more of your new root beliefs: I can make mistakes, I can act without feeling motivation, I can disappoint others, and I can cooperate with others!
As you breathe in, make lots of space for the emotion. As you breathe out, imagine yourself letting go of control.
While riding the wave, if you notice any part of your body that feels particularly uncomfortable, you can inhale directly into that area, making more space for the discomfort. Remember that you are not trying to get rid of anything; you are simply allowing whatever feeling that may arise to be there. The feeling may intensify, it may move to different parts of your body, it may change into another feeling, or it may decrease. Whatever it does, just continue to breathe and make space for whatever feelings happen. If you do, I promise that the feeling will change. Like the ocean waves, emotions ebb and flow.
Of course, emotions, like waves, come in all sizes. Some are big enough to knock you off balance. But if you want to get the things done that you need to get done to live the life you want, then you won’t let that stop you.
Back in Hawaii, sometimes the power and speed of a wave caught me by surprise, and I was thrown under and tossed like a piece of seaweed in the churning water, and repeatedly slammed against the ocean floor. There was nothing to do but relax my body and surrender until it had passed. I came up gasping for air, speckled with sand burns, and a bikini bottom full of sand, but I was alive and I knew in my heart it was worth it.
When you breathe deeply, slowly, and deliberately, you send a message to the brain that says, I can handle this.
Learning to ride your waves of emotion is worth it, too. You can practice anytime. To help you, you’ll find an audio file with guided Ride the Wave instructions downloadable at http://www.newharbinger.com/35876.
Riding the wave will build resilience to the number one thing that fuels the procrastination cycle: negative emotion. The next chapter deals with the number two fuel for the cycle. It’s an especially difficult problem for modern teens.