CHAPTER 10
a short guide to getting your groove back
We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.
—Martin Luther King Jr.
Life is difficult; there’s just no getting around that fact. Sure, life is more difficult for some people than others—but no matter how hard we try or how privileged we are, it is not possible, or even desirable, to lead a life free from discomfort and difficulty. As we’ve seen in the previous two chapters, the best way to find our groove is to accept, and even welcome, discomfort and failure into our lives.
Yeah sure, I can hear you saying. All of that is well enough in the abstract, but what does it really mean in practice to “welcome failure” or “accept difficulty” when we’re struggling? How can we best navigate when we are thrown off our game? How can we get our groove back when we can’t find our sweet spot? Most of us need—but few of us naturally develop—a specific plan of approach for when the going gets rough.
How we cope with discomfort and adversity depends, of course, on the severity of the particular setback we are dealing with. How we respond to making an embarrassing mistake will differ dramatically from learning that we have breast cancer to feeling discomfort when arriving at a party where we don’t know anyone. The setbacks we face in the course of our day-to-day life exist on a continuum from mild discomfort to profound pain. The tactics outlined below are versatile enough to scale up or back depending on the situation.
After thirty-five years of emotionally whipping myself after even the slightest misstep, I have finally disengaged from the tangle of fear, embarrassment, and tension that every little setback created in me. You can build these important skills, too.
STEP ONE: FEEL WHAT YOU FEEL
We are living in an age of anxiety, and when we feel stressed-out (or sad or disappointed or bored or frustrated), our world offers up a host of ways to numb those negative feelings, ways to dull the pain. We drink alcohol and take drugs; we overeat and gossip; we have affairs and go shopping for things we don’t need; we keep ourselves too busy to feel anything, compulsively checking our phones and email and Facebook.
Unfortunately, when we numb unpleasant feelings, we numb everything that we are feeling. There are two problems with this. First, our emotions are how our heart talks to us, how it tells us what choices to make. As Omid Kordestani, one of the first Google employees, reminds us, “In life you make the small decisions with your head and the big decisions with your heart.” So to make good decisions, to know who we are and what we want in life, we need to be able to listen to our emotions.
Second, to completely feel the positive things in life—to truly feel love, or joy, or profound gratitude—we must also let ourselves feel emotions like fear, grief, and frustration. So if you are feeling anxious or embarrassed or hurt, the first step to getting your groove back is to let yourself feel that emotion.
Even though it can be scary to expose ourselves to our strongest emotions, neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor teaches us that most emotions don’t linger more than ninety seconds. What you’ll probably find is that if you can sit still with a strong emotion and let yourself feel it, even the worst emotional pain rises, crests, breaks, and recedes like a wave on the surf.
The key to not getting sucked into an undertow of cyclical rumination and emotional retriggering is acceptance. Lean into your feelings, even if they are painful. Take a moment to be mindful and narrate: I’m feeling anxious right now, or this situation is making me tense.
See if you can describe the emotion you are experiencing as though it is an object. Where in your body does it live? Is it in the pit of your stomach? In your throat? What, really, does it feel like? Can you give it a shape or a texture or a color? Hang in there with unpleasant feelings at least long enough to acknowledge them.
For instance, I was trying to work on this chapter, and one of my kids was singing in the kitchen really loudly. Because the kitchen is adjacent to my office, I asked her to pipe down, which she did. For about one second. And then she started up again. Which I found really, really irritating, even though I also recognized that my irritation is irrational. She’s just happy and has a song stuck in her head. I want her to be happy and comfortable singing in the kitchen while she empties the dishwasher. But instead of letting my irrational irritation spin me into a spiral of escalating annoyance and guilt, I notice and label it. I’m feeling SUPER irritated by the sound of her singing that SUPER annoying song. I feel the irritation in the tops of my shoulders and behind my eyes. It is orange and red and spiky. It moves around and is sharp but static-y.
This is the foundation of emotional intelligence: We label what we are feeling, and we validate those feelings, no matter what they are. Accepting what we are feeling isn’t the same as resignation; we aren’t deciding to keep feeling the same thing in perpetuity. That is defeat, not acceptance. Surrendering to what we are feeling in the present moment might mean accepting the present—and therefore finite—disappointment. But when we surrender, we open ourselves up to something much greater and much more powerful—hope for something better in the future.
It may help to understand that letting ourselves feel what we feel is a form of mindfulness. Most people associate mindfulness with monks sitting calmly in meditation, but mindfulness is not necessarily a lack of emotion or a state of blissed-out calm. We can feel terrified, and mindfulness enables us to have that experience. We can be yelling or howling in pain and still pay mindful attention to that experience. We can be sitting calmly, quietly anxious in a concerning situation, and at the same time be mindful of our worry.
STEP TWO: UNTANGLE YOUR THOUGHTS
Sometimes it is not our feelings about a difficult situation that keep us down, but our thoughts. Perhaps when you read above that emotions last only ninety seconds, you thought, No way! I let myself really feel my feelings when [insert painful/heartbreaking situation here] and I felt [devastated/frustrated] for way longer than a minute and a half! You’ve experienced your thoughts at work here. Physiologically, emotions pulse through us rather quickly. Neurotransmitters related to an emotion we feel really will be cleared out of our system in a matter of about a minute and a half. We experience emotions as lasting much longer, however, because often we keep re-stimulating them with our thoughts. Something painful happens, and we feel an emotion. Then we think about what happened, and we feel the emotion again. And then we think about it again…you get the idea.
Susan David, a Harvard psychologist, and Christina Congleton, a consultant who advises companies around the world, write compellingly about how sometimes when we figuratively trip we stay down because we get tangled in unproductive thoughts. “We see leaders stumble not because they have undesirable thoughts and feelings—that’s inevitable—but because they get hooked by them, like fish caught on a line.” We get hooked by our thoughts in a couple of ways. First, we can treat unproductive thoughts like unquestioned facts: “It was the same in my last job…I’ve been a failure my whole career.” We then often apply these faulty thought-facts more broadly to other situations. This leads us, David and Congelton write, to avoid situations that might evoke similar thoughts and feelings—so a mistake at work can lead us to pass up a challenging project or not apply for a promotion.
Instead of buying into negative, spiraling thoughts that can come following adversity, we first need to identify the thoughts we might be tangled in and separate out the benefits—and costs—of the thought. Perhaps you accidentally missed an important teacher conference at your child’s school, and you feel “hooked” by the thought I am too involved with my work to be a good parent. Ask yourself: Is that thought productive? Will it help me be a better parent? Is it helping me at work? Will it help me remember future meetings at the school? The answer, of course, is no.
Next, decide whether you are treating your unproductive thought as a fact, or if you are avoiding situations that will lead to similar thoughts. If you feel guilt or shame about your performance as a parent, you’ve likely bought into it, and that might make you more likely to avoid emails from the school, for example, or to procrastinate calling a teacher back—neither of which will help the situation. If you’ve bought into the thought, question the truth of it. Is it a fact that you work too much to be a good parent? Can you absolutely know that it is true? Maybe it is. If so, accept that, and proceed to step three (“Take Responsibility and Course-Correct,” below). If it isn’t a fact—perhaps you know many great parents who work as much as you—acknowledge that your thought is just a thought, and not necessarily absolutely true.
Or perhaps you are pushing the thought aside with the rationale that All working parents miss important meetings at the school sometimes. I’m a great parent who is more involved than most. While it might be true that you are a great parent, missing important meetings with teachers is probably not evidence of it; moreover, your desire to prove that you are a good parent might lead you to make up for your mistake in unproductive ways (think of the parents who buy their kids presents when they feel guilty, or don’t uphold legitimate and important standards like bedtime or limiting screen time). Instead of avoiding the difficult thought, acknowledge it. Is it useful information? How does it make you feel when you think that thought? Can you lean into that feeling?
When we acknowledge and question our thoughts, we can often gain the perspective we need to untangle ourselves from them, something researchers call “emotional agility.” Emotional agility is a skill that has been shown to reduce stress and future errors, increase innovation in businesses, and improve our job performance.
We need to pay particular attention to self-critical thoughts. These are the most unproductive ones of all. If you are anything like me, making a mistake can generate a fair amount of self-flagellation. Somehow I think—or act as if I think—that if I’m really hard on myself, I’ll be less likely to make the same mistake again, or I’ll motivate myself toward better performance in the future.
But self-criticism doesn’t work. It doesn’t actually motivate us. Instead, self-criticism is associated with decreased motivation and future improvement. Kristin Neff, the psychologist who has done pioneering research on self-esteem and self-compassion, explains how this works:
Self-criticism is very strongly linked to depression. And depression is antithetical to motivation: It causes us to lose faith in ourselves, and that’s going to make us less likely to try to change…If every time you fail or make a mistake you beat yourself up, you’re going to try to avoid failure at all costs. It’s a natural survival instinct.
Self-criticism conditions us for failure in two ways. First, it makes us risk-avoidant, which compromises our potential for growth. Instead of challenging ourselves—something essential for improving performance—we hedge our bets by taking the easy route. Second, self-criticism makes it extra painful for us to see our weaknesses and failings for what they are, ensuring that we won’t learn from our mistakes but rather that we’ll repeat them. According to Neff, when we beat ourselves up over a mistake our “subconscious pulls every trick in the book to not have to own up to [our] weaknesses.”
So self-criticism isn’t an effective way for us to prevent ourselves from repeating a mistake in the future; instead, it increases our stress and prolongs our negative feelings. (The same is true for the majority of criticism of others, too. This is food for thought the next time you think you are motivating your children, spouse, or employees through criticism or critique.)
Neff’s research demonstrates the benefits of self-compassion over self-criticism, especially in the face of our flaws. She also offers us an easy way to enter into this mindset. Self-compassion, she writes, is simply “treating yourself with the same type of kind, caring support and understanding that you would show to anyone you cared about…In fact, most of us make incredibly harsh, cruel self-judgments that we would never make about a total stranger, let alone someone we cared about.”
Self-compassion—being warm and supportive toward ourselves, and actively soothing ourselves—has many benefits over self-criticism. It leads to less anxiety and depression, and greater peace of mind. Neff herself was “surprised by how strongly the links were between self-compassion and well-being.”
Self-compassion also builds our capacity to hear useful feedback from others. In one study, Neff and her colleagues asked college students to make a video to introduce and describe themselves. They were told that they would be given feedback on how “warm, friendly, intelligent, likeable, and mature” they appeared. The feedback was fake—participants randomly got negative, neutral, or positive feedback—but the self-compassionate people were relatively unflustered by the task and the feedback they got. People high in self-esteem but not in self-compassion, however, tended to take offense when they didn’t get positive feedback. They couldn’t even take in neutral feedback, but instead tended to deny that the feedback was due to their own personality. Instead they blamed it on the shortcomings of the person giving them feedback. Self-compassionate folks could attribute feedback to the job they did without blaming the messenger.
Contrary to what you might think, there is more to practicing self-compassion than just being kind to yourself. Neff’s research shows that self-compassion also involves mindfulness, as discussed in step one, and having a strong sense of our common humanity. We can cultivate this sense of common humanity simply by remembering that imperfection is “part of the shared human experience”—that we aren’t alone in our suffering.
So, follow the logic and the psychology toward ease. When we drop judgment and just pay mindful attention to our feelings and thoughts and reactions, when we comfort ourselves with the knowledge that “to err is human” and in this way we are connected to a common humanity, we allow ourselves the space to relax. We allow our nervous system to operate in “pause and plan” mode, which dramatically increases the odds that we’ll recover from our error more gracefully than if we were in a state of fight or flight. This is when we find our groove.
In this process of untangling ourselves from our critical thoughts we’re simply noticing. This involves a kind of discipline through which we are not chastising ourselves—or other people—for making us feel how we feel. We are experiencing. We are not shifting into a cause-and-effect inquiry.
Generally speaking, this sort of acceptance without judgment isn’t our default mode. At least, it’s not mine, and it’s not the default mode of most people I know. Instead, most of us tend to be quite judgmental of ourselves and those around us, particularly when the chips are down.
One thing Neff always teaches about self-compassion: Don’t expect, or hope, that self-compassion will relieve your pain or make difficult feelings go away. (But that’s not to say there isn’t a way to feel better. It’s coming, I promise.) We don’t practice self-compassion to make ourselves feel better. We practice self-compassion simply because we are suffering. This ability to acknowledge problems, negative feelings, and toxic thoughts while still being kind to ourselves is a key skill for becoming comfortable with discomfort.
STEP THREE: TAKE RESPONSIBILITY AND COURSE-CORRECT
Although sometimes we don’t play any role whatsoever in the difficulties we face, often our difficulties and disappointments do come from our own mistakes and weaknesses. If we can allow ourselves to be honest, that’s just a fact. For example, we overcommitted and are now in a jam, or we did do something that we told our teenager or our spouse we would stop doing. How we respond to the blunders we bring upon ourselves determines whether or not we are able to overcome them.
Before we can grow from an adverse situation, we need to acknowledge whatever role we played in the setback. We can’t learn from a mistake or prevent it from happening again when we are still blaming someone else for causing it. This mature step is about acknowledging the role we play in difficult situations. Accepting responsibility allows us to take back some of the control, and not feel so victimized.
When we hold ourselves accountable, we put ourselves in a better place to course-correct. What can we do differently the next time so that this doesn’t happen again? And how can we repair relationships that may be damaged due to the mistake or challenging situation? To whom do we need to make an effective apology? Who do we need to forgive? What conflict do we need to resolve? What skills do we need to build? Ask yourself these questions, and already life will be a little easier.
LEARNING FROM DIFFICULTY 101
Most mistakes, failures, and difficulties follow a particular pattern:
• Something happens.
• We react to it emotionally: We feel embarrassed, horrified, struck with fear, et cetera.
• We have predictable thoughts about the event that lead us to continue to react emotionally or to avoid our emotions altogether.
• We accept our feelings and untangle our thoughts, and the negative emotion dissipates. The sting of the mistake or misstep clears, the grief wanes, the situation blows over.
Now, finally, the opportunity arises for us to grow and become a better or more skilled person from the adversity we just faced. Although once we are feeling better it often is far more appealing to move on fully without re-examining what went wrong, when we skip this last step we walk away from the greatest prize. Adversity almost always carries with it a gift—the opportunity to learn something that we couldn’t have learned any other way, or a change in perspective that fundamentally shifts our actions or our values.
Don’t worry, there isn’t a large time commitment to taking that last step. Take just a few minutes—or longer if you need to and can make more time—to reflect and problem-solve. What can you do to improve a difficult situation tomorrow? Who else can help? Whom do you need to forgive before you’ll feel better? How can you be better prepared, or what better approach can you take next time? Do you simply need to try harder?
Put a plan into place now, while the issue or uncomfortable situation is still fresh in your mind. Be as specific about your next action steps as possible. This is your best bet for improving future outcomes.
Now, take a moment to reflect. What have you gained from the adversity you’ve faced? How have you grown? What new perspective have you gained?
When we’ve recovered from a blunder or come through a very difficult time, wonderful things can happen. We try again with our new strategy or learning, and we succeed. Or we gain the confidence that comes from having tried, failed, and learned something important. As South African adventurer Boyd Varty writes, “Confidence that comes from never having been burned is different from confidence that comes from having been in situations where it all went wrong.”
COURSE CORRECTING WITH THE SWEET SPOT EQUATION
As I’ve been copyediting and putting the finishing touches on this book, I’ve also been moving homes. And moving. And moving and moving and moving. We cleaned out our garage and all our closets in May, and painted and replaced old carpeting in June. In July, we put most of our stuff in storage and staged our house, and moved in with relatives. But then our Realtor recommended that we not put our house on the market over the summer after all, so we moved back home—without our stuff. In August, we moved back out and put our house up for sale. As I write this, we finally have a plan to move in mid-September, provided our new house is ready.
As you might imagine, living with most of our stuff in storage for nearly three months has really thrown me off my game. I’ve lost my groove a zillion times. But I also keep finding my groove again, using the Sweet Spot Equation:
(1) Take Recess. Knowing that I’m more likely to feel overwhelmed and frustrated during this move, I’ve had to make sure to add a lot of positive experiences and emotions back into my life to keep my ratio of positive to negative emotions high (see Chapter 2). I’m spending more time in nature with my kids, going to movies with my husband, making art, and playing with my dog.
And although my first instinct is to criticize myself (Why in the world did we start moving so early!? Or, Why am I so upside down? We are only moving—such a first-world problem! are some frequent unproductive thoughts) I’ve also been practicing self-compassion, which helps a lot.
Finally, I’ve continually refocused myself on what I can learn from this unsettling time, what I will do differently next time, and what I’m gaining from the difficulty. The famous words of Thich Nhat Hanh, “No mud, no lotus” have become my mantra.
