I called my son Patrick the evening of his Junior Olympics Tae Kwon Do competition (he was thirteen at the time, and I couldn’t attend due to a prior commitment). When I asked him how it went, flatly he said, “I lost.”
In the sparring portion of the competition, two competitors wearing their dobok (Tae Kwon Do uniform) and various pads and protective gear get into the ring. The goal is to score as many points as possible in the timed round. It’s very much like a regular boxing match.
“Well, what happened?” I asked. “Was he bigger than you?”
“No, not really.”
“Was he stronger than you?”
“Not really. I don’t know.”
These kids hop around on the mat for a bit, circling and sizing up each other (again, like a regular boxing match) before one charges the other, and the two begin kicking and punching at each other’s bodies. While some bouts are tame, others can get pretty aggressive, even in a junior competition setting. In fact, USA Tae Kwon Do felt the need to include the following clause in their 2009 rulebook: “Inability to continue because of fright, crying or loss of will following a kick to the head which did not cause injury does not constitute grounds for disqualification of the attacker.”
Patrick finally opened up about the event and explained that as soon as the bell rang, his competitor ran toward him and delivered a roundhouse kick to Patrick’s side, knocking him onto the mat. In essence, his opponent startled him within a matter of seconds. And after that moment, he didn’t want that experience again: to suddenly take a stinging kick from his challenger and get knocked to the mat. In his remaining time, he became 100 percent defensive, making it his goal to remain standing for the rest of the fight. No matter what, he would not end up on the mat again. He did a lot more backing up than stepping forward during those minutes.
At the end of the two rounds, the score was one to seven. His opponent managed to score seven points on him, primarily because Patrick wasn’t focused on his offensive tactics. He was fixated on the defensive. Scoring points was the last thing on his mind.
This seemingly negative experience taught Patrick a valuable lesson about stepping forward. He became an outstanding student of the martial arts and completed the arduous journey to black belt in Tae Kwon Do.
Love the Mat
It’s no surprise that one of the mottos trainers and instructors in various martial art forms all over the world pass on to their students is love the mat. In some cases, they’ve expanded the motto to “Love the mat and the view of the ceiling.” I can appreciate that visual of lying on your back on the cold cushioned surface, even for a second, staring at the distant lighting grid above you, just enjoying the view.
If you’re training and competing on a regular basis, it’s a given that you’re going to end up on the mat over and over and over again. If you hate the mat—if you step into the ring thinking, “Don’t get hit, don’t get knocked down, don’t lose”—then you’re chewing up consciousness that could be attending to your skills. You’re devoting your attention and energy to bracing against the mat.
You’ll hear the same or similar mottos in core work and abdominal exercises (“Let’s do another round of planks. Come on, love the mat!”) and in yoga studios, where a common thread is that the mat is your very own island and a place of comfort. Koré Grate, executive director of the Five Elements Martial Arts and Healing Center, is a renowned women’s self-defense and empowerment instructor and is famous for her “Learn to Love the Mat” classes. Whatever the arena, this paradoxical strategy works because a large chunk of your consciousness is no longer consumed by your fear of the mat. Your concentration is no longer on not falling, not failing, or not taking the hit. Your new position is “Fine, I may end up on the mat. So what? I can handle it.” This allows you to move forward. You can focus more of your consciousness on handling the competitor in front of you (or your skill set, or your core exercises, or your self-defense mantras), thus diminishing the chance you’ll end up on the mat.
Let me rephrase that. We are going to end up on the mat repeatedly. If we are busy protecting ourselves against hitting the mat, if we are working to guarantee a certain designated comfort level, our consciousness is in an internal battle that weakens our performance. The less
we worry about being thrown to the mat, the less likely we are to end up on the mat. I’m promoting a paradoxical strategy that says to go after what threatens you, welcome discomfort, and allow the occasional punch in the gut from Anxiety. When you’re in the jungle, run toward the roar.
You cannot keep backing up into a place of safety and expect to gain control. You must step into the chaos and fight for control there. When you figure out how to do this, you will begin living out in the world again. To be fully engaged in life, you must give up control as you now know it. Only then will you gain a whole new level of control.
The Neurology of “I Want This”
Your prefrontal cortex is the part of your brain that makes interpretations about what you are experiencing. It can work in your favor, or it can work against you. When Anxiety is in charge, your prefrontal cortex will scare you by exaggerating danger and telling you that you don’t have what it takes to handle the threat. Your major task is to find ways to compete with the prefrontal cortex telling your amygdala, “This experience is dangerous, and I’m afraid I can’t handle it.” One way is to allow those fearful thoughts to pop up (because they’re going to pop up, whether we like it or not). Don’t try to get rid of them. When they arrive, step back and notice them. Once you create that mental gap, give yourself a new message similar to “I actually want this feeling.” In essence, our goal is to get your prefrontal cortex focused on generating these paradoxical statements so they will take priority over your fearful thoughts.
When you have been traumatized in the past, how do we help your amygdala figure out that it doesn’t have to keep juicing you up with epinephrine? Actually, your amygdala will learn on its own when you purposely and voluntarily choose to place it in a safe, reasonable facsimile of the fearful situation and let it hang out. This requires that you also start detaching from those dramatic thoughts you have generated in the past in response to threat. (Oh, no. I can’t stand this. I’ve got to get rid of these feelings. Now!) Yet to get stronger, you will still need those uncomfortable thoughts and feelings to show up. In neurology we use the expression “You have to activate to generate.” This means you have to activate the neurocircuitry of fear, and you have to activate it specifically during the event that is scaring you in order to generate a new response to that specific event when you encounter it again in the future. Be willing to put yourself in those scenes repeatedly, but make sure you are stepping onto the platform of acceptance while doing it. It’s possible you won’t have to repeat it a number of times in order to change. But the best attitude to have is “No matter how many times I have to repeat this, I’m willing to keep doing it until I get strong.” That stance needs to trump the attitude of “Oh, gosh, am I better yet? Because I don’t really want to do this anymore.”
Choose to Become Distressed and Afraid
- You have to voluntarity and purposely choose to generate distress if you want to learn to manager distress
- You have to voluntarily and purposely choose to generate distress if you want to learn to manage distress.
- Go after what threatens you, welcome the discomfort, and allow the occasional punch in the gut from Anxiety.
- Give yourself a paradoxical message similar to “I actually want this feeling.”
- Choose to feel clumsy, awkward, unsure, and afraid.
- Act on the mottos “Love the mat” and “Run toward the roar.”
Unfortunately, you can’t simply put yourself in the threatening situation and then distract yourself when you get scared. Your amygdala needs to sense that this experience is similar enough to the original one that traumatized you. At the same time, however, your amygdala needs to become aware that this is different, because this time it notices that you’re scared but not terrified, and you have an urge to run but you’re not acting on it. So you need to perceive yourself as safe enough and then choose to experience those uncomfortable feelings instead of escape them. Your amygdala has to hang out, unencumbered by your resistance. That’s how it learns.
If you got trapped in an elevator once in the past and now you feel phobic of elevators, but want to get over your phobia, you need to get on an elevator, let yourself get scared, and ride up and down the elevator, welcoming those fearful sensations instead of fighting them. And then do it again. And again. If you will repeat that action, then instead of remaining on autopilot, secreting all that epinephrine your amygdala always gives you, it will begin a new learning process to determine just how much epinephrine it really needs to secrete. If you keep riding that elevator (assuming you don’t get trapped again) while you actively maintain the stance of “This is really what I want to be doing right now,” your amygdala will begin to make new decisions as it faces elevators. At the same time, these experiences allow your long-term working memory to build internal resources and make them available to you more rapidly in the future. This is all good strategy.
Giving Your Amygdala a Chance to Learn
1) Step into a safe, reasonable facsimile of the traumatic scene
2) Let yourself feel threatened and get scared
3) Welcome the fearful sensations: “This is what I want right now”
4) Hang out
Change what you say to yourself and believe in what you say. That’s how you will prevail over all those negative comments your prefrontal cortex has been generating. If you can embrace whatever you are experiencing in the (uncomfortable) moment, your amygdala will do its job and learn not to secrete more epinephrine than necessary. Over time you will become less afraid and better able to tolerate your fear.
How do you refocus your prefrontal cortex? By creating that momentary gap in your negative diatribe so that you can say, and believe, such messages as these:
- I want this distress. Sitting with and accepting this distress is going to make me stronger.
- I can handle this uncertainty.
- I’m willing to feel this.
- That’s content. I’m not paying attention to content.
You can even learn to say this one, “Come on, Anxiety, gimme me your best shot.” I’ll tell you all about that one when we get to the section Be Cunning.
Once you respond with a message of willingness, expect that within moments you will hear yourself resisting and feel that urge to get away from the distress. That pendulum is just going to swing back and forth for a while. If you told yourself, “I’m willing to feel this,” and then your discomfort magically disappeared, that’s not going to help our project. Your amygdala needs to have the chance to linger in the distress while you aren’t busy enflaming it through your prefrontal cortex. Let those thoughts and feelings come, then detach from your resistant stance and swing back over to your accepting stance. Do it again and again and again. Don’t get frustrated with your rebound over to resistance again. If that happens, tell yourself it’s just what you’re looking for.
Let me say again. You have to voluntarily and purposely choose to step into the distressing event if you want to learn to manage your distress. You must step forward, into the threat, and let yourself become afraid. That gives you a chance to master your fear. If you permit yourself to feel afraid, you have already begun to walk down the path to mastering these skills. When you choose to become distressed and afraid, you are now taking back ownership of your life from Anxiety.
Figure 7. Expect that you will resist, and then
practice detaching, again and again.
The Science of Habituation—
This Is Hard, and I Want It
How can I possibly suggest that you should ask for doubt and discomfort? I can explain. But first, let me remind you that ever since Chapter 7, we have been addressing worries that are noise, not signals. You might be having a hard time paying your bills these days, and that’s something to be concerned about. But when Anxiety takes over, it convinces you to worry throughout the day. When you worry at inappropriate times (like when you’re trying to sleep), or when worry only makes you feel bad instead of also activating a problem-solving session, then we are working on that kind of worry now. When your fears and worries have led you to avoid activities you really want to engage in again, we are working on those topics now. All the tactics in these chapters are designed for noisy worries, not signals.
In behavioral therapy we have a term called habituation, which has been a long-standing principle in the treatment of phobias and other irrational fears. Habituation means gradually learning to tolerate a relatively safe situation that has been scaring you. It requires three variables: frequency, intensity, and duration. Applying this principle means that you face the feared situation frequently, all within a short few weeks. As you face your fear, you should generate at least moderate distress. (On a scale of 0 to 100, imagine getting your distress to fifty or above.) And you should linger in that difficult scene for an extended period of time. Lately we’ve been refining some of the concepts behind habituation, and these changes make a great deal of sense. (I’ll tell you about that work by Drs. Barlow and Craske in Chapter 24.) But that’s not our concern right now. For our purposes, these definitions will work perfectly.
But wait a minute. I’ve had plenty of hard-working clients who challenge me when I described this approach. If they have panic disorder, they might say, “Dr. Wilson, I go to the grocery store. At least three times a week! And I stay there, sometimes for forty-five minutes to an hour, while I’m feeling so anxious. But I’m still no better!” They seem to be actively engaging in what we call exposure practice. They are meeting the basic criteria for habituation: they’re exposing themselves to the fearful situation frequently enough; they feel quite distressed; and they are staying forty-five minutes to an hour, which fits the definition of an extended period of time.
Yet it’s not helping them. Why not? Because as they stand in the threatening situation, their self-talk includes, “Jeez, I hope I don’t have a panic attack. I wish I could get out of here right now, but I have to do my shopping. I hate this feeling. How much longer? How much longer!?!” This is just what we were talking about in the previous chapter. As they remain in the threatening environment, their opinion of the present circumstance—“This is bad. I want to escape.”—is working against them. The statements of their prefrontal cortexes are now an active part of their working memory, which accesses past experiences that went poorly. All this resistance is using up chunks of their working memory, crowding out thoughts of any positive coping skills.
And the same can happen with you. Your negative judgment is always going to override any techniques you might use to get stronger. That’s why you and I are not relying on techniques. Your resisting mind, just like mine and everyone else’s, can push aside techniques. So we are building from the top down. We started with solid principles. We are now constructing a point of view that leads to a broad strategy that will then direct your actions. Technique is overrated. Acting on principles is the long-term solution.
Imagine you have social anxiety and you are working on your fear of being criticized by others during your departmental meetings at work. You attend these meetings every week—there’s your frequency. Each of those meetings lasts a solid hour. Add to that the length of time you are anxiously worried both before and after the meeting. All of that counts as your duration. And, of course, you get pretty darn distressed during that time, so there’s the intensity. Now we’ve got the frequency, intensity, and duration of the habituation model. And yet you aren’t getting stronger. What’s missing here? If before each meeting you predict that things will go badly, and if before you speak up you keep generating worried thoughts about what you’re going to say, and if as you leave the meeting you start worrying about how you expressed yourself, then you are standing in your own way of getting stronger. The messages of fear and worry generated by your prefrontal cortex won’t let you gain any ground. That’s why we must make some modifications in this habituation model.
Imagine you have a fear of elevators and you try to get over it by riding up and down the sixteen floors of your office building repeatedly. That’s pretty good strategy, right? But what’s the chance of your mastering that elevator phobia if during each ride you scare yourself with, “Boy, I’ve been lucky so far. I wonder how many strands of that cable are still left. Could it snap at any moment? Of course, it’s never happened to me yet. That means I must be due for a tragic fall!” You are actively generating interpretations that this elevator riding is dangerous while you are actively attempting to overcome your fear. That’s never going to work. When your negative interpretations run wild, completely unrestrained, they will always trump your courageous action, and you will stay stuck. I believe this is the top reason why people in behavioral treatment for their anxiety disorders are not able to recover. It makes sense to me that if you do work on your elevator phobia in this way, you’ll try these attempts only a few more times before you conclude, “It’s no use. I can’t get better. The stairs are best for somebody like me.”
You and I are not taking a behavioral therapy approach to your problems. We are leading with the cognitive: your thoughts and your attitude. Your prefrontal cortex is going to supersede any chance for habituation if it continues to reflect the point of view that says, “It is best to get back to where I feel safe and comfortable again.” To compete with such a perspective, you need to take on an attitude that stems from habituation. Consider this logic: “I need to frequently generate distress and sit with it for a while in order to get stronger. I want to get stronger. So I actually want frequency, intensity, and duration.”
But don’t just step into your threatening environment. Seek out frequent exposures to your threat. And if you then feel distressed and insecure, welcome those feelings. And if your doubt and discomfort seem to be lasting a long time, then want them to last. The change we are looking for is a shift in your attitude toward your threat, your doubt, and your distress. That means you must courageously step toward what scares you. But you don’t do it in order to habituate. You do it as a means to practice this change in your point of view.
To build your strength, you will need to move into territory that is now under Anxiety’s control. You are going to feel clumsy, awkward, unsure, and afraid. Your job is to willingly choose to have those feelings when they show up. The truly unfamiliar territory you will be aggressing into is the psychological terrain in which you purposely scare yourself. I know all this continues to sound absurd, because it’s paradoxical. And it will be hard for you. It’s supposed to be hard. That’s why we call it work. But it’s not complex. I will coach you on how to face your fears with a simple frame of mind that no longer feeds Anxiety.
Only Do What You Want to Do
Speaking of nonsensical, here is certainly an unorthodox suggestion: only take actions that you want to take. Don’t push into fearful situations simply because you think, I have to do this in order to get better. If you don’t want to face the difficulty, back away. If you don’t want to take an action, don’t take it. If you don’t want to practice these skills, don’t practice. If you approach a challenging circumstance and then decide you don’t want to step any closer, stop.
Don’t take any action only because you should take it. Take it because you see the logic (twisted as it is) in taking it, you purposely decide to take it, and you willingly choose to take it. When you want to do the hard work that is required to get stronger, then push on.
You and I both know that a part of you will not want to step forward. Everyone has that experience because it’s universal. When we contemplate taking a challenging step, some part of us doesn’t want to struggle and would rather back away. So expect that part of you to show up. Your task is not to let it become your executive voice. You can hear it, you can understand why you’d have that thought, but you can’t allow that voice to be in charge of your actions. You need to act based on an executive message of “I choose to step forward. This is hard, and I still want to do this.”
Let’s say you often become intimidated and anxious when a car comes up behind you “too closely” on the highway. Now you’re driving down the highway in order to practice tolerating that intimidating feeling. A car pulls up behind you, and you begin feeling all that typical distress. At this point you have a choice. You can say, “I don’t like this. And yet I’m going to continue to allow myself to feel anxious right now.” Or you can say, “I don’t like this. I’m going to pull over until they go past.” Either choice you make is fine. Anytime you choose to stay with and welcome your distress or your insecurity, you’re practicing your skills. In those moments, you are scoring points against Anxiety. But that doesn’t mean you always have to score points against Anxiety. As soon as you make an executive decision to stop practicing, then stop practicing. When you’re ready to practice again, go ahead.
I know you’re going to be surprised to hear me say this, but there is a paradox that’s associated with this only-do-what-you-want-to-do theme. (You’re not surprised? Oh, you know me too well.) The paradox goes like this: Only do what you want to do, and want to do the hard stuff.
Another Paradox Only do what you want to do. And keep finding ways to want to do the hard stuff.
To get stronger, you need to want to take actions that intimidate you. Keep stringing together moments in which you choose to feel scared and step forward anyway. But start this process by developing the skill of wanting to do whatever you decide to do. If you believe an action is worth taking, then genuinely want to take it. Here’s the message-to-self: “Things might get dicey here, and I’m going to stay the course anyway.” Generate activities related to your theme that could get you feeling apprehensive and insecure. That’s your challenge. And when those feelings do show up, your challenge is to willingly stay with them.
If you are afraid of being embarrassed, then your work is to learn how to embrace embarrassment. When you become embarrassed, your job is to tell yourself something like, “This is hard for me. And I can handle these feelings.” (You can’t just mouth the words. You need to mean it.) Then let yourself linger in the feeling of being embarrassed. You don’t need to get rid of that feeling. As soon as you take the stance that you have to get rid of that feeling, you have put Anxiety back in the dominant position.
A Paradoxical Twist to Habituation
- Want to step into your feared situation.
- If your doubt or distress shows up, then want it to show up.
- If your doubt or distress gets stronger, then want it to be strong.
- If your doubt or distress sticks around, then want it to stick around.
Your job is to handle any present moment in such a way as to stop fighting it. Let’s return to that habituation model of frequency, intensity, and duration. Choose to step into your feared situation so you can hang out with a sense of insecurity or distress. Do that frequently. While you’re there, if your anxiety gets stronger or you start feeling even more uncertain about how things are going, then embrace that experience. That’s the intensity part. Why do that? Because you are feeling stronger anxiety or doubt at this moment. Accept what is currently present. You have only two possible responses to any moment: either you embrace it or you fight against it. As soon as you fight against it, Anxiety is dominating the moment again.
In that same way, if your anxiety doesn’t diminish or your uncertainty spontaneously sticks around, embrace that experience, since that’s the duration part of habituation. Remember, a more timid or insecure part of you will be thinking, I do not want this experience. I want to get rid of this experience. There’s no problem with those kinds of thoughts popping up. In fact, you should expect them. Just don’t put that intimidated part of you in charge.
Dominate or Be Dominated
Yes, you’re right. Once again I am offering you responses that seem patently absurd. Nobody in their right mind (myself included) is truly excited by the experience of doubt and discomfort, and certainly no one wants to literally hunt down those feelings. Yet choosing to seek them out is the opposite of the disposition that maintains the dominance of Anxiety. Anxiety needs you to back away when you feel intimidated. Do you get that? It is not looking to give you an uncomfortable sensation. It’s looking to give you an uncomfortable sensation that you resist. Your job is to find any other way to respond besides resisting. The most important principle here is that when you stop resisting and you stop avoiding, you start getting stronger. In other words, it’s not just what you do, it’s what you stop doing.
Anxiety needs you to play your role of shrinking back, of trying to get rid of these feelings that intimidate you. Instead, if you can stay open and willing to take on this absurd stance, even if it is tongue-in-cheek, you will generate a new frame of reference that is incompatible with what Anxiety so desperately needs to survive. Once you stop backing up and start moving toward Anxiety, Anxiety becomes subservient to you. No matter how clumsy you are at attempting to welcome Anxiety, to the degree you will pay attention to mastering that tactic, you will detach from your tendency to resist. And that’s a winning strategy.
What’s Automatic Versus
What You Can Change
Here’s how you might experience this shift in the moment. When the provoking threat shows up, it produces two automatic responses within you. The first will be your sense of intimidation. It could be an image or a worried thought, a sense of danger, or some sudden impulse. If it’s a thought, it can take any form that implies something bad could happen. I could fail this test. I could suffer in Hell from this blasphemous thought. I could look foolish. I could get trapped. I could freak out. I could get rejected. I could lose.
Your second automatic response will be a compulsive urge: your insistence on removing the threat and reducing your distress by something you do or say. The driving stance is “I can’t let that happen!” So you will feel this strong impulse to leave the scene or to seek some reassurance by asking for help, taking a medication, checking for safety, or repeating some thought or action. Consider this initial sense of intimidation and your immediate urge to get rid of it as within Anxiety’s domain. We’re going to let those go, because we are not trying to fix such automatic and spontaneous reactions. Our work begins immediately after those thoughts, feelings, urges, and drives. Our focus will be on what you do next.
These Come Automatically,
So Accept Them!
The Intimidation—a thought, image, or impulse that makes
you feel uncertain, anxious, and at risk
THEN
The Urge—your insistence on removing the threat by something you do or say. It will take the form of “I can’t let that happen!”
This is the moment to intervene. Your first task is to mentally step back from the moment, separating yourself from the part of you that is worrying, just like I talked about at the end of Chapter 9. Put a label on your current experience so you can gain some perspective about what’s going on: “Oh, here’s my worry about money again,” or, “Oh, I can feel my urge to check the faucet again.” You’re not making a negative judgment about the negative thought popping up. It’s not, “Oh, no! There’s that worry again!” In fact don’t be angry, upset, self-critical, or disappointed by the thought. Simply step back objectively to observe it and name it.
Stepping Back and Wanting It
Notice the threatening thought, image, or impulse.
Name what you notice. “Oh, I’m worrying about that again.”
Want that. “Good! I want this doubt.”
Notice that you feel scared.
Want that. “Good! I want to feel scared, too.”
Hang out while feeling uncertain and frightened.
Now what? Anxiety expects you to struggle to get rid of this uncomfortable doubt. Instead, take a stance that is opposite of what Anxiety needs. That’s going to be a reasonable facsimile of “Good. There’s my worry. Right now I want not to know [about how to solve my money problems or whether or not the faucet is dripping]. Because that gives me a chance to feel uncertain. And that’s what I want, too.” Doesn’t that sound absurd? But that’s what we’re looking for: to want to be unsure, because tolerating a sense of insecurity is how you get stronger.
Next will come another automatic response: you’ll feel more scared. Why? Because seeking to feel certain about safety is a defensive strategy. Anytime we drop a defense at a time of threat, we will feel more vulnerable and more scared. (If you don’t believe me, then the next time you are driving seventy miles an hour down the highway, pop off your seatbelt for a while.) This is the moment for your second therapeutic intervention: mentally step back again and name what’s going on: “Oh, I’m more afraid right now [about my money situation/about the house flooding]. Good. I’m looking to feel scared, too.”
Now what? Hang out as long as you can with these feelings as you continue to engage in your chosen activities. Every time you can engage in this paradoxical response and then turn your attention back to your chosen activity, you score a point against Anxiety. If you don’t want to tolerate the doubt or discomfort anymore, do whatever you have to. You don’t need to practice your skills all day every day. Practice them moment-by-moment. And then start stringing together as many moments as you can. Assume that the more moments in a row you can practice, the stronger you will get. Eventually you will have to do it for a longer period of time, but you don’t have to do that now.
Cobblestones and Uncertainty
It seems like we humans are continually on the lookout for the quickest, easiest, or most predictable path to any given end. Convenience stores and fast food. Escalators. Faster download time. Text messages. And there’s nothing wrong with any of that, I suppose. Google Maps provides us with the most direct route from A to B, and if the traffic indicators glare red, we can adjust that route to avoid the hassle. For many of us, a good day is one that is hassle-free.
The trouble with our smooth, well-ironed environment is that the real world has bumps in it. Life has bumps in it. The world is not a paved street. It’s characteristically flawed and full of surprises.
I suppose we have a choice in that we can continue to take a detour with every approaching pothole, or we can accept and eventually embrace the uncertainty that comes with daily life, training and retraining our brains to deal with the ever-changing path we walk on. It turns out that the latter approach is not only better for us mentally; it has a significant effect on our physical health. Ask the residents of Acorn Street in historic Beacon Hill, Boston, or the residents of the “Dumbo” neighborhood in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. After all, research suggests that people who live and walk on cobblestone streets have an improved sense of balance, an improved cardiovascular system, and all-around improved health, and we can attribute these positive health conditions to the “poor” (as in “not smooth and even”) conditions of the streets on which they live.* The bumpy, rocky, coarse, uneven, unpaved streets outside their front doors are actually doing them more good than harm.
*William McCall, “The path to better health and lower blood pressure may be paved with cobblestones,” Associated Press report, July 12, 2005.
Imagine you and I are now walking together down Acorn Street. Each time we take a step on that unpredictable cobblestone street, our brains are engaged in the task, giving both mental and physical instructions. Our minds are alert, constantly adjusting to the erratic ground beneath our feet. Our cardiovascular system is making similar adjustments, changing the way it pumps blood through our bodies.
If you still don’t believe me, take a trip to China and be on the lookout for black stone mats laid out next to the streets. Passersby remove their shoes and step across the black cobbles, sending information through the feet, signaling the vestibular network to engage in a workout, improving their overall equilibrium. They’re literally thrusting themselves into uncertainty for the sake of better balance.
I can’t imagine a purer, more pleasant, or more appropriate paradox for us to consider.
When you work with trainers or fitness coaches, they do not put you on the elliptical machine on a steady incline at a constant pace. No, they put you on the BOSU ball and do their best to make you just unstable enough. They’ll pull you off the weight machines and put free weights in your hands because they want your muscles to feel awkward. When muscles are awkward, they start firing off more, and that in itself builds strength. When you’re in a spin class, the best instructors will have you in and out of the bike’s saddle, at both high and low resistance, so your body never acclimates to the workout. Why? Because the purpose of any well-conceived physical exercise is to promote disruptive change. That’s how you build strength, build muscles, increase stamina, improve balance, and improve performance.
This is exactly what you and I need to do. We need to create a well-conceived strategy to build your ego strength and your mental muscles and to increase your grit and resilience so you can handle distress and rebound after a loss. By doing all that, we will improve your performance.
How do we do that? We disrupt your pattern and get you out of balance, out of your set routine, and out of your comfort zone. You need to seek out opportunities to feel clumsy, awkward, embarrassed, insecure, and self-conscious. That is such a crazy thing to do. And it works so well. But there is no way for you to know that until you experience it. All my talking here will have zero benefit unless you translate this strategy into action.
In Defense of Awkwardness
The Wright Flyer was the first successful heavier-than-air powered aircraft. The Wright brothers designed their plane to be unstable. It was so unstable they could barely control it, even with a great deal of practice. The pilot had to continually make adjustments to maintain pitch.
All previous designers assumed the plane had to be inherently stable. So why in the world would the Wrights purposely construct an unstable plane? Because then they could control it. If they wanted to influence the plane’s takeoff, direction of travel, and landing, they had to exert control, and that required an airplane that needed control in order to be stabilized.
When you attempt to live within a continually stable routine so you can feel safe and in control, you have it backward. If nothing in your circumstances is allowed to change, your world is very small and you have no control.
If we’re truly interested in living in the real world—the world of cracks and crevices and cobblestones, the world of instability and accidents and unexpected incidents—then we must train ourselves to cope with the insecurity of not knowing and the sensations that come with awkwardness. That leads to resilience: our ability to spring back from troubled times. We must learn to deal with variability in our environment, unpredictability in our lives, and changes in the nature of our circumstances. We must, first and foremost, learn to step on the cracks rather than stepping around, over, and in between them.
As you move toward the activities you’ve been backing away from, be willing not to know for certain how things are going to turn out. I encourage you to adopt the principle of expecting the unexpected and welcoming the discomfort of awkwardness and uncertainty that comes with facing any challenge.
Our doubt and discomfort are not the foe. They can be greeted at the door as welcome visitors. Why? Because if we fight to keep them out, we give control over to Anxiety. If we welcome them (they are coming anyway), we become the subject of the interaction, not the victim. The point of view to strive for is “I notice that I’m feeling awkward, and I’m doubtful of the outcome here. I want exactly these feelings, because they are required during this learning process. If I don’t master this step of welcoming, I don’t get to the next step. I want the next step.”
The other reason to take on this stance is that it’s the most efficient way to get to the next step. Here is paradox in action: Welcome the present moment in order to move into the future.
By the way, I have no interest in your “wanting” all of these experiences because some psychologist said it would work. “I want this” and friends (friends being “This is hard, but I can handle it,” “I can tolerate this,” “I’m willing . . . ,” etc.) work only if they’re truly earnest. You can’t fake it and expect results. The message “I want this” is no “open sesame.”
I received a note from a former client who had moved away to attend law school. We had been working on her social anxieties because she had been quite timid about speaking to others for most of her life. Since her preteen years, she had done all she could to keep anyone from noticing her, fearing she would come across as weird or different and then be judged harshly and rejected. She had not wanted to take any action that might even remotely draw negative attention from others, and she had always exaggerated the likelihood that she would do or say something weird. One important lesson she absorbed in treatment was that being socially anxious, the risk she is taking when she speaks up, is much more about the terrible feeling of humiliation inside herself and has very little to do with getting harshly judged by others. After a good, long while in treatment, she began to understand that her job is to take actions socially that will generate that internal state of humiliation. And then she needs to tolerate that feeling. It’s a terribly uncomfortable feeling to withstand. But it’s much different from her faulty belief that at any moment she could say or do something that caused others to judge her as a social misfit and outcast. No one in their right mind would take actions that would immediately lead to being an outcast. But every adult has to withstand moments of embarrassment and even shame.
Yes, her comments in this note may be tongue-in-cheek, but she has the right attitude! (Italics below are mine.) You don’t know this woman (if you did, you’d really like her), but I knew her well. With all her incredible insecurities, if she can adopt this stance and put herself at risk of feeling humiliated in order to have the chance to get stronger, then you can, too.
Dear Reid,
I get a gold star for the day. I was curious about something in one of my classes (of 60+ people), so I raised my hand and asked. Unfortunately no one laughed at me . . .
I have oral arguments in about a week. I have to get up in front of a (pretend) judge and argue one side for 15 MINUTES!!!! I’m very nervous about it, but at least it’s not graded. And the humiliation can only last so long, or perhaps it will actually go smoothly. Although what I really want is to trip on my way up to the podium, stutter the entire time, blush excessively, and have an extremely bad case of the hiccups.