How to Upgrade Your Mental Operating System, Pt. 5
ACCESS Enjoyment
At a recent dance lesson, I was practicing bachata with my instructor. For some reason, I was feeling off that day. My steps felt stilted and I was caught in my head. She noticed and asked “are you enjoying the dance”? The question was a wake up call. I was more focused on “doing a good job” than simply enjoying the dance.
Building upon the ACCESS model, this article goes over some strategies to help you experience more joy in the dance with life.
A Simple Equation for How You Feel
To keep things simple for this article, let’s use the below equation as a model for how you feel. External circumstances represents things that happen: you earn a promotion, you come down with a cold, you go on vacation, you have an argument with a friend, etc. Internal evaluation is the meaning you assign to what happens. For example, let’s look at the external circumstance example of coming down with a cold. The interpretation of that can go in multiple directions. It could be classified as “bad” because you feel crappy. It could also be classified as “good” if you’ve been feeling overwhelmed and you now have a “valid” reason to rest.
I have spent times in my life trying to manipulate external circumstances and other times working on my internal evaluations. Hands down, working on my internal evaluations has been the more effective path. Yes, external circumstances are a factor. That said, we have more power over our internal evaluations than our external circumstances. I propose two strategies for the choosing joy:
Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day. - Henri Nouwen
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Making Time for Gratitude
Are you familiar with the concept of negativity bias? It states that we have a tendency to apply more emotional significance to negative experiences over positive or neutral experiences of equal intensity. For example, think of how you would feel coming across a windfall of $10,000. Now think of how you would feel if you were hit with unexpected expenses of $10,000.
Practicing gratitude does not mean ignoring challenging or unpleasant experiences, it means giving the positive its due. What we focus on grows. I doubt this concept is new to you. That said, how consistently do you practice it? I started by writing down 3 things a day about 4 years ago. I practiced consistently and now write down more. My negativity bias has weakened, and my mental health has improved dramatically.
Acknowledging the good that you already have is the foundation for all abundance. - Eckhart Tolle
Making Time for Meaningful Activity
What are your values? What are your strengths? Do you consistently make time for activities that align with your values and strengths? There have been periods of my life where most of my time was spent in two areas: work and leisure. My job at the time paid the bills and provided opportunities for me to learn, but I was not passionate about it. The work itself was not particularly meaningful for me. Leisure time was great for relaxing. Especially chilling out on a Friday night with some comfort food, a 6 pack, and some video games after a stressful week. While the leisure time had its value, it also was not particularly meaningful to me. This was a time of my life when I was frequently stressed and anxious.
Looking back, I was optimizing my life at that time for comfort over growth. Perhaps I had aspirations for something greater, but I had plenty of excuses not to take action. Here’s the deal, meaningful action is going to contain elements of challenge and discomfort. It’s the process of working through those challenges that brings joy and satisfaction. What is meaningful to you is different than what is meaningful for me, so I can’t give you specific instructions on what to do. Here are a few examples of activities that are meaningful to me.
Making sure out goals are properly aligned with our passions only makes sense. - Josh Hinds
Isn’t Focusing on Enjoying Life Selfish?
I was talking to someone earlier this week who is considering a big change in his life. Something that excites him. While discussing the decision, he proposed the concern - “I feel like I’m being selfish.” There is a lot of good to be said about being considerate of others. However, it can be taken too far if we aren’t being considerate about our joy. We can’t pour from an empty cup. If we have no joy, what can we give? If we have joy, imagine what we can give.
The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of your life is to give it away. - Pablo Picasso