What's helping you and what's not?
Throughout life, we find ways to cope when we’re struggling with our feelings. Sometimes, we don’t even know how to name our emotions. Take a look at the feelings wheel - are you able to identify what you’re feeling and dig into the root cause of it? It can take a long time to understand what we feel when we feel it and even more reflection to identify why.
When we’re unhappy, lonely, feeling ashamed, guilty, frustrated etc., it can be tempting to make choices that won’t help us in the long run. Every day we’re in a place to make choices we feel empowered about or make choices that provide instant gratification (or numbing) that we don’t feel great about - that can be equally wonderful or exhausting.
Unpinning any coping decision is usually a habit which follows the cycle of cue, craving, response, and reward (according to James Clear, author of Atomic Habits). This can look like:
Work stress cue), craving for wine, having a bottle (or more) of post-work wine and a vent (response), feeling temporarily better (reward).
Work stress (cue), craving a release, going for a walk and talking to a friend (response), feeling supported and better able to face work the next day (reward).
While the choice seems obvious, it’s often not. Habits are hard to make and hard to break. And, when your habit involves an addictive substance such as sugar, alcohol, nicotine etc. well, that makes it all the trickier.
There’s an enormous amount of literature out there about breaking unhealthy habits and for good reason - this is an incredibly complex space. We’re not medically qualified and it’s important you seek professional support if you’re concerned about an unhealthy habit that’s taking a toll on you.
PG tip - however you’re coping, track it and have real-time, honest data to help you decide if the habit is helping you cope or hindering your ability to live empowered.
We’re here to share pragmatic tips in our upcoming fundamentals course: Living Empowered. You’ll see that featured soon and in the meantime, feel free to subscribe to our blog for new content each week or contact us.
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