How are you?
People often ask that these days. Frankly, after the last year, I don’t really know. ‘I’m fine’, I say. And I am. But how I actually feel has been another thing altogether – happy one minute, in despair the next, then frustrated or bored……it goes on. It’s been ‘an experience’. Part of life. But then life is basically the sum of all our experiences - good, bad and everything in between.
We tend to think of experiences as things that we DO, although in my view, they are equally about how we feel.
Experiences are remembered in terms of how we felt at that time, as much as what we were actually doing. If we reflect on some of the best experiences of our lives, we know exactly how it felt to be there. And yes, sometimes ‘doing’ something special or exciting helps us to feel a certain way but in reality, how we feel in any particular situation can be as much about what’s going in our head rather than what’s happening to our body.
Last Summer, in a brief respite from lockdown, my husband took my son to meet up with his grandparents, auntie and cousin. They drove for three hours and sat outside in the garden - eating pizza, wrapped up in coats on a cool showery day. Apart from the pizza, it was hardly a dream day out for a 13 year old boy. When he got home, he said it was one of the best days of his life….not for what he did, but how he felt.
Two people can be in the exact same situation and whether they experience it as good or bad is just about how they ‘feel’ about it. So the definition of whether something ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is very subjective, a matter of personal perspective.
But how we feel is rather a hard thing to get a handle on.
We can see our feelings as the result of the stories we tell ourselves about a particular event or situation. It’s an interesting idea, isn’t it? It means that, in theory, we can change the feeling by changing the story we tell ourselves about it.
A good part of our enjoyment of life is defined by the expectations and goals we set.
We then judge ourselves on how well things have gone and ‘choose’, maybe consciously or subconsciously, to feel positive or negative about that. The benchmarks are of our own (or perhaps others) creation, there is no reality or fact – it is just a story and how we feel about the story.
A recent experiment looked at how people responded when they failed to achieve a task set, and were then given two different types of feedback. Some were encouraged to see it as a gradual learning process, a ‘good try’ and to have another go. Others were made to feel that they were a disappointment for failing. Not only did the feedback given dramatically affect their willingness to keep trying – it also made a significant difference to the likelihood of them ultimately managing to successfully complete the task.
All because of the story they were told.
So, whilst it may not always be easy, changing our life, or how we feel about our life may be more about changing the stories we tell ourselves about what’s happening to us. It’s the habit of a lifetime……..although, just noticing what’s going on could be the first step to making a change.does.
“Nothing will change your life as much as changing your thoughts”
