by wp-admin | Dec 9, 2021 | Exploring the Mental Fitness Formula
All it takes is a point of light, a ray of hope in the darkest night… Randy Travis
Do you ever have moments when you get what seems like a great idea, but later you reconsider and decide you’d be crazy to try to do that? Here I am to show you what crazy looks like! I put this costume together when my son was six and we were going to a Halloween costume party. I sewed him the clown costume he wanted and designed my Mrs. Fixit trappings to express the longing I had to find full-time work as a therapist. Here’s how Mrs. Fixit lights her candle and keeps it burning.
In 1976 had my Ph.D., but lacked the confidence to pursue a therapist job during the mental health climate of the time. So I did part-time jobs that grew me in new ways. The most powerful was two years of marketing the Dale Carnegie Course. I was never very good at it, but I got over my HSP self-consciousness. Every day I’d cold-call on companies in the northwest Chicago area until about 3:00 pm, when the pain in my gut from fear made me go home to lie on the couch and regroup. Gradually, I realized that I shouldn’t take other people’s reactions to me personally and my gut became more comfortable for life. My favorite saying that our boss, Jim Bowen, gave us for this fear was “Nobody ever kicks a dead dog.” This helped me learn how to keep my candle burning indefinitely.
How do you decide when a “great” idea is great enough to pursue? Research to discover what else has been done in the field. Has your idea already been done; what came of it? Why? Maybe it wasn’t very well done, or you could do it in a different way to good effect. Or you might choose a different great idea to pursue. Get the training necessary for developing your idea. Finally, as Napoleon Hill advised in his book, The Master-Key to Riches, find a like-minded group to support you along the way.
If you’re confused about which direction you should take, because you have ideas in several areas, check out Pt. II Chapter 7 of my book, where there’s an exercise to help you set short- and long-term goals in key areas. Review your life to consider what you’ve loved doing and where you excel, then talk with trusted friends and mentors about what they think might be most fruitful for your to explore. Try some smaller, related projects to see how they work for you. You’ll likely discover personal limitations that prevent you from pursuing some ideas. Your Wise Parent should be assuring your Child that you have all the talents you need to live a rich and meaningful life. If it’s not doing that well enough, it’s time to review Part I of Claim Your Own Mental Fitness to learn how your Adult can transform some unexamined Toxic Beliefs (especially toxic Belief #2) into Wise-Parent guidance.
Elaine Aron (hsperson.com) has developed a video, Sensitive, about HSPs (Highly Sensitive Persons or those with sensory processing sensitivity) to help them find the confidence and acceptance they need to bring their talents into a world that tends to overwhelm them and snuff out their candles. As an HSP I’m grateful for her work, but I know that many non-HSP’s also get discouraged. Too many distractions of daily living pull us away from our goals. There are too many people with unresolved grief and anger who want to crush anyone who expresses enthusiasm and confidence. I guess it makes them feel better about their own dead candles, but all they’d have to do to reignite them is build up their own Wise Parents.
Remember it’s good to be a living dog and embrace life with energy and a sense of purpose. Celebrate where you are on your journey with a costume, picture or symbol that expresses where you are and keep your candle burning.
by wp-admin | Dec 9, 2021 | Exploring the Mental Fitness Formula
When you see what’s wrong and you try to make it right, you will be a point of light. Randy Travis
This line from Randy Travis always brings me to tears. But wishing don’t make it so. First you must construct a lantern for your candle. This spark of inspiration and faith in yourself, like all fire, needs containment and guidance to become Travis’ point of light. Mrs. Fixit would say that the candle represents the unique set of skills and talents you have to fuel this light and your Adult must experiment with how to keep it burning. The glass in a lantern protects your inspiration from the wind and rain along your journey, and allows it to keep lighting your way. The metal housing gives your candle a firm base to keep it steady and an access point for recharging your fuel. The handle allows you to hold it up where you need its luminance. You’ll construct your own unique lanterns as you go.
To claim your own mental fitness, you must have a grasp of just what you need to navigate in your life. The system I’ve been describing in this blog and in Claim Your Own Mental Fitness offers the means to construct this for yourself. Here’s a review of the key elements:
- Child: the energy, talents and interests that constitute the raw material for your candle
- Indulgent Parent: the unfettered permission to explore and express Child impulses in potentially scented and malleable wax-like form
- Critical Parent: the limiting and shaping instrument that forms your candle
- Wise Parent: balances these two, allowing a well-shaped and sturdy candle that’s not too brittle or too soft
- Adult: monitors these as you go through your days, adjusting each and creating your Wise Parent as it revises the Toxic Beliefs of your Indulgent and Critical Parents. It trims your wick just right and makes sure your candle is ready for your journey into relationships and managing your daily life.
The skills your Adult needs to provide this guiding influence are contained in the FORMULA. Remember, it must Focus inward upon your Child and Parent parts, Observe what Toxic Beliefs might be triggering fight-or-flight and Revise these to calm your system and make the new versions available in your Wise Parent. Then your Adult must Monitor for any needed adjustments, continually Using your Child’s body-linked feedback that fight-or-flight has begun. Next your Adult must support your Child’s feelings of hope, confidence and strength by Lightening its day with fun, inspiring, healing and energizing experiences. This keeps your light shining brightly. Finally Your Adult must learn how to Apply this system when you interact with other people and when life stresses you in new ways that threaten to take you into overwhelming emotional darkness.
Three-year-olds don’t design lanterns. With their immature pre-frontal cortexes, they can’t monitor well or study how other people have found ways to become steady points of light. Gradually we develop the mental ability to do this, but we often get very poor guidance for how to build effective lanterns as we go through life. Expect to work hard for mental fitness. Even when you know how to work with your different mind aspects and practice the FORMULA, it’s still very hard to keep a steady march with your point of light through all the stressors you encounter.
Once you have your lantern, how can you “see what’s wrong and try to make it right?” Your Adult must be like Syd Mead’s robot “Number Five” in the 1986 film Short Circuit, open to and hungry for INPUT. Humans through all our history have struggled with the same issues facing you. They’ve written about what’s helped them, often brilliantly. Nowadays movies and other videos offer new avenues for study. To keep your Adult functioning well you must keep practicing the FORMULA and also become a life-long learner about mental fitness.
Study the Wise Parent guidance of others you respect to decide what you believe is right or wrong. Don’t be too proud or too lazy to explore what they have to offer if you want mental fitness. Your steady light can lead others to light their own candles and see what’s wrong, then try to make it right.
