A Simple Way to be More Grounded Now and Get Better Over Time
Can these two questions make me a happier person?
What is the biggest obstacle to feeling okay?
For me, it’s failing to be in the moment I’m in. Instead, I obsess over past failures and ruminate on future worries, preventing me from ever being conscious of what’s going on around me and inside me right now. And “right now” is where life happens. So I’m missing life.
And what prevents me from improving and growing?
Repeatedly doing stuff that’s terrible for me — falling back into old habits and patterns, making bad decisions again and again. (Reminds me of that old saw “insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”)
If I boil down what I need to feel better and continually improve, these are the two basic elements:
Be more present in the moment
Learn from what’s happening and grow as a result
Of course, being more present and getting better all the time both sound great. I can’t picture anyone not wanting either of those things.
And it’s probably pretty easy to achieve both — if you’re a superheroic genius who has no anxiety and never feels overwhelmed.
But what about the rest of us? Is there a way for us, in the midst of the madness and complexity of our daily lives, to have calm presence and iterative self-improvement?
I think so.
Ask yourself two questions.
This week I started experimenting with a technique to not only remember my goals — 1. be okay and 2. get better — but maybe actually achieve them.
Here it is. I regularly ask myself these two short questions:
What’s happening right now?
What can I learn from this?
Every time I answer them, I’m amazed at how much comes up, and how valuable it is.
They’re deceptively simple questions, but if I earnestly commit to answering them, they ground me and help me make sense of what’s going on.
Answer directly, with details (and out loud).
These aren’t general questions to consider in a general way.
They need to be answered directly and in detail (and out loud, if possible — if you speak the answer, you’ll hear it, and it will stick).
You may get a weird look or two if other people are around and you’re muttering to yourself. But if it aids your mental health over the long term, maybe it’s okay to come across a little crazy…
1. What’s happening right now?
When I ask “What’s happening right now?”, it’s an invitation to list out what’s going on in my body and around me.
If I ask it of myself right now, while writing this, I’d have to answer:
“My stomach is churning a little with anxiety. I’ve got some tightness in my chest and jaw. I’m thinking about how hard it is to write this and feeling a lot of self-doubt about my ability to explain myself or give other people advice. I’m also splitting my attention between my kids playing a Roblox game, my wife looking at her phone on the couch beside me, and the work I’m doing, and feeling a nervous sense that they might need something from me soon.”
That’s a lot of information. About the physical sensations in my body, the thoughts in my mind, the circumstances of my environment.
My answer could probably run on for many more paragraphs, but I think what’s above is enough: it tells me what I’m feeling (not based on the stories I’m telling myself, but on the sensations in my body) and what stimulii — and stories — might be contributing to it.
2. What can I learn from this?
Once you have a sense of what’s happening, you can move on to question two: “What can I learn from this?”
Noticing what’s happening yields up some incredibly valuable data: this is what’s going on, and this is how I’m reacting to it. There’s always something to take away from that data, and doing so can help you grow and maybe even change your default way of reacting.
So in my current moment, I might answer the question like this:
“I’m experiencing anxiety which is causing me to doubt my abilities and split my attention, which is making it a lot harder to do the thing I’m doing right now. I am very invested in the idea that I need to serve and be available to other people, and this habit of thinking often prevents me from staying focused on what I want and need to focus on. When this kind of reaction is happening, common signals in my body include a roiling stomach, a tight chest, and a clenched jaw.”
Once again, I could probably go on a lot longer than this, but there’s a ton of useful information in what I just wrote. And to be clear, I didn’t really “know” all of that before I wrote it down — I had a sense of it, perhaps, but it wasn’t available to me in such clear terms.
Take action on what you’ve learned.
Using this technique has the immediate benefit of bringing me down to earth a little. Just noticing what’s happening with me right now helps me slow down and get more centred.
Instead of being caught up in the slipstream of stories that my mind throws up to make sense of what I’m feeling, I can see that there are factual things going on: tightness, churning, anxiety.
This reorientation allows me to think about what I might learn. And it can allow me to make a plan for how I might react just a little differently next time I’m in a situation like this.
If nothing else, I will remember to ask myself the two questions again — What’s happening right now? What can I learn from this? — next time I’m feeling a little overwhelmed.
And I will remember to be more aware of my beliefs about how I spend my time and what’s expected of me. I will be more consciously supportive of my need to focus on what I’m doing and not be available to others during those times (barring an emergency).
A request: try this yourself and let me know what happens.
I’m going to keep using this technique in the coming days and weeks, and see if I can make it a sustainable habit.
If you’re game, I’d love it if you’d try it too and tell me what your experience is like.
Ask yourself the two questions:
What’s happening right now?
What can I learn from this?
Answer them as best you can, and decide how you will use your answers to shift your behaviour a little bit.
I’m always seeking pathways to living a more intentional and healthy life, and this one intrigues me.
Even if the effect is small, I’m hoping it will be positive.
If you do try it, let me know what happens.