In my last column on impulse control, I alluded to reflectionas a means of managing one’s impulses. Again, let me clarify: your impulses or feelings cannot be stopped; have them or they will have you. Your feelings serve as information, however, what you do with them matters.
Reflection can be loosely defined as slowing down your thinking and paying attention to your intentions and feelings in an effort to obtain your objective for acting. Hopefully, your principal intention is to “express yourself, rather than prove yourself.”
The challenge: How do we use our impulses to convert our thinking to help articulate a message that will be heard by others, and perhaps be influential in changing minds? Given the speed at which we feel things, we must find a way to slow things down.
Moments of Awareness is a method of “reflection in the moment” which I have used successfully (but not all the time) over the years. Here’s how it works.
1) You must learn to recognize your earliest sign of stress, whether it is visceral or cognitive. It’s imperative that you do not wait until your thoughts and feelings escalate into full blown anger. Think of emotions as being on a staircase that may range from mild annoyance to explosive.
2) Once you recognize the first sign of stress, get inside your head in a hurry and ask yourself, “What’s happening? What am I thinking and feeling in this moment, and why am I thinking and feeling this way?” Answer internally. (This step is often referred to as “current reality.”)
3) Once you answer the above questions, ask yourself: “What would I rather be thinking and feeling, and how can I get there? (This step is often referred to as your “vision”).
4) Lastly, you must choose either to stay stuck in your current reality, or change and do something different (your “strategy”) to help accomplish your vision or intention.
This technique must be practiced continually or it won’t be available when you need it. Why? Because allowing your stress to build and hijack your feelings will disable your pre-frontal cortex from internally managing the situation.
I used to practice Moments of Awareness every time I walked through a doorway; however, I’m not suggesting you do that as I was a problem child, and needed the practice.
