Take Your Hand Off the Hot Stove

I've always been fascinated by the brain and its inner workings. Increasing my mental fitness by joining Positive Intelligence literally rewired my brain, and in turn truly transformed me.

In the neuroscience based Positive Intelligence practice, we talk about the phenomenon of mirroring neurons. Simplified, this is the notion that if I come to a conversation very spirited and full of positive energy, it will be contagious and you too will get ‘lit up’. Conversely, if I come to you in a very down state, full of negative energy it will threaten to unleash negative energy in you.

Crazy, right? Think about the last time you met with me. How did you feel after we spent time together?

We frame the negative around “Saboteurs” – our inner critics who wreak havoc in our heads holding on tightly to old paradigms and false beliefs, leaving us in a state of imposter syndrome, always second guessing ourselves. We even have cartoon-like images for each of them and given that we do a lot of visualization in our work, I often can clearly “see” these Saboteurs. Our Saboteurs’ patterns of thinking, feeling, and reacting become soft-coded in our brain through neural pathways. When these neural pathways are triggered, we are “hijacked” by our Saboteurs and feel, think, and act using their patterns. 

We play a lot with these Saboteurs – we make it fun to call them out when we see them, and we work hard to rewire our neural pathways away from the negativity that these Saboteurs impose. They are, at the end of the day responsible for most of the negative feelings we experience, like stress, anxiety, anger, frustration and more. In our world of Positive Intelligence, we think of this negativity as a hot stove. You wouldn’t leave your hand on a hot stove until it burns. Why live in a state of negativity until it consumes you?

This morning, I had a call from someone close to me who was clearly in a state of overwhelm. There has been a myriad of changes in this person’s life over the last few months that are all super positive but all require a lot of attention and this person feels like it’s all hitting at once. There will be much more of this to come in this person’s life as time goes on. This person had also not slept well for a few days. Being as close to me as they are, I became what my mom would have called “the punching bag” as this person lashed out in my direction.

I could have handled it the old Gayle way… lost my own temper… hung up… dissolved into a puddle of upset, and have it ruin a perfectly fine day. But I saw what was happening. It was like an out-of-body experience watching it all unfold.

I looked at the phone and could “see” every cartoon image of each Saboteur as it popped in… the Controller who felt out of control… the Stickler whose perfectionism was going to collapse under the weight of having to delegate… the Victim who was very much at the top of the heap bemoaning “poor me” throughout the call. There were even hints of the Hyper-Achiever pushing them to do yet more and the Hyper-Vigilant who was worried about it all…And of course, there was the Judge (at this point I wasn’t even sure if it was my own Judge or theirs!) at the helm, criticizing me. It was like a hot mess unraveling before my eyes and threatening to open the Pandora’s box of my own Saboteurs!

Recognizing the hot stove, I made every effort to remove my hand from it. I calmly listened and let the rant unfold. I offered up a few suggestions that might ease the overwhelm. I knew I was on my way to a massage therapy session which for me means an hour of mindfulness that puts me in a state of calm. And at the end of the day, I had deep empathy and compassion for this individual who truly could not help themselves in that moment, and needed to unload.

I walk a fine balance daily keeping these Saboteurs of mine at bay. Some are super strong in me; many have quieted significantly over the time I’ve been doing this work. Some days it’s easy and other days it really stretches me. It’s always more challenging when someone else’s Saboteurs threaten, through that phenomenon of mirroring neurons to unleash my inner critics. But the sense of calm I feel in beginning to master the hard work of rewiring my neural pathways from the negative to the positive keeps reminding me that the work will never be done, but it’s so worth it!

In work with my clients this comes up often. People and situations beyond our control threaten to derail us and our best intentions by heaping loads of unwelcome stress on us. In lieu of attempting to control what we cannot control; we can refocus and reframe around what is within our control:  how we react to any given situation/person/circumstance.

Instead of spending the day miserable, derailed by what was WAY out of my control I am super proud that I enjoyed every minute of today… the massage therapy and ensuing calm (for those who know what PQ reps feel like – try them for an hour on the massage table… IYKYK!), a hot shower, an afternoon & evening of amazing clients and warm sunshine.

Lessons Learned: We can’t control others. We can prepare, but we can’t always control what is thrown at us in any given period of time. Our own resilience lies in our ability to take our hands off the hot stove of negativity and lean back towards the positive by learning to surf instead of control.

The images of the Saboteurs that dance daily in my head: