Liar Liar Pants on Fire: Faulty Thinking and My Quest to Lessen Human Suffering
In my early twenties, while caught in the grips of picking total jerks for boyfriends, I was blindsided by mine when I clumsily attempted to bond. You see, I was going through something that, although I’ve totally forgotten today, felt epically tragic at the time.
In response to the bearing of my soul, here was his solitary response:
“At least you have your arms and legs.”
True, very true.
But for the sake of one human being begging for a crumb of warmth and humanity from another, couldn’t he have mustered the emotional energy to have done a little better than that? Now, I am not talking Brene Brown level empathy here, but even a little “I am sorry to hear that.” would have gone a long way, given my low standards at the time.
No, he apparently could not.
So, with my arms I waved goodbye, and with my legs I walked away. It was only my self-esteem that was ever so slightly less intact.
I can easily chalk this up to immaturity and simply regard it as a memorable if not unfortunate growing pain. But, there is something to this memory. It continues to stick with me as it weaves its way through my life — a life of someone who privately negotiates the messiness of human relationships, as well as passionately seeks to alleviate the emotional pain and suffering of others, as a personal and professional calling.
For the past year, I have been writing a book called re:MIND and collaborating with an organization called Perceivant to both bring the book to life and transform it into a course. re:MIND is all about alleviating human suffering so that people can be liberated from thinking patterns that, well, in non-clinical terms, suck.
Like,” liar liar pants on fire” level suck.
Yup, our thoughts, especially the negative thought patterns that seem to cycle repeatedly in our minds, are not beholden to any truth. They are beholden to habit. For many of us, these faulty thinking habits have become embedded into deeply carved neuro-pathways that, like the metal ball ricocheting in a ping-ball machine, traverse the same pathways over and over again ad nauseam, shaping how we see ourselves and what’s possible for our lives.
Thankfully however, there is a way to interrupt these lying thoughts and to activate the regions of our brain that trigger imagination, possibility and hope. Wouldn’t it be nice to be free from so much self-doubt, self-criticism and to at least take some of the edge off the rampant levels of anxiety they contribute to?
Here’s a thought that I would like to be free from: what if someone takes a quick glance at re:MIND and quickly incorrectly surmises; “Oh, I get it. It’s encouraging people to look on the bright side?”
As a way of jump starting my own liberation from this worry, allow me to officially declare that re:MIND is unequivocally not about simply looking on the bright side.
Rather, the approach draws upon the inspiration from both narrative coaching and neuroscience. It is engineered to interrupt our habituated and problem saturated thoughts and stories by inviting more positive, generative and life-giving thoughts; ones that can ultimately etch out alternative neural pathways while we intentionally develop qualities like resilience and confidence. And, unlike the advice I received so many years ago, it does not discount the very real pain and suffering of those for whom it strives to serve.
For a quick glimpse into what I am talking about, let’s briefly unpack this, starting first with the important role of stress:
“Stress precipitates habit pathways in the brain. When under pressure, we resort to what we know, rather than opening our minds to what we don’t know. In essence, learning becomes irrelevant at the precise moment when we need it most.” — What Brain Science Can Teach Us About Creating Resilient Leaders, Liz Mellon, Duke Corporate Education, 2015
With this, re:MIND highlights ways to cope with stress: breathing techniques, mindfulness and meditation. It also teaches people tools to understand their feelings and emotions, name them and all importantly, express and release them. Additionally, it teaches readers that emotions and feelings are something we experience — they are not who we are.
Once less anxious and stressed, it’s important to actively focus on shifting perspective by engaging your imagination or, as Harvard Neuroscientist Srini Pillay, M.D. says, practice “possibility thinking”:
“Possibility thinking, believing in the future actually increases your dopamine in your brain so that you actually become more motivated and it also increases the natural opioid so you feel less stressed.”
With this in mind, let’s get to increasing your natural opioids!!
Ideally, the below questions (focused on promoting motivation and belief in oneself) would be preceded by a five-minute meditation. Now, grab a pen and paper:
“Think of the person who loves and respects you most. See yourself through their eyes. What three words would they use to describe you, when you’re at your best?”
“What would happen if you truly believed this about yourself? What challenges would it help you face today or even this week?
“Think of one way remembering this about yourself helps you secure the future you’re hoping to create?”
Unlike this quick and incomplete snapshot, as a student of the re:MIND course, you would be ushered through this process far more strategically and deliberately as you’re led through a step by step process that culminates in a “game plan”; a personalized game plan that enables you to combat the thoughts and beliefs that no longer serve your highest good.
So, yes — maybe there is a bright side to all of this. Maybe it looks a little bit like freedom from the lies your thoughts are caught in the habit of telling you — about yourself and what is possible.
In case you missed Kristin’s previous blog, you can find it HERE.
After earning her master’s degree in counseling psychology more than two decades ago, Kristin Taylor immediately began working with clients to help them navigate through difficult life transitions. This lead to her serving as an academic success coach and developing an expertise in coaching “at-risk” students. Due to her results, Taylor has gone to manage and train coaches to do the same. Her approach is a creative amalgamation of her background as a counselor, combined with a strength-based, solution-focused approach to student coaching. Taylor is the author of a new Perceivant textbook called “re:MIND”, which helps students navigate the college environment with a positive mindset. You can learn more about this textbook at www.perceivant.com.
