This Is How To Be Resilient: 4 Secrets To Grit When Life Gets Hard - Barking Up The Wrong Tree

If I told you, 'Vacuum the floor or I'll shoot you,' you'd immediately start vacuuming the floor. If I said, 'Paint the house or I'll shoot,' you'd soon be painting. That's how the world outside the skin works. But if I simply say, 'Relax, or I'll shoot you,' not only would the directive not work, but it would have the opposite effect.

Trying to deliberately control your brain with your brain can be an M.C. Escher-on-shrooms-level nightmare.

From A Liberated Mind :

...in order to get rid of something deliberately, we have to focus on it. If we are working to get rid of something, we need to check to see if it's gone. When we do that with internal events laid down by our own history, such as memories, we have now reminded ourselves of the events connected with these memories yet again. When we do this with echoes of the past, we increase their centrality and build out the history we have with them.

Trying to deliberately control your brain with your brain can be an M.C. Escher-on-shrooms-level nightmare.

From A Liberated Mind :

Any attempt at suppression only amplifies the difficulty. So we avoid, procrastinate or quit which has disastrous effects on long-term goals and happiness. And that means you're not in control of your life anymore. You're not doing or achieving what is meaningful to you. Life is no longer a pursuit of happiness and fulfillment, it's a pursuit of whatever is not-pain .

From Acceptance and Commitment Therapy :

There is an inherent paradox in attempting to avoid, suppress, or eliminate unwanted private experiences in that often such attempts lead to an upsurge in the frequency and intensity of the experiences to be avoided (Wenzlaff & Wegner, 2000). Since most distressing content by definition is not subject to voluntary behavioral regulation, the client is left with only one main strategy: emotional and behavioral avoidance. The long-term result is that the person's life space begins to shrink, avoided situations multiply and fester, avoided thoughts and feelings become more overwhelming, and the ability to get into the present moment and enjoy life gradually withers.

From Acceptance and Commitment Therapy :

Some people might say they can suppress feelings. Yeah, you're correct. You can. But research shows you can't suppress the bad without also suppressing the good . If you want your life to be as numb as your mouth during dental work, by all means, go ahead.

So how do we control our negative feelings? Easy answer:

You can't.

Control is the problem, not the solution. Any rigid attempt to resist negative feelings won't work in the Willy Wonka land of emotions. The only way to win the tug of war with feelings is to drop the rope. We must go from avoidance to acceptance.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: acceptance does not mean caving and giving in. You don't have to like, agree with or obey the feelings. But you can't ignore, avoid or fight them. Acceptance means allowing them to unfold without judgment, resistance or compliance.

From Acceptance and Commitment Therapy :

Acceptance, as we mean it, is the voluntary adoption of an intentionally open, receptive, flexible, and nonjudgmental posture with respect to moment-to-moment experience. Acceptance is supported by a "willingness" to make contact with distressing private experiences or situations, events, or interactions that will likely trigger them.

If you wait until you feel good to do what is important, you may be waiting the rest of your life. (In fact, research shows this is exactly why procrastination happens .) To escape the finger trap puzzle you don't pull out, you have to push in. In fact, studies show the ability to accept negative emotions has bigger benefits than job satisfaction or emotional intelligence.

(To learn how to have a long awesome life, click here .)

Okay, we've covered a lot. Let's round it all up and learn the proper way to motivate yourself to actually follow through and do all this when the moment calls for it...

This is how to be resilient:

• The Feelings Paradox: Problem-solving doesn't work in the Wonka-ville of feelings. Accept and expand.
• Notice: If we always knew how we felt people wouldn't shout "I'M NOT ANGRY!!!" during arguments. Scan your body to really notice what's going on.
• Acknowledge: Labeling is a powerful way to reduce the impact of negative feelings and to prevent yourself from identifying with them.
• Make Space: Invite the feeling to pull up a chair. (They're not used to this. It's probably how a telemarketer feels when someone is nice to them.)
• Expand: Bring up the stage lights. Dilute the salt water. Engage with the world outside your head.

"I don't want to procrastinate anymore." "I don't want to get anxious and paralyzed by fear." "I don't want to quit when the tension gets high."

While well-meaning, these goals are lame. They're "dead person's goals." A dead person's goal is anything a corpse can do better than you can. In other words, they're defined by a negative, what you're not going to do. Killing bad habits and reducing friction is great, but what's it worth if you don't know where you're headed?

As Nietzsche said, "Don't tell me what you're free from; tell me what you're free for."

From ACT Made Simple :

In ACT, we want to set "living person's goals"- things that a live human being can do better than a corpse. To move from a dead person's goal to a living person's goal, you can ask simple questions like these: "So let's suppose that happens. Then what would you do differently? What would you start or do more of? And how would you behave differently with friends or family?" "If you weren't using drugs, what would you be doing instead?" "If you weren't yelling at your kids, how would you be interacting with them?" "If you weren't having panic attacks or feeling depressed, what would you be doing differently with your life?"