Well, I can't put that in the toaster!

Life will often throw you a curve ball. It just does. How you react is the only part of the situation you are really in control of. These are some of the lessons I've taken on the journey so far.

red car on a toaster

I was reminded recently of an event many years ago when I was still fairly newly married. It was a Sunday morning and we had run out of bread. "Could you pop out and buy a loaf please?". Sure, no problem he said! Two hours later he returned with a new car. I hadn't been aware that we needed another car, there had been no talk of cars. We still hadn't had breakfast, and as we now had a car but he had forgotten he went out for bread, we still didn't have anything for breakfast. In fairness it was now lunchtime and so that moment had passed. I wonder how you would have responded?

Curve balls are a great training ground for learning to take a step back out of the immediate situation and consider what is actually important. What can you control? What is the most effective thing you can do next? Whilst I would much rather have had toast all those years ago, these situations (and believe me, there have been many of them!!) were part of developing an effective response mechanism when the unexpected happens.

So lesson 1 - notice the emotion. When something unexpected comes along our first response will generally be an emotional one. Usually the emotion is a strong driver in the response you make, so getting into the habit of noticing your emotions without being driven by them is really beneficial. Your unconscious mind is the domain of your emotions so you don't consciously choose how to feel in your initial response to something, but you can choose to notice with interest the feeling. You could be angry about the car, or disappointed with the lack of bread, or you could be amused at the idea of getting the car into the toaster. None of the emotions are right or wrong, only the action you take next, and that will be heavily influenced by the feeling you are experiencing.

Think of this a little like a fire drill. Whether you are in a school or an office building you probably experience frequent fire drills where you calmly exit the building and congregate in the appointed area. We do the drills so that if there is ever a real emergency everyone already knows what to do, and where to go, and are familiar with the practice of doing so calmly. Learning to notice your emotions is much the same. Getting into the habit of noticing an emotion to arises and being curious about it is preparing you for a time when you need to be able to choose your next action carefully and rationally rather than when you are angry, stressed or anxious.

Lesson 2 - what is actually important about what has happened? I've often found that the important things manage to somehow get hidden in all manner of ways. Things that are urgent can mistakenly appear to be important, yet in truth aren't. So many things are happening that it becomes difficult to spot the important things - when you can't see the wood for the trees. And most often 'immediate' can seem disproportionately important in the moment. We all run filters at a deeply unconscious level that sift through everything happening and draw your conscious attention to a very small number of things. Because those filters are also responsible for spotting danger they are more likely to highlight potential threats to you. So the things you notice are not necessarily because they are actually important, but because they met some other basic unconscious criteria.

We are all very good at jumping to conclusions, and making assumptions. Your brain is simply wired that way and we rarely even realise that is what we are doing. Its a bit like your own personal version of fake news that you invented and went on to believe. So once you've taken that step back from the emotion ask yourself what is actually important about what happened, and important compared to what? Colleagues frequently used to approach me with the latest 'disaster' and the question I asked was often - has anyone died? No - good because that we can't fix, but I'm sure we'll be able to deal with this. It did two things, it put the situation into proportion, and it set a belief that there were things we could control. Believing that there are actions you can take is crucial to solving any problem.

And lesson 3 - communicate clearly next steps. "Go back to the shop and get the bread". I hadn't quite decided how to feel, and it was unlikely the garage were about to accept the car back even if I won that argument, but I could still have bread! I knew what I could change and what I couldn't in that moment. By sending him back out he was also left unsure just how much trouble he was in, which was much more advantageous than having an argument.

When we respond in the emotion what we convey is the emotion rather than what matters. If the thing that most matters to you is for someone to know you are angry then that works. On the other hand if what you actually want is for them to change something that is the most important aspect of the communication. Typically we get those two things the wrong way around. If a colleague at work makes a mistake, what do you most want to communicate? Do you simply want them to know you are disappointed, or cross? Or would you prefer to correct the mistake as quickly as possible, learn from it so it doesn't happen again, and have confidence that they will come to you in the future if anything else happens?

So if life keep throwing you curve balls, its time to practice catching them with ease. If you'd like to more about how we can help through our coaching, mentoring and therapeutic conversations then contact us.