Kate's Nuggets

The Importance of Noticing the Good Stuff
Episode 37

Podcast Opening over Theme Music:
Hello and welcome. This is Kate's Nuggets, the podcast where I share bite-size nuggets of wisdom about self-leadership. I am your host, Kate Arms. I invite you to listen lightly, let these ideas wash over you. Take what you take and let the rest go. You can always come back and listen again.

Kate Arms:
Hello. Today I want to talk a little bit about the importance of noticing the good things in our lives.

Right now, there are a lot of things that people are worried about in the world. There were all sorts of things that people were worried about before the Coronavirus pandemic. And now with the pandemic in the mix, there is even more to worry about. And the racial tensions, especially in the United States, have increased. And there are a lot of things that people are worried about in the world.

What happens when we worry about the bad things is twofold. The good part of noticing the bad things is that it motivates us to make a change. The bad part about noticing the bad things is that if we notice too much, if we see more than we can handle, it can deflate us and demotivate us. And if what we are seeing that we are worried about is stuff that feels in our bodies like a threat to our survival or to our sense of identity, we get reactive.

We get triggered. We get into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn mode, and we stop feeling good about our lives. We stop having access to the calm, creative, curious, connected, fun-loving parts of ourselves.

Most of the things that we're worried about in the world are chronic. And our bodies are not designed to handle the kind of chronic stress that we are under from an activated, reactive, adrenaline and cortisol-driven reaction.

Many of us, when the coronavirus hit and we were asked to stay at home, had a surge of activity, creativity, and problem-solving. And we just handled what was going on. And this is an incredibly valuable use of fear, adrenaline, and cortisol. And most of us are spent at this time. Many of us, at some point over the last few months, have just burned out.

We cannot live on an ongoing basis from that biochemical patterning. We need to find a sustainable pace that we can use and face all of the difficult things in our world that need to be faced.

So one way of responding to the overwhelm and the number of things that call for our attention and make us stress is to find some way of numbing ourselves or distracting ourselves. So you might find yourself drinking more, watching more TV, playing more video games, reading books, escaping into some kind of fantasy creative work, game playing.

None of these things are bad by themselves, but all of them take us away from being able to deal with the very real problems that exist in our world. So, we need a different way of adjusting our biochemistry so that we are not activated. So that we can be calm, creative, curious, connected, certain, and handle all of the challenges that we are facing.

How can we do that? This is a place where noticing the good stuff that is happening simultaneously with the bad stuff is an incredibly powerful practice. The reality is that at any given moment in the world, there is something beautiful, meaningful, or otherwise good going on. Even in the worst wars, there are beautiful sunsets and sunrises. They happen simultaneously. The one does not discount the other.

You can have a great laugh with your kids, real fear about the coronavirus, a fight with your best friend, and a beautiful sunset all happening at the same time. The world is complex.

We as human beings are primed to notice the negative. And some people are more heavily primed than others to notice the negative. Some people are really, deeply attuned to how things could be better than they are. And we learn most effectively the things that it hurts us to learn, because those are the things that it's most important that we learn.

If we encounter a dangerous situation and we get hurt, the more that we can learn about that so that we don't make the same decisions in similar situations, the next time the better off we expect to be. So it's very easy for us to set up a negative feedback system where we notice something that's bad, we get upset while we're upset, we are more likely to remember other things that are upsetting. We are more likely to notice other things that are upsetting.

And so we actually need to counter that cycle in order to not be overwhelmed by the number of things that upset us. John Gottman, who is a psychologist who studies couples, found that in a married couple, you need about four positive interactions for every negative interaction for the relationship to stay happy. Nobody has all happy all the time. That's just not human.

But four positive for one negative makes the difference that is in a relationship that has presumably a foundation of love. People who've studied similar things in the workplace have found that, in that environment it tends to be closer to eight to one. So in order to stay in a positive frame of mind, you need to focus on eight positives for each negative.

We're currently under an enormous amount of stress, dealing with this pandemic. Eight to one might not be enough for some of us. But it might be. And what I really want to encourage you to do is to just notice the good stuff as often as possible. To practice noticing the things that bring you joy in this moment.

Now, the in this moment is really important. Because one of the things that gets complex is, if we remember things that happened in the past that brought us joy and we can't have them anymore, the impact that they're going to have is they're going to bring up sadness and grief. Or if we think about things in the future that we want to have, that would bring us joy, not having them is likely to increase our discomfort.

So what we need to focus on in the middle of these highly stressful situations is, what is the thing right now that I can look at that's happening right now that brings me to light?

So it could be that I'm touching something that feels very soft in my hand. It could be that I'm looking at a little statue in my office that is making me smile. It could be that I just thought of a joke that one of my kids told me, and it made me smile. It could be that I am in action, doing something that feels like it is nudging the world in a direction I want it to go.

It could be that I'm proud of myself because I am looking at a habit that I have that I want to change, and I'm engaging in reflective inquiry to understand how that pattern functions in my life. And I am using tools that I have at my disposal to undo them. It could be that I made a really nice cup of coffee and I'm enjoying it. Or I've stepped outside and there's a sunbeam that's warming my face.

When we notice these good things, we want to get into the habit of savoring them. Now, to savor something is to experience it fully. So this means that when something good happens, first we have to accept that something good is happening. Allow it to be good. Despite all of the other things that are going on, we need to have permission to enjoy the good things in our lives.

And then really experience the pleasure associated with that good thing and notice how the pleasure rises and falls. Because all of our emotions rise and fall. They don't last. Most emotions last about 90 seconds. They come in, they get our attention, then they fade.

They have to fade, because our attention needs to be available to different information if the situation around us changes. So, savoring a good thing isn't holding onto it longer than it lasts. Savoring the good thing is enjoying it while it lasts.

And this is not about denying the bad stuff. This is about experiencing the complexity of life. Now, there is a sweet profundity that many people experience about the complexity of life, even when it includes bittersweet moments. So, notice where you have that capacity. Where there's a joy that is behind, or underneath, or permeating this amazing world and this phenomenal thing that is the human existence.

Even when we are in pain, we are miracles. Human beings are just incredibly complex, and incredibly adaptable. And absurd, and ridiculous, and flawed. And through our flaws, when we reveal our flaws, we connect with each other. So even our flaws are gifts, like whoa. Even our flaws are gifts, because it's through our flaws that we connect with other people. That's amazing.

We're so creative. Look around you and see what is in your space, in the environment around you that has been created by a human being. What in your space has been created by you? What relationships have you been co-creating with other people that bring you joy?

These are all good things that you can notice and savor. You can even notice and savor the experience of being able to stay non-reactive in the presence of uncomfortable emotions.

I've been talking to a lot of people recently about the need to develop frustration tolerance and to overcome rejection sensitivity. When we have an experience of the everyday sublime, it counters the experience of the everyday frustrations. Because there are frustrations and setbacks every day.

So what do I mean by the everyday sublime? The everyday sublime is that experience of just being alive in your body, being alive to all of the sensations that you have from your senses. And not trying to analyze them, not trying to articulate them, not trying to describe them.

If you let yourself actually just experience them without cognition, you can experience far more complexity than you can articulate. And we can have the fullness of our experience, despite our inability to articulate what it is that we are experiencing.

And this gap between what we can experience and what we can articulate is an experience of wonder, and mystery, and of aesthetic arrest. This is the moment where we stop, and have to just breathe and take it all in. Whether what we are taking in is the smile of somebody we love, or a bird that has just flown past our window, or a flower that we have seen, or a beautifully carved salad spoon, or a really well-designed chair or machine. Or an algorithm that's just beautiful.

When we can see that goodness in the world, and experience that goodness in the present moment, and savor it for as long as it's present in our experience and then let it go, we create in ourselves a sense of calm and peace that allows us to then take that sense of calm and peace, and turn towards the challenge of the day.

How are we going to keep our loved ones safe from Covid-19? How are we going to navigate our complex needs between being social and being distanced? How are we going to navigate our relationship to race relationships? Or to the complexities of climate change? How are we going to navigate looking for a job when so many people are unemployed? How are we going to transition from an industry that is not likely to do well over the next couple of years to one where we can have a job that feeds our children? How are we going to navigate that?

If we come from a foundation of calm, curious creativity, which we have created from savoring the good stuff, then we can take that creativity and that clear-sightedness, and we actually have access to our maximum problem-solving capabilities.

Our slow thinking, and our trained thinking, where we look at how do we solve this new problem require us to be able to calm our nervous systems and noticing the good stuff in our lives and savoring it is one of the most powerful tools that we have for getting to that mental state.

For one thing, if we take the time to get curious about something, to notice the good stuff, our bodies interpret the fact that we've taken that time as evidence that the stress we are dealing with is not an immediate danger to life or limb, and that shuts down our acute stress response systems, that gets us out of fight, flight, freeze, fawn.

Simply taking a moment to pause starts a positive feedback cycle that gets us to stand down. And then we don't need all of those numbing devices. We can choose when we have some downtime to play in ways that are meaningful for us and that bring us joy, but we don't have to escape from the rest of the world. We can play simultaneously with what's going on in the rest of the world, knowing that the world is going on as it is, good and bad simultaneously, and we get to choose.

If we don't manage to get ourselves in a position where we can choose whether we're engaging or not engaging, we're stuck either compulsively always being involved, always going too hard and burning ourselves out, or always escaping. And neither is healthy. And neither gets us to a place where we look back at the end of our lives and feel good about who we've been, and how we've lived.

All of us crave making a difference. All of us crave feeling good about things. All of us crave accomplishing things, a sense of agency and control, and all of us crave meaningful relationships, and none of those are possible if we are functioning from a shutdown, fear-based perspective. Noticing the good stuff helps us lose that triggered fear.

Fear by itself is not necessarily bad. Being concerned about how things might turn out is often very valuable. It's when we do it from that activated, reactive, got to get out of here or deal with this right now place, that we make mistakes. Especially when we're dealing with chronic challenges, and chronic stressors.

So, my invitation to you is to look for the good stuff, notice it and savor it. And don't hang onto it as it passes, because there's more good stuff right around the corner that you want to be open to experiencing.

End Theme and Credits:
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Here's to Thriving! Catch you next time.
Kate's Nuggets is a Signal Fire Coaching production. The music is adapted under license from Heroic Age by Kevin McLeod.