![]() You try to give your full attention to the task at hand, as well as connect with your deepest values. The alternative is to deeply connect with the present moment. Our thoughts and feelings are often about dwelling in the past or worrying about the future. By accepting feelings for what they are – just stories in your head – you open up space to see your situation more clearly. As such, you learn “defusion,” or how to relate to your feelings in a new way. It’s futile to control thoughts and feelings because they’re sort of like the weather: always present and ever changing. The 3 core principles of ACT offer professional changemakers (like you and me) an alternative: 1. Your actions are driven more by immediate impulses and negative emotions than by your deepest beliefs. To escape uncomfortable feelings of failure or anxiety, you try to stay busy at all costs, or pour all efforts into a cause that will solve things once and for all. Your goals are so big that you feel overwhelmed, or you expect that you should make consistent progress without making any mistakes. You so fully identify with your own thoughts and emotions that you “fuse” with them, believing that they are very important and the gospel truth. How do you know if you might be sinking in the proverbial quicksand? This led to a certain righteousness about our proposed solutions. Overworked and overwhelmed, I was in groups that crafted ever-larger visions to avoid examining why our current efforts weren’t working.Īnd we felt morally justified. So many activists are so caught up in their own emotional responses to these issues that they’ve lost sight of the problem. The quicksand metaphor is undoubtedly about personal psychology, but I think it applies well to collective efforts to end homelessness or reduce poverty. Are you acting like the world you want to see? Once you’ve connected with the present moment, you can move on to effective action. In this way you can stop letting unwanted emotions control your behavior. It just means that (1) you are committed to seeing reality exactly like it is (2) you accept how you feel about it without judgment. In this case, “accept” doesn’t mean you are OK with a situation, much less think it is just. Instead of struggling against it, or running from the pain it causes, you accept the problem and how you feel about it. It’s also about getting into close contact with the problem. ![]() You have to create enough room to realize that what you’ve previously been doing hasn’t worked. ![]() Well, sometimes trying harder makes things worse, not better. The quicksand trap metaphor is commonly used in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), an action-oriented approach to psychotherapy. You actually have to lay down and stop struggling. Now, the only way to escape quicksand is to create as much surface area as possible with your body. ![]() You flail around only to go deeper still. But the more you try to get out, the further you sink.Īnd as you get deeper, the more panicked you get. Naturally, you’d want to get out right away. Imagine hiking in the woods and accidentally getting caught in quicksand. Here’s what I’ve learned in the last year: Fight complex problems like you “fight” quicksand Instead of trying to change the world, I started to look at my own thoughts and feelings through the lens of behavioral psychology. When I burned out in 2021, I decided to stop struggling. There was always more I wanted to change. No matter what I achieved, it was never enough. For years I used moral outrage to fuel work against those I thought of as “the enemy.”ĭuring that time I couldn’t even sleep because I was constantly judging, strategizing, planning, and fantasizing. In my mind, the pain of the world could only be numbed by a total commitment to activism. When looking at the suffering and injustice in the world, I can analyze the situation and its causes with rigor.īut from there it’s been easy to be outraged. Who is preventing the change you wish to see? ![]() The biggest problem is that everyone is so committed to making a big impact, that they never take a minute to be present in the struggle. Once you learn this process, you’ll start to see every moment as an opportunity to commit to your deepest values and goals. In today’s issue, I’m going to show you how I went from being an angry, burned out activist to a happier and more effective problemsolver. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |