What if your participation in the food pyramid is determined by how well you manage anxiety?

I know.  Hello Big Mac.

But really….to what degree are your choices….influenced by your mood?….your current opinion of yourself?  How your career’s going?….heck….how work’s going today?   To what degree are your behavior choices influenced by how your special person is thinking about you? (Or, more correctly….how you THINK he is thinking…and, by the way, you’re wrong.)

“Which is more important?  The world as it exists?   Or the world we’re making up as we go along?”

Symptomatic behavior, from angry outbursts to staying in bed all day…. are a result of a combination of:  physical elements (including genetics and current state of health);   life events (including upbringing experiences);  the individual’s basic level of functioning (typical ability to manage stress and change);  the functional level and availability of the emotional system (family).

And behaving in anything like a healthy, reasonable manner is hard as trying to drag yourself out of a pot of setting taffy.  If it were any easier, no one would miss their daily walk, no one would be overweight, no one would overdrink….there wouldn’t even be a “Latest Stupid Diet Discovery Aisle) in the grocery store.  Oh, and there’s now a separate section called: Anti-Aging.  Now what kind of dream world is that?

I don’t have the answer on how to suddenly function better, how to easily conquer my ever-present, anxiety-driven,  Emotional Guidance System.  I haven’t taken my afternoon walk since….ahhhh…since we returned from Cabo San Lucas….since I returned to real life.  I’ve figured it out how to cure all of us.  If we can all stack up enough hotel and airline points to live permanently in a resort on the tip of Baja…I mean…we’re fixed.  What a miracle.

Let’s start with the symptom of not eating fruit.  Grazing the buffet overlooking the Sea of Cortez, I had no problem filling up my bowl every morning with strawberries, bananas, pineapple, apple slices.  “Beautiful fruit,” I’d exclaim.  “Omelet?” they asked.  “Oh, not for me.  This fruit looks great!” 

Now, I’m back at my Dallas national world headquarters Hilton…and I can hardly look at the fruit.  Gosh, all those healthy behaviors had come so naturally in Mexico.  What happened I ask, as I finish up my bacon and wash down my blood pressure pill with coffee?

Now BEFORE WE BLAME the ENVIRONMENT and slap on all the cliches…”work too hard…traffic…weather…mom late picking you up from kindergarten…”…JUST STOP IT already.

I, like all of you, can take more charge of the world I see and make up.  I can make those strawberries more colorful.  And, there’s a way you can start right now.  Say out loud, “Wow, what a beautiful, interesting sky.  What lovely______.”  Because remember, unlike the unfortunate Princess Diana…YOU ARE ALIVE.  (See post on What Do You Have that Princess Diana Doesn’t?)

And as long as you and I are alive, we’ve got a shot at changing what goes on inside our chest cavities.  We’ve got a shot at joy.

Jellybeans

Trudging my computer case across the tiled floor of my office and out to my car, I bent over to pick up a Coke can I’d earlier set by a chair…

When the opened box of Ike and Mike’s (tube-shaped jellybeans for those into adult foods) tucked into one of the case’s pockets splattered everywhere… I snarled, I cursed, I bent over to pick up the flying pieces….Of course, in the process, I spilled more as, in my hurry and misery, I hadn’t secured the box. I snarled and cursed some more.

Always ready to take control, my Emotional Guidance System, (search site, if unfamiliar) SAID: “Great! Just what I needed!  I’ve had it!  This is too much. My knees are alreadykilling me, I’m late for an appointment…. Crazy dog will be in here hogging these jellies down any second…and I’ll have multi-colored poop to deal with for days!

This is terrible, horrible, and unbelievable! I drop my computer case…on my foot… “%#@&”… This is just great.
That’s when “the moment” happened without any warning. After years of training in psychology, Eastern meditation, libraries of books, and many hours instructing others in emotional life….

The moment occurred without effort on my part.

Some little creature inside my brain hit me square between my squinty eyes. “What keeps you…from enjoying this moment just as much as you enjoyed playing fetch with Crazy Dog last night?”
What? Is it possible that all those psychologists saying each person is in charge or his or her own happiness…actually have something? And, if they (we) have…why is it so difficult If being alive is being in each and every second?

What is keeping me…you… from enjoying this moment….the one NOW… as much as the favorite moment you are planning this holiday?

I don’t have an answer.  When the ‘moment’ occurred, I felt something loosen.  And I smiled, just a little.
I know, this is heady stuff.   To think all this could come from splattered jellybeans.

But he was not a happy fellow.  He obsessively worried that if he made a commitment, even for a month… as soon as  he’d made his move, he’d meet someone prettier, cooler, smarter…someone who’d turn even more heads when she was on his arm.  What the heck was he going to do then?

Ah, yes.  Here is one of the tricks of our old life-sucking enemy, the…you guessed it…the Emotional Guidance System(If you’re not familiar with the terms, search Guidance System on this site.).  One of the ways that Master of Anxiety Building…gets in the way of living.

The name of this trick is:  Exaggeration of  the Alternatives.  The trick has two parts.  The first is simple exaggeration…If I choose A, and learn later that B would have been a better dd choice…Well, that would be awful, terrible, and I can’t stand it!    From now on my only choice is to complain and fret.

Sound trivial?  Hey, don’t tell me you aren’t disappointed when you pick the slowest checkout line in the grocery…again.  And the drive-in bank.  Do you not, everytime, end up behind the guy who doesn’t do his paperwork until he’s number one in line?  What about choosing a job?  Or a career…Do you know anyone saying, “Oh, what I could have, should have done?”  And what about choosing that special person?… What if?  What could have been?

The second important feature of this trick of the EGS…happens because when we live by “What if?“ … “If only…” …and this is the really BIG PIECE. …The Emotional Guidance System, driven to accomplish one thing…get rid of immediate anxiety   …The really dirty part of the EGS trick…

Is that when we focus on the notion that the most important thing is making the RIGHT CHOICE…we are lost to the present.  We are obsessed with the past…”Why didn’t I see this was the wrong choice.”  And, we are obsessed with the future.  “Oh, no.  Woe is me!  Because I made the wrong choice…my future is a mess…and there’s nothing I can do.  Nothing…

We are in a VICTIM position.  We focus on what could have been…in our imagination…and do not pour our energies into what we have.   We spend time being critical of others, critical of ourselves.  “Here I sit, having made the WRONG CHOICE and there’s nothing I can do.”  

The EGS would have us invest our energy in these ‘worrying’ mess rather than dedicate ourselves to the PRESENT.

The Emotional Guidance System is never in favor of ‘doing the best we can with what we have’.  The EGS wants an easier way out than the effort it takes to deal with the present moment.

Think about that one.  I mean, since the present moment is all we have.  Wouldn’t it be a good idea to give the present our attention?

Is it possible our day, our relationship, our career is as great as we make it?  How about Now?…And Now….Whoops…missed a chance….How about now?

“Hi.  I’m in here.  Are you out there?”