BETTER THAN HAPPY – Episode 216
If you get just a minute to yourself today, re-read the post on agency, on DAY #282. Maybe you’ve noticed, today’s post is coming from the same podcast by Jody Moore, just a different part of that podcast. But, in preparation for the post, I re-read DAY #282 myself, and, really, agency is a principle I am only beginning to understand. But I think understanding that one principle will change our lives, for the better. Look through that post again.
Let’s get into today’s post. And today I am really looking at a principle taught by Byron Katie, but introduced to me by Jody Moore, in this podcast. Turnarounds.
This sounds familiar, right? This is what we have been looking at, maybe from a different angle, the past couple days.
Byron Katie has us start off with a Judge-Your-Neighbor worksheet. And I used the worksheet as my thoughtwork this morning, in my morning brain self-care.
“To begin, relax and be still. Travel in your mind to a specific situation where you were angry, hurt, sad, or disappointed with someone. Witness the situation. Be there now. Notice, name, and feel the emotion you were experiencing at the time. Find the reason you were upset.”
Byron Katie
She takes us through six questions about that situation, then four follow-up questions, examining our statements in the first six questions. And then comes the turnaround. Then we change our statements to reflect more on our own power in the situation.
“If my thought is, ‘My neighbor doesn’t accept me the way I am.’ We turn it around and we look at in what way that’s not true and in what way I can turn that around and make it more about me and what I’m feeling and who I’m being?
Play with the idea. If the thought is that my neighbor doesn’t accept me the way I am, I might try on, ‘I’m not accepting me the way I am.’ In what way is that true? ‘It’s true because if I was completely accepting of me the way I am and my neighbor didn’t accept me the way I was, it wouldn’t bother me.’
I would think, ‘She’s confused, she’s wrong about me. I’m amazing the way I am.’
The other turnaround we could use here is, ‘I don’t accept my neighbor the way she is, because the way she is is to not accept me and not understand me the way I am.’ And if I just accepted that about her, again, I would think, ‘She’s confused, I’m amazing, and I love her and I accept that she doesn’t accept me, I’m okay with that, I get it.’
Those turnarounds really put the focus back on you and your own agency.”
Here’s another example. If my thought is, “I’m hurt by my mom because she lied about me to my sister”, what would the turnaround look like? Notice that that thought is focused on her agency and wishing that she did something the way I wanted her to do it, right? So, maybe the turnaround could look like this: “I’m not hurt because she’s lying about me, I’m hurt because I’m spending all this time and energy thinking about how she shouldn’t be like that and she shouldn’t lie and she’s making all these problems for herself and for me and for my sister.” That is the reason I’m hurt. I’m not hurt because of what she’s doing. I’m hurt because of what I am doing, which is the ruminating and the worrying and the thinking and the judging. That’s why I’m hurt.
So that’s that turnaround.
“Notice how it puts the focus on you and your agency and what you want to choose, and it shows you what you’re choosing with your agency right now…
Really just use your own agency rather than put your agency on a shelf and default to what your natural brain will tell you.”
Do you see how we use our own minds, our own agency, to turn around a “dip” in a relationship, specifically, in today’s studies? That relationship is only in our minds. And we are the managers of our own minds, and thus we are the creators of our relationships and of our lives.
“Agency means that we are the creator of our life experience.”
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