Somewhere in between my baby's sickness, toddler's screeching, overflowing email inbox pinging (again?!) and realizing that although it was 2 p.m., I had not yet brushed my teeth, I took a breath.
This working mother thing didn't seem to be going particularly well.
My kids were sick and melting down. We were short on child care and long on to-do lists. I was behind on lots of projects at work including, well, writing this article. I was starting to drown in feelings of self-pity and defeat.
I'm failing. I can't. This will never work.
But because I have been reading Redirect: Changing the Stories We Live By, written by University of Virginia psychology professor Timothy D. Wilson, I stopped and told myself a different story.
I imagined myself as Working Mother, Superhero. Armed with a laptop, a career and yes, a couple of screaming kids, I reminded myself that I'm genuinely in the middle of some of the most intense years of motherhood, and perhaps my life. I told myself that all of these challenges were helping me to grow into the person I want to be.
Then something surprising happened. The less I told myself that I was a mess, the less I felt so.
And, Wilson and other researchers suggest, the more I continue to see and define myself as a capable person, the more capable I can become. In the stories we tell ourselves about who we are, "small edits can lead to lasting change," Wilson writes in
Redirect, citing a large body of research demonstrating the effective such narrative changes can have on outcomes in life.
These stories aren't only the ones we tell ourselves in our heads: We can do something to reinforce them. We can perform deliberate exercises that can help change our thoughts and actions. "We're all constantly making assumptions about who we are and why we're doing what we're doing," Wilson explains.
For example, we can write. And particularly in the creative process of putting pen to paper (or fingertips to keyboard), we're able to sort through complex assortments of emotions and experiences.
Wilson recommends writing exercises developed by University of Texas at Austin psychology professor James W. Pennebaker. Pennebaker's exercises walk the person through examining his situation.
"Over the last 30 years, it has become clear that writing works for several reasons," Pennebaker explained. "For example, merely labeling an experience and your reaction can make a difference. Part of this is acknowledging to yourself what may have happened. Writing helps to put an experience into perspective. It can help people find meaning.
"Finally, once an emotional upheaval is put into words, it is easier for people to get past it. They sleep better, pay attention to other things in their worlds, and can become better friends to others."
Wilson also shared a few other techniques his research suggests will help a person to craft (and change) the arc of a life.
Ready to start a new story? Here are some tips from Wilson's book (a preview of which is available at books.google.com).
DO
Write only when necessary:
"My personal recommendation is to only write when you need to," Pennebaker says. "If you find yourself thinking or worrying about something too much, set aside three to four days where you write for 15 to 20 minutes a day.
"If your life is going well, you are not burdened by major life events and you are sleeping well, then enjoy it. Writing isn't needed."
Try a four-day expressive writing exercise focusing on one of the following topics:
• Something that you are thinking or worrying about too much.
• Something that you are dreaming about.
• Something that you feel is affecting your life in an unhealthy way.
• Something that you have been avoiding.
"The events that tend to stay with us and bother us and pop up in our minds are the ones where we can't find some meaning in it or understand why it happened," Wilson says.
Really let go and explore your feelings and thoughts as deeply as you can:
You might ask yourself how the experience relates to your childhood, your relationship with your parents, other important people in your life or your work. Ask yourself how it relates to who you would like to become, who you have been in the past, or who you are now.
You can edit your writing each day, or not. You may decide to throw it away when you finish the exercise or save it to reflect on later to see how you have changed.
"What the writing exercises can do is speed up the meaning-making process," Wilson says.
Try the "best possible selves" exercise.
If you'd rather focus on the positive, try several consecutive days of writing that imagines what your future could be like.
"Imagine that everything has gone as well as it possibly could. You have worked hard and succeeded at accomplishing all of [your] life goals. Think of this as the realization of all your life dreams. Now write about what you imagined."
By focusing your narrative on how you're getting there, Wilson suggests, "you might become more optimistic about your future and cope better" with obstacles.
Get some distance from difficult experiences before trying to make sense of them.
Wilson's research suggests that in the aftermath of a highly stressful event, it can be helpful to give yourself some time to heal. Ruminating about events too soon after they occur "impedes the natural healing process and might even 'freeze' memories of the event" -- make the awfulness, the negative emotion all you can think about when you revisit the experience.
Try to take a step back and look at events from a more objective point of view.
The "step back and ask why" technique asks you to close your eyes and imagine observing yourself.
As you replay the event, Wilson says you should "try to understand your distant self's feelings," ask why you had those feelings and ponder, "what were the underlying causes and reasons?"
Get inspired by stories of other people who faced similar situations and overcame adversity.
Wilson's study of university undergraduates exposed academically struggling freshmen to true stories from upperclassmen who were able to improve their own grades after poor performances early in their college years. This story-prompting method helped the freshmen to "entertain the idea that effort might pay off, causing them to study harder for their next test."
The students who were introduced to this new outlook demonstrated significantly better academic performance than those without it. A more positive thought-behavior cycle thus began.
Try the "do good, be good" approach, aka, "Fake it till you make it."
A similar technique to expressive writing inverts the cause-effect relationship in story editing: Change your behavior first.
"The first thing is to act how you want to be," Wilson explains. It's easier to craft a narrative about what a neat person you are after you've made your bed every day for a week.
Little steps have outsize effects over time.
UNRELIABLE METHODS
Don't assume that writing a "gratitude journal" will make you happier.
Wilson writes that sometimes, the opposite is true. Perhaps, he suggests, by putting joy at the front and center of reflection, it becomes too commonplace to enjoy. Instead, Wilson recommends the George Bailey (of It's a Wonderful Life) method, which focuses attention on all the ways that positive outcomes in your life might not have been achieved.
"Imagining how ... the most important things in their lives might not have happened made it seem surprising and special again," Wilson found.
Don't think that "just writing about what you feel will resolve your problems."
Story editing needs to examine the purpose behind events to help you to make meaning in your life. Wading through negative emotions and experiences without finding purpose in them can be counterproductive.
Don't wait too long to get started.
A new narrative is there for the making. Who will you be?
Family on 05/27/2015