When most people think of developing skills in order to have happier, healthier lives we think in terms of ‘coping skills’ – something to actively ‘do’ to deal with a particular issue. It’s a slay-the-dragon mentality. Slay it, put it behind us, battle the next one. The most well-known and simplistic include count to ten, walk away, breathe, go to your happy place. If the situation calls for more, then we find our voice, speak our piece, apply assertiveness. We like to be humans doing rather than human beings. We prefer action as it gives us a sense of power and control.
Before I teach clients any ‘doing’ skills I teach them ‘being’ skills. In other words, I teach self-awareness first. Most of us can rattle off at least a short list of what or who is pissing us off, tugging on us, stressing us out or triggering old wounds. It’s important to have the skills to cope with the immediate stressors in life and that usually entails planting our feet and handling things. Humans inherently desire to move, to advance, to grow but few of us are very adept at assessing where we are on the daily continuum of life. Where do we stand? How did we get here? Where do we want to go next? What does the next healthier me look like?
The concept of a continuum is fairly familiar and is usually expressed by a horizontal line with arrows on either end. It represents moving from one extreme to its opposite counterpart or a measuring of the intensity of an experience.
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Miserably Unhappy Ecstatically Happy
1————————————————————————10
Pain Level
I believe day to day life is more cyclical. Sometimes it truly is “round and round and round we go”. I would like to offer the Existing – Living – Thriving continuum as a better means of self assessment.
When I first introduced this concept I did not have the line across the middle going from “Living to Living”. Initially, clients would place themselves anywhere on the outside circle they felt described where they were at that moment.
Try it for yourself. Are you currently at Existing – at a low point, depressed, barely hanging on by your fingernails, just want this day to end? Are you on Living – life is OK, pretty good, holding my own, putting one foot in front of the other, no major problems at the moment? Are you enjoying Thriving – awesome, great, life is good, contented, happy, wow what a day? Or are you somewhere in between? Mark where you believe you are and also place an arrow pointing in the direction you feel you are headed.
It helps some folks to make several marks and date them over the past week or so. Sunday you were Thriving, Tuesday between T and L but headed down. By Thursday you had dropped below Living, still heading downward and by Friday evening you were at the very bottom on E for Existing.
After about a year of using this model a discussion emerged in a therapy group when a client asked “What if you never get to Thriving? What if you just kind of move back and forth instead of round and round”. Then another client said “I don’t want to rub it in anybody’s face, but I don’t ever go all the way to E. I just hang out at Living most of the time with a Thriving day once in a blue moon”.
Tada! Clients are brilliant. Now we use the image above. It adds a depth and a complexity that more closely matches real life. It gives you more options of expression. If you use this over a period of time you may be able to see an emerging pattern of being stuck in the lower loop. That’s important information.
The goal to strive for is the upper loop. No one lives at Thriving. That is a place, an experience, that we visit from time to time but it’s not even healthy to stay there. It’s simply not sustainable. As you move past a Thriving experience and are headed down towards Living begin to plan and problem solve what you can do to turn and head across the circle to the other L and then begin to head back up for another T experience. This is often where those human doing skills come into play. We will get to those soon. For now, simply be aware. Be a human being.