Use Your Damn Skills

Focus on the interval of time you can wrap your brain around. 

Many people get overwhelmed in therapy or personal development because they think of it as a process of dramatically transforming their entire life— forming new attitudes and habits that they’ll have to maintain from here on out, for years. And years. And years. 

When you tell your brain that the way it’s been conditioned to respond and function has to dramatically, fundamentally change, and it’s going to have to function in a new and unfamiliar way, and it’s going to have to keep up that pattern for years…and years…and years…your brain is very likely going to freak out. 

It’s not that your brain doesn’t want a better life for you. It’s that your brain is a realist. 

Your brain knows that sweeping changes are hard to maintain for long periods of time. And your brain is right: making a huge change and expecting that change to stick for the long haul, especially when we’re inexperienced with the change, is a tall order. 

Imagining staying sober when your primary coping mechanism has been a habit or substance is overwhelming enough. People in recovery often have trouble imagining staying sober for another minute, let alone years into the future. The same holds true for anyone trying to make changes in well-established, over conditioned behavioral patterns. 

Imagining keeping those uncomfortable changes up over a long period can be a discouraging, depressing thing. 

The good news is, there’s no real reason to imaging keeping those changes up over the long haul. 

There’s no reason to imagine NEVER having your substance again. 

There’s no reason to imagine NEVER engaging in your self-defeating behavior again. 

All you need to think about is however long you can think about. 

Can you realistically imagine not taking a drink for the next ten seconds? Then start there. 

Can you realistically imagine using your day planner to plan out the next three hours? Then start there. 

Can you realistically imagine exercising for ten minutes? Start there. 

Can you realistically imagine going twenty minutes without cutting yourself? Then start there. 

Can you realistically imagine going thirty minutes without killing yourself? Then start there. 

Whatever interval of time seems realistic for you— even if it’s a period of seconds to minutes— then start there. Then when the next interval comes around, deal with that interval then. 

Whereas your brain might balk at making certain changes “for the rest of your life,” it’ll usually make a deal with you to try something out for a specific, relatively shorter, manageable period of time. 

Part of the skill of internal communication is learning how to deal with your brain when it’s developed certain habits and dependencies as a way to cope. Your brain didn’t evolve addictions and self-defeating habits just for the hell of it or to make you miserable. It developed those patterns to defend against uncomfortable feelings and memories. So when you ask it to give up those coping patterns, it gets scared and defensive…and you need to deal with that reality. 

Asking a scared, defensive brain to give up its security blankets indefinitely is usually a recipe for frustration and relapse. 

On the other hand, asking a scared, defensive brain to tentatively try out some new patterns— with compassion and empathy for what that brain is going through— is a more realistic, more doable approach. 

Using specific time windows in which to experiment with new behaviors can often open the door to forming new habits in a way that is less overwhelming and more productive than trying to induce “shock and awe” in our nervous systems by making too many changes or incredibly dramatic changes all at once. 

It’s odd, how often people think they need to make dramatic changes all at once. Our addictions, emotions, and habits didn’t develop all at once; it’s unreasonable to expect them to change all at once. 

Recovery is a process of finding what works, minute by minute, and progressively making the kind of little changes we can realistically live with. 

We need to trust that the little changes will all add up to significant changes over time. 

And the best way to ensure that the little changes “stick” and add up to bigger changes is to make the changes little enough that we can imagine wrapping our brains around them without flipping out. 

Just focus on the interval you can realistically imagine. 

Let the next one take care of itself. 

 

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You’ve heard it said that “hard work pays off.” I tend to agree with this— generally. 

The thing is, there are lots of ways to work “hard.” And not all of them “pay off.” 

Not all of them can possibly pay off, when you think about it, insofar as there are plenty of people in the world who are working equally hard, but at cross purposes. If “hard work” was all that was needed to succeed, everyone would. And we know that’s not the case. 

“Working hard” is often very helpful on our personal development journeys. I consider diligent effort to be a tool, one of many that we have to learn and use wisely. 

That is to say: if you’re going to work hard, make sure you’re working smart. 

If you’re going to work hard, make sure you’re achieving results. 

If you’re going to work hard, make sure you’re heading in the right direction. 

The engine of a car can work plenty hard if it’s revved up to a hundred miles an hour— but all that hard work won’t do it much good if it’s pointed in the wrong direction. 

And why would a car be heading a hundred miles an hour in the wrong direction? Often, because its driver didn’t consult a map, and hasn’t been paying enough attention to the landmarks they’re passing to know that they’re lost. 

We tend to glorify “hard work” in our culture. We consider the willingness to work hard a marker of good moral character. We tend to trust people who are hard workers more than people we don’t consider hard workers— they often strike us as more honest and virtuous than those we consider slackers. 

There’s an extent to which the willingness to work hard is certainly admirable, insofar as it’s not easy. 

But the fact is, people who are using “hard work” are simply utilizing one tool from their tool box that they happen to be good at using. 

What good is using the tool of “hard work” if we’re not also using the tool of “sensitivity to results?” 

What good is using the tool of “hard work” if we’re not also using the tool of “willingness to adjust?” 

People who are convinced that “hard work” is the key to the kingdom of results in and of itself are often faced with a harsh reality with their work is met with less success than they’d prefer. 

Often when people’s “hard work” doesn’t pay off, they get angry. They feel that because they used the tool of “hard work,” then they “deserve” a certain result. 

Unfortunately, life has a tendency not to care about what we “deserve.” 

Life rewards those who develop their skills and use their tools judiciously. 

(Life also has an annoying tendency to disproportionately reward those who are in the right place at the right time— but that falls squarely under the heading of “things we can’t control.”)

My point with all of this is, don’t fall into the trap of thinking that “hard work” is all you need in order to succeed. It’s a tool without which it tends to be more difficult to succeed— but it is one tool among a handful of important tools. 

Just like any tool, it’s important to know when and how to utilize the tool of “hard work.” 

If you use the tool of “hard work” in times and places when it’s not the tool that is called for, it’s very easy to burn yourself out. 

If you fail to use the tool of “hard work” in times and places when it IS the tool that’s called for, you’re going to get out-hustled. 

Tools can be tricky things to manage. They can make, say, building a house a lot easier— in fact, it’s hard to build a house WITHOUT using tools. 
But they can also smash your thumbs if you’re not using them mindfully. 

There are a lot of people out there who like to shame people for their supposed aversion to “hard work.” In their model of the world, the main reason why people aren’t succeeding is because they’re simply not working hard enough (this is connected to what I mentioned earlier, about “hard work” being connected to virtue in many peoples’ minds). 

I’m gong to suggest a different hypothesis: if you’re not succeeding at the level you prefer, your lack of “hard work” MAY be contributing. 

But it may also be your lack of another skill or tool as well. 

Think of “hard work” as a tool. Nothing more, nothing less. 

When you need the right tool for the right job, you definitely need to be able to pull it out of your toolbox. 

But make sure you’re stacking that toolbox with an array of tools for an array of purposes— and, even more important, make sure you’re developing enough understanding of and experience with your tools in order to be able to use them well. 

 

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The project of personal development entails paying attention to two variables: “what works for most people,” and “what works for me.” 

You’re doing yourself a disservice by disregarding either of these variables. 

However, most personal growth gurus and teachers focus almost exclusively on one or the other. 

It’s odd. You’d think if they were so cosmic, they’d know we really do need both. 

Why do we need both? 

“What works for most people” is important to pay attention to because human beings tend to have things in common. 

We tend to have the same types of nervous systems, generally speaking. We tend to have things in common when it comes to how we respond to reward and punishment. Our brains almost all run on basically the same neurotransmitters. Our bodies almost all require fundamentally similar nutrition and rest to function. 

“What works for most people,” when it comes to emotional and psychological development, is laid out in the reams and reams and reams of psychological and behavioral research my field has amassed in the last several centuries. 

It’s an imperfect body of work, the psychological research, I’ll give you that. But the fact is research psychologists have conducted enough studies and replicated enough results that we really do know a lot more than you might think about “what works for most people.” 

Why would you ignore that, the way many self-help teachers like to? 

Granted, the research is often not sexy; it often doesn’t lend itself to the, uh, creative sensibilities of a subset of people who prefer more metaphysical explanations for why humans do what we do; and it often confirms things that we already know. 

But ignoring the psychological research— “what works for most people”— sets us up to somehow believe that we are fundamentally different from the vast majority of our fellow humans…and I assure you, no matter how alone or special or alien you feel, you’re not that different from your fellow humans. 

“What works for me,” however, is important to pay attention to for a different reason: because no matter how similar you might be to your fellow human beings, your mileage is absolutely going to vary when it comes to how helpful any given tool will be. 

You have a history of associations, experiences, rewards and punishments that are unlike anybody else in the history of humanity. 

No one besides you occupies the highly individualized world you’ve built in your brain and mind. 

While you may be similar to your fellow human beings in that you respond to the same forces of reinforcement and punishment— and again, I assure you, that is the case— you have an unquestionably unique matrix of meaning that determines what you, specifically, find reinforcing and punishing. 

Why would you want to ignore that, the way many professional therapists do? 

Granted, professional therapy often falls into the trap of assuming that because humans are fundamentally similar, they must all then be the SAME, and because we’re “scientists,” we need to assume everybody is the SAME, unless we have empirical evidence to the contrary. 

Failure to take into account both extremes— “what works for most people” and “what works for me” — accounts for many, many therapeutic and personal development failures. 

On your own journey, one skill that is imperative to develop is the willingness and ability to flip back and forth, as needed, between considering “what works for most people” and “what works for me.” 

We need to be willing to take either approach when trying to understand an emotion or behavior. 

We need to be willing to take either approach when trying to create a useful plan of action. 

We need to deeply accept that we are both part of the human species and also a unique organism that has never existed before we, personally, were born. 

The skill of “flexibility of perception and approach” is a game changer. 

It allows us to both take advantage of the collective wisdom of the behavioral science paradigm— and also the years of data you have collected over the course of a lifetime of being YOU. 

If you’ve been reading me for any length of time, you know I don’t believe in ignoring any valid set of data. 

Be a scientist. Use all the available data. And be smart enough to know when to take a macro-approach…and when to reel it in to the population of “you.” 

 

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I don’t think you “deserve” a good life. 

I don’t think you “deserve” a bad life, either. 

I don’t think you have a “birthright” to happiness, nor do I think your “birthright” is misery. 

Whether you think you, or anyone else, “deserves” happiness or has a “birthright” of success…those questions are emphatically above my pay grade. Philosophers, theologians, and other people much smarter than I am have been thinking deeply about those questions for centuries. 

What I do know is the practical, day to day mechanics of constructing a better life. 

And it’s my experience that when we get overly preoccupied by what we “deserve” as our “birthright”…our heads aren’t in the place we need them to be in order to create a better life in the real world. 

When an elite athlete goes out onto the playing field thinking that they “deserve” a victory because they’re simply a “better” competitor than their opponent…then they’re not focused on the sequences and skills they need to be focused on in order to win. 

When a political candidate assumes their victory is assured because they “deserve” it, being much more qualified and intelligent than their opponent…then they’re often not focused on the strategies and efforts they’re going to need to turn out their voters and persuade the electorate. 

Life, as it turns out, doesn’t seem to care what we think we “deserve.” 

It doesn’t care what we think our “birthright” is. 

Focusing on what we “deserve,” far more often than not, pumps us up with a sense of entitlement that distracts us from the real world mechanics of how do we live our values and pursue our goals TODAY. 

Understand: I’m not saying your birthright ISN’T greatness. 

I’m not saying that humans don’t “deserve” to be happy, in the abstract. 

What I am saying, though, is that it matters where our head is, day to day.  It matters where our focus is. 

Where I want your focus, day to day, is how you’re going to make today work. 

Today. This day. 

Not the rest of the week, month, or year. Not the rest of your life. 

What are your goals and values that you’re going to act on TODAY? 

What are the practical, down to earth, doable ways you’re going to act on those goals and values, TODAY? 

That’s where I want your head. Not in a philosophical reverie about how you “deserve” to be lauded or punished. 

The fact is, for many reasons, we simply don’t get what we think we “deserve,” for better or worse. 

I’ve been in professional and personal relationships where I was certain I “deserved” better treatment than I was getting. I was thoroughly convinced, in fact, that I had “earned” the right to be treated better than I was being treated. 

Guess how much it mattered, what I thought I “deserved?” 

Eventually we come to the realization that it simply doesn’t matter what we think we “deserve.” What matters is what we’re willing to do, today, to live our values and nudge toward our goals. 

If my work with patients and clients can be summed up succinctly, it would be in the statement “Get your head out of the clouds, and focus on the mechanics of how to make TODAY work.” 

The fact is, whether we are right or wrong about what we think we “deserve,” what our “birthright” is, we still have to identify strategies and skills to make it through this twenty four hours. 

No “birthright” is going to use your skills for you.

No level of “deservingness” is gong to free you from the necessity of being clear about who you are and what you’re working toward, today, here in the real world. 

Acknowledge what you think you “deserve,” if you must. 

But then go out and handle THIS day, THIS day right in front of you, one minute, one problem, one skill, one task, one goal at a time. 

 

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Our metaphors matter. They direct our focus. 

One of the reasons I so often speak in terms of training and coaching is because it’s a metaphor I find useful in directing the focus of my “athletes.” 

It’s my experience that many patients and clients find therapy and personal development daunting because it’s as if they’re being asked to develop a skillset that will handle EVERY PROBLEM THEY ENCOUNTER FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES. Or they’re being asked to FIGURE OUT THE WHOLE “LIFE” THING. Or they’re trying to FIX THEIR LIFE. 

I mean…woof. Who wouldn’t be intimidated if that’s how you’re approaching the task of therapy or personal development? 

I point them in a different direction— instead of trying to tackle this big, overwhelming thing of FIGURING OUT LIFE, I encourage them to think of our work together as a coaching relationship. 

They’re an athlete, I’m their coach. 

Their life goals are the “score” of the “game” they’re playing. 

In order for the “game” to make sense, the scoring system has to be specific and make sense. It would make no sense to send an athlete out on the field with no idea how to score points, would it? 

This is why, in their work with me, my patients are asked to get very specific about their goals, and about the little goals that lead up to their goals— if we’re going to “train” properly, an “athlete” needs to know how to score and what tasks are required to get them past the goal line. 

The metaphor of me and my patients as “coach” and “athletes” also extends to the idea of “training.” 

Being successful at a sport involves a lot of practice. Practice requires getting clear and specific about what abilities and skills the athlete needs to develop in order to win at their sport (i.e., achieve the life goals the patient has come into therapy to work on). 

The idea of “training” speaks to developing a schedule and a disciplined routine whereby the athlete practices their skills every day, with the intention of sharpening those skills enough that they’ll score more points, more goals, more takedowns, more wins. 

This is exactly what needs to happen when we’re in therapy or working to improve our lives— daily work on the skills we need in order to move toward our goals. 

Sports involve victories and losses, just like life. 

The thing is, when we’re defeated in life, we tend to get discouraged and depressed…whereas when an athlete loses in a professional sport, yes, they may be disappointed, but they also realize that losing is as much a part of competition as winning, and they use that loss to go back and refine their training regimen. 

See? Metaphors matter. 

(And I’m not even a sports guy!) 

What are some of your metaphors? What are the lenses through which you’ve been looking at your life? 

Our metaphors shape our reactions to and interpretations of success and failure. They inform our judgment about what should come next. They feed our belief systems about whether the challenge we’re facing is conquerable or not. 

As a metaphorical “coach” for my “athletes,” I’m not in a position of knowing and seeing everything, any more than a professional coach can know or see everything that might impact an athlete’s performance on the field. 

Therapists, for some reason, aren’t that great at admitting they have blind spots.

But if my patients think of me as a “coach,” it becomes far less troublesome to admit that, of course I have blind spots— and just like any good coach of any good athlete, I’m in the position of adjusting and refining my own viewpoints and skills and understanding of the game, in order to better serve my “athletes.” 

Take your metaphors seriously. 

Ask yourself whether your metaphors serve you well, or burden you. 

Ask yourself if there are metaphors that might realign how you see the world and your place in it. 

And then…go out and win one for the Doc. 

 

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“Suck it up” is an expression that gets both over- and under-used. 

Most of the time I’ve seen it used, it’s been in a shaming, negative sense. It seems “suck it up” is often deployed as kind of a verbal or emotional weapon against someone somebody thinks isn’t trying as hard as they should. 

People toss out “suck it up” to shame or humiliate both other people and themselves. 

Do you realize how often we tell ourselves to “suck it up” and push through a difficulty? 

It’s as if we’re telling ourselves that our feelings and reactions in the moment don’t matter— we “should” be “tough” enough to “stick it out.” 

Look at that mess of a sentence. “Should.” Tough.” “Stick it out.” 

None of those expressions contains an actual strategy. 

None of those expressions speak to actual tools. 

None of those “tough guy” expressions provide any kind of guidance as to HOW one is actually expected to “suck it up.” 

I, myself, don’t believe the obstacles most people face are attitudinal. 

I don’t believe the problem with most people is that they’re not “sucking it up” or being as “tough” as they “should” be. 

I believe most people who are stuck or afraid or struggling lack an actual path, actual tools, actual strategies. 

It’s my experience that if you provide a motivated individual with clear goals (both final goals and intermediate goals) with the tools he or she needs, then the “suck it up” part often takes care of itself. 

And that is actually where I feel the expression “suck it up” might be underused— in the goal-setting and strategizing portion of the game. 

A lot of people don’t like to set goals, create plans, or plot strategy.

They fantasize that if they just have the right attitude, or if they’re just “tough enough,” or if they just make a decision to get through a situation “no matter what,” that’ll be enough. 

If they DO get around to setting goals, making plans, and plotting strategies, that sometimes brings their attention to the less-than-stimulating intermediate goals they have to go through to GET to their final goals…and they often don’t like thinking about those intermediate goals, because they’re boring, frustrating, or require more attention to detail than the big-picture goals. 

I get it. Daydreaming about big goals is way more fun than strategizing to achieve little goals. 

Suck it up. Strategizing, intermediate goal-setting, and time management are necessary, not optional, parts of this whole life development process. 

Suck it up. If you really want to do the things you value, if you really want the level of emotional and physical and lifestyle freedom you envision, you ‘re going to have to do a few things you’d prefer not to do— like intermediate goal-setting, planning, and strategizing. 

“Suck it up” isn’t a magical talisman that can carry us through any given situation on the momentum of attitude or determination alone. But it IS the only way to confront the reality that some aspects of this process won’t be immediately stimulating or gratifying. 

The expression or concept of “suck it up” doesn’t have to be shaming or humiliating, by the way. It can, in fact, be your best friend, if you let it be. 

“Suck it up” presupposes you DO have the knowledge and skills necessary to do the hard things. 

“Suck it up” implies you can get through the unpleasant part of this process, so you can move on the parts of the project that are more fun and interesting and rewarding. 

You can either use “suck it up” as a way to pretend that there is some sort of sweeping attitudinal factor that will make all the difference in the world— which is nonsense and counterproductive— or you can use “suck it up” as a practical bit of self-talk to get you through the practical tasks needed to move forward. 

Don’t beat yourself over the head with “suck it up” 

Use the expression just as you’d use any other tool in your repertoire— intelligently, self-supportively, compassionately, and consistently. 

Suck it up and set some goals. 

Suck it up and manage your time. 

Suck it up and strategize around your strengths and weaknesses, your stronger tools and your weaker ones. 

Suck it up and have some compassion for yourself, even when you don’t feel like it. 

Suck it up and be fair to yourself. 

You can do it. 

 

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I am constantly, CONSTANTLY on my patients and clients to set goals. 

Not just the big, motivating, end-of-the-rainbow goals; but also the smaller, intermediate, steppingstone goals necessary to get to the end of the rainbow. 

The reason for this isn’t because I think setting goals is what people are “supposed” to do, or what therapists or coaches are “supposed” to tell their clients to do. 

(I’m not a big fan of doing things merely because they’re what we’re “supposed” to do, for that matter. It’s my experience that if “supposed to’s” are the main reason we do something, it’s probably not going to wind up being very fun or interesting for us in the end.)

The reason I’m so obsessed with goals, little and big, is far more basic: if you don’t have goals for your life, I guarantee you, somebody else does. 

There are PLENTY of people who would happily take over your right to set goals for yourself if you’re not interested in that project. 

These are people who have their own agendas, values, and interests in mind— and who will, necessarily, view you as basically a pawn or steppingstone to achieving THEIR own ends. 

Mind you, I don’t think these people who would happily set goals for your life are all evil, or even that their goals “for” you would be necessarily bad. 

But I do know there is a 100% chance that your self-esteem will notice that you’re chasing somebody else’s agendas, values, and interests…and your self-esteem isn’t going to like that very much. 

Put another way: it’s virtually impossible to build positive, stable self-esteem while pursuing goals that were picked for you, rather than goals you chose yourself. 

Why? Because self-esteem can only be built with your active, conscious involvement. Self-esteem doesn’t grow in a passive environment. 

The primary reason why self-esteem needs our active, conscious involvement is because self-esteem is rooted in our survival instinct. The behaviors that create self-esteem are behaviors that our evolutionary ancestors found advantageous to survival. 

Our cave-person ancestors who were passive didn’t do too well in the survival sweepstakes— they tended to be easily manipulated and defeated by their harsh environment and natural predators. 

Self-esteem is the modern-day reflection of the qualities and instincts that were essential for the very survival of our species. 

And when the survival of the species is at stake, you don’t want to bet on the passive horse. Or, in this case, the passive cave-person. 

Self-esteem has two parts: an experience of worthiness, and an experience of efficacy. 

“Worthiness” suggests that we are valuable. We deserve good things to happen to us— or, at the very least, we don’t deserve bad things to happen to us, just because we’re human. Worthiness is the feeling that we have worth— and if we have worth, we are certainly worth more than passivity. 

If we have worth, we certainly deserve more than to limply accept someone else’s goals for us. We are worth setting our own goals, that align with our own, consciously-chosen values. 

“Efficacy” is the experience of being “up to” the challenges of life. We may not have the tools to defeat every single challenge we face at every given moment, but if we feel efficacious, we have a general sense that we can handle what life throws at us. It involves a certainty that we can learn from experience and develop new skills and tools to succeed at life as necessary. Efficacy is the feeling that we are, literally, effective— and if we are effective, we can certainly do better than passivity. 

If we are efficacious, we can certainly do better than to meekly accept someone else’s goals for us. We are capable of setting our own goals— again, that align with our own, consciously-chosen values. 

If we fail to set our own goals— end goals, intermediate goals, big goals, little goals— someone else will merrily skip into that void. 

If someone else merrily skips into that void, you wind up living your life and structuring your day around their goals and values, not yours. 

If you wind up living your life and structuring your day around someone else’s goals and values, your self esteem notices, and you begin to wither inside. 

You begin to feel depressed and you’re not quite sure why. 

You begin to feel life and work are pointless. 

You lose interest in things, and why wouldn’t you? You’re no longer the author of your own experience. 

All of which is to say: my emphasis on goals at The Doyle Practice isn’t a “default” setting. It’s a very intentional choice, because our goal-setting habits (or lack thereof) are the building blocks (or lack thereof) of our self-esteem. 

And without self-esteem, building any kind of a satisfying life is nearly impossible. 

So humor me when I rant on and on about goals. 

There’s method to the madness. 

 

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I want you doing little, boring exercises literally every day that can nudge you toward more productive ways of thinking. 

I know, I know. Little, boring exercises are no fun. 

They don’t feel like they’re doing much good. 

They feel too easy. 

They feel too stupid. 

Especially if you’ve come a fair way in your healing journey, they can feel repetitive, as if they’re “beneath” your current level of functioning. At a certain point, a lot of us get the thought in our head that we shouldn’t “have” to do certain basic exercises if we’ve come this far. 

Yup, it’s the truth. Those little, boring exercises every day— those exercises that repeat and reaffirm and practice the very basics of recovery— can be a drag. 

You know what they tend NOT to be, however?

They tend NOT to be overwhelming. 

They tend NOT to be out of the realm of our imagination or competence. 

They tend NOT to be painful in the sense of being too emotionally taxing or pointed that we run the risk of being triggered or traumatized when we do them. 

That’s why I want you doing little, boring exercises every day to strengthen your basic recovery skills: because I want you actually DOING them. 

No skill I can teach you is going to do you any good if it doesn’t get practiced. And practiced, and practiced, and practiced. 

Many people speculate, an awful lot, on what makes the difference between people who recover from trauma, from substance abuse, from depression, from anxiety— and those who remain stuck. Literal books have been written on the subject of what the magic ingredient is to successful recovery stories. 

I wish, as fervently as anyone, that there was a magic ingredient. 

The truth, however, is considerably un-sexy. 

The magic ingredient— which isn’t very magic— turns out to be work. 

Not even work, in the sense of “effort expended.” Work, as in the willingness to put up with repetition. Work, as in the willingness to engage in practice. 

There are skillsets that make the difference between recovery and non-recovery. It’s hard to recover from anything without grounding and mindfulness skills. Recovery is difficult without the reality testing skills taught by cognitive behavioral therapy. Recovery is difficult without a well-developed understanding of time and energy management. 

There are skills in addition to those that are helpful, but the basics remain the basics. They haven’t changed since I’ve been a psychologist; and the history of the field suggests they haven’t changed much in the last several centuries. 

What makes those skillsets work, however, is our willingness and ability to get to the point of those skills being unconscious, fully automated aspects of how we deal with the world. 

Recovery basics need to become part of our default, autopilot settings. 

We need to get so familiar with them and so good at them that we don’t have to stop and think every time those skills are called for— they need to be just there for us, at the ready. 

How does that happen? 

You guessed it: practice. Rehearsal OVER-rehearsal. 

We don’t practice and over rehearse things by which we feel overwhelmed or triggered. We just don’t. We’re wired to avoid pain and too-intense stimuli. 

So we break them down. Whether it’s thought-stopping and reframing and rebuttal thinking, as taught by CBT; whether it’s acceptance and commitment work as practiced by the twelve step recovery tradition; whether it’s grounding and containment as taught by the trauma treatment community. We break down the requisite skills into small, bite-sized exercises…which, yes, we then practice every day. 

Whether we want to or not. 

Whether we feel like it or not. 

Whether we feel like we “need” to or not. 

I want you doing little, boring exercises that stress and strengthen the basics of recovery every day, because I want you to turn into a recovery ZOMBIE. I want you so versed in this stuff that you could do it in your sleep; that you could do it while spinning a basketball on your finger; that you could do it even if you don’t realize, in your conscious brain, that you need to USE those skills in the moment. 

Those little, boring exercises will save your life. 

They really will. 

 

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When we’re in pain, our first job is to acknowledge that pain exists in our world right now, and needs to be managed. 

A lot of people lose a lot of momentum in managing their pain by going through a long period of denial, in which they try to pretend their pain doesn’t exist. 

The reason I want you to acknowledge your pain, rather than pretending it doesn’t exist, isn’t because I’m some sort of sadist. 

The reason is actually pretty simple: you can’t manage something you refuse to admit exists. 

Let me say that again: you can’t manage something you refuse to admit exists. 

This holds true for all sorts of pain: physical pain, depression, anxiety, grief. If you’re interested in managing it and not letting it control you, you’re going to have to look it in the eye. 

No way around it. 

Pain inconveniences and incapacitates us exactly as much as it does. No less, but no more— unless we tun the volume up on that pain by pretending it doesn’t exist. 

If we acknowledge our pain— its exact nature, its exact intensity, the exact ways in which it incapacitates us— we can start to formulate a realistic plan to work around it. 

If we acknowledge our pain, we can begin to consider useful, effective strategies to minimize and turn the volume down on that pain. 

Put another way: how do you expect to formulate a truly effective strategy to work around or work through something if you haven’t acknowledged and examined the EXACT parameters of that thing? 

Pain freaks us out. We don’t like it, obviously. 

But pain freaks us out on an even more basic level: when we experience pain, our evolutionarily-honed response is to escape that pain as soon as possible, because we don’t know when the hell we’re going to be out of that pain. 

The cave-people ancestors in our evolutionary history figured out that things that hurt you often end up killing you. So the instinct to escape pain as soon and as emphatically as possible has been hard-wired into our behavioral repertoire. 

It takes our more evolved cerebral cortexes— our bigger brains— to understand that if our first or only response to pain is to run the other way as fast as possible, we’re likely to just prolong that pain…or run headlong into situations that are more painful than the one we’re trying to escape. 

Productively acknowledging pain doesn’t mean we have to like it. 

It doesn’t mean we have to revel or languish in it, though some people do seem to have an interesting habit of jumping into painful situations and swimming around in them (whenever this is the case, I get curious about the greater pain they think they’re avoiding by doing this— or, conversely, how they’re somehow deriving pleasure or reinforcement from that behavior). 

Acknowledging and assessing pain is a simple, but not easy, skill. It requires us to get over our initial panic— to stop freaking out for a sec— and to learn to take a few steps back from ourselves…while, yes, still experiencing the pain. 

We can do that— observe ourselves while still remaining attached to our experience. We do it all the time, in fact. (It’s a trick we psychologists call developing your “observing ego”). 

When we experience pain, the first thing we need to do is throw our self-talk skillset into gear. 

If you’ve ever watched a professional boxing or mixed martial arts fight, you might have noticed the fighters’ respective cornermen shouting instructions and encouragement to the athletes, especially when they get into trouble. When we experience pain, we need to be our own “cornermen.” We need to learn to talk ourselves down from that reaction of fear and panic that accompanies pain. We need to be our own “coach” that helps us descend from that place of anxious desperation. 

Then, once we’ve put on our self “coach” hat, we need to put on our “scientist” or “researcher” hat when it comes to our pain. 

We need to ask questions of it. We need to assess it. We need to observe it. 

Yes, we need to do all of this WHILE we’re hurting. (I didn’t say this was an EASY skillset to develop.) 

The thing is, though? As we develop those two skillsets— our self-“coaching” skillset and our “researcher” skillset— we’re going to find our pain is ALREADY more manageable and managed than if we were simply denying that the pain exists. 

Learning to talk yourself through your pain and look at your pain through a “scientific” lens begins to put YOU back in charge of your experience. 

Denying and disowning pain only robs you of the ability to control your experience in any way. 

Pain isn’t easy to manage, and no one is saying it is. Moreover, no one knows what your pain, specifically, is like. I would never, ever be so arrogant as to tell you I know exactly what you need in order to handle your specific experience. 

I do know, however, that nobody— and I mean that, nobody— has wished or willed their pain away through the magic of denial. Nobody has ever effectively managed a problem, pain included, in the long term through denial. 

I want you to acknowledge your pain because I want you to both feel less pain and manage the pain you do feel well. 

And you can. 

I truly believe that. 

 

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You’re smart. I know you know the importance of goals. 

Without goals, it’s hard to get anywhere, at least anywhere you want to go. 

You might end up somewhere without goals, but it’ll likely be somewhere pretty random— or, more likely, you’ll end up somewhere chosen for you by someone else, in a place that serves their needs more than yours. 

Goals are tools we use to live our values. The link between our goals and our values is the big-picture importance of goals in our life. 

Goals have a more practical purpose in our lives as well, however. 

Goals help us establish what to put on our schedules every day in order to make sure our attention is getting funneled in the right direction. 

What we do with our time every day is enormously important. It can make the difference between feeling bored and engaged; between feeling empty and fulfilled; between feeling lazy and industrious. 

When it comes down to it, what we do with our time is really the biggest variable in whether we’re feeling happy or frustrated. 

How do we decide what do do every day? 

(Trust me on this: if you don’t have a plan for your day, someone else assuredly does. The world is FULL of people who are perfectly happy to tell us how to spend our days.)

We decide what to do with our time every day based on— you guessed it— your goals. 

I tell my patients that it’s enormously important to always be training for something, like an athlete does. 

Are athletes called upon to compete every day or every week? No, they’re usually not. 

But do athletes choose how to spend their time every day based on the steppingstones that lead to their “game day” goals? You betcha. 

Goals provide structure, down to the week, the day, even the hours. 

Human beings need structure. 

We need structure based on what we value and what we like. It’s really, really hard to live a life that you find fulfilling without structure that is erected around what you value and what you like. 

Many people hear the word “structure,” and they recoil. They think that “structure” is something that limits them.

(As if that would be a bad thing— when viewed in their proper perspective, limits are some of the most useful tools we have— but that’s a different subject.)

But ask yourself: if “structure” is so bad, what’s the alternative? Chaos? Randomness? 

Your self-esteem notices when you’re living a live of chaotic randomness. Self-esteem is hard to come by when you’re not living life on purpose, with mindfulness and intentionality. 

Pick some goals in your important life domains. 

We human beings have needs in various life domains— we need physical health, we need relationships, we need freedom, we need fun. Many of us have a need to feel connected to spirituality. All of these domains offer various opportunities for goal-setting. 

Pick some goals, then ask what the steppingstones or milestone goals on the way to those goals are. 

What are the steps? 

If a goal is going to take a year, what’s the six month goal en route to that goal? How about the three month goal? The one month goal? 

Get down to the week. Get down to the day. 

Ask yourself: if you were committed to this goal, and if these are the steppingstone goals or the milestones, what does that mean about how my day, today, needs to be structured? 

What do I have to do today, in other words? 

Goals are nice for their inspirational quality, that’s true. But for my money, goals are MOST useful because they answer the question of “how should I manage my time?” 

Time management is life management. 

This is your life. 

Ask good questions and manage it well. 

 

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