The Stress Doc continues his "Top Ten" tips and techniques for heightening one's exploratory and risk-taking potential - from mentally meandering and turning on the "thrustration" to getting disciplined with time and training. And there's a case example.
Risky Business: Part IV
Three more pointers to help you go from burnout to break out. Go for it!
7. Take an Incubation Vacation. If you can't literally get away to create a new perspective, learn to psychologically detach and let go after building up problem-solving tension and frustration. A psychiatrist, Richard Rabkin, calls this increasing, potentially creative cognitive-emotional steam, "thrustration." I've defined it as follows: when you're torn between thrusting ahead with direct action and frustration as you can't quite put together the pieces of the creative puzzle. By allowing yourself to wallow in frustration, by feeling stuck, you are priming your primitive brain. Right hemispheric images, repressed emotional connections, subterranean memories, the capacity for unexpected analogies, etc., are often triggered by this acute smoldering tension…If you've done the necessary preparation - that is, by willfully wallowing in the details of your problem until you've hit the wall.
Those who tenaciously cling to only problem-solving logic and willpower don't understand the "grief-letting go-incubation-innovation process." We must dwell in the land (or cyberspace) of constructive discontent, must productively attack the box of our making or choosing, and then breakaway from the familiar to explore new possibilities. As Albert Camus, the Nobel Prize- winning, Algerian-French novelist and philosopher observed: "Once we have accepted the fact of loss we understand that the loved one obstructed a whole corner of the possible pure now as a sky washed by rain."
So take an incubation vacation for discovering uncommon light in the darkest clouds…and hatch a new perspective. It's a perspective so innocent it often runs in all kinds of directions without rigid expectations, a view that doesn't know what it should or should not do, and even risks an array of new encounters.
8. Harness Time. As we've seen, creativity and risk-taking require an aimlessness and sense of timelessness. However, both in the early and latter phases of rejuvenation and regeneration, a sense of time limits and urgency is also essential. Often to get our mental motor started and running, time must strike you as finite; it can run out on you. Still, time and need may give us a premature push such that we aren't quite mature enough to handle the experience. Yet, if we wait until we are fully ready to take the plunge, we may endlessly linger in that comfort zone; we may never achieve "emancipation procrastination." I recall my mother confronting my inner procrastinator by quoting the Ancient Roman poet Horace: "To begin is to be half done. Dare to know - start!" (And you wonder why I'm such a stress expert?)
By staying conscious of, without becoming a slave to, time there's a possibility for focusing on the anxiety or anger that may be preventing us from engaging our explorer mode. And sometimes, we need an assist to confront "The Intimate FOE: Fear of Exposure."
9. Find a Coach. A key component, sometimes an absolutely critical one, to exploration and growing in new directions is working with a coach. First, this means finding someone who is skillfully experienced in your learning curve arena: an expert who walks the talk. Then trust must evolve. If the coaching relationship is to be maximally productive, the student will need to accept both supportive and confrontive feedback. And in my risk-taking paradigm, the coach must also be able to handle student objections, criticisms and challenges to his or her authority. When this kind of focused and sustained energy-intimacy is achieved, results are often dramatic.
The Doc Delivers
For example, several months back, I began online coaching with an aspiring LA actress and comic having difficulty finding steady work. She also had sold her used car to get a slick computer system in hopes of starting a home business. Despite some monthly financial support fromn her family, with offline and online prospects still proving scarce, she increasingly felt frustrated, trapped and depressed. She got out of her exercise routine, allowed eating habits to slip, put on noticeable weight and began having bodily stress symptoms, such as TMJ - a jaw related stress condition (I knew there was hope when she typed in LOL to my interpretation: "Too Many Jerks.") While in her deep funk she found me through AOL. First, I helped her accept that her stress and moodiness were understandable. She wasn't being a whiner or a wimp. After discovering she had talent for writing humorous personal essays, I used one in my Humor From The Edge column. This reaffirmed some of her precrisis talents and abilities. Also, gradually learning more about her social network, I supportively challenged some of her dependency upon or hopes for collaborating with unstable users or toxic (TMJ) personality types. We grappled at times over this issue - was I being too negative in my judgments or was I "lecturing" her. Gradually, we got on the same page.
Mind-Body Professional Connection
She now sought another expert - a personal exercise trainer. And, of course, getting back into a hard-working regimen not only helped her tackle the excess pounds, but she returned to Marilu Henner's program for optimal nutrition and health. Our protagonist isn't at her desired goal yet but, more important, she's becoming comfortable with, no, make that excited about, her lifestyle changes.
Still, with the precarious career situation, another step had to be taken. Upon realizing she had some previous experience doing massage in a doctor's office, I encouraged her to get her license. This stirred up many old anxieties and self-doubts. Much of her previous schooling (including years of Catholic and boarding school education) had been fairly traumatic with many blows to her individuality and self-esteem. In fact, she had attempted massage school previously, but dropped out after not taking it seriously. A frequent lament; "How could she ever learn anatomy?"
Now she was grappling with another reality: we may need to have a variety of job/career skills and tracks for our career path bag of tricks. And having recently faced this medical-existential life crisis, her attitude and behavior was markedly changed. Her level of concentration and serious motivation as a student is unprecedented despite the lingering flashbacks to nuns and a perception of being mathematically-challenged. In fact, fellow students are asking to copy her notes.
And, finally, as "healing humorists" we are now planning a national seminar: "The Mind-Body Humor Connection: Practicing Safe Stress for Maximum Health." Definitely a win/win outcome. And, if anyone knows an organization or association looking for a dynamic, inspiring and fun-filled speaking or training program, or wants info on my online coaching services, just email - stressdoc@aol.com .