Two Words That Changed My Life

Yeah, well, you know, this is just like, uh, my opinion, man.

I've decided to add a short additional post each week for paid subscribers that takes what we talked about and dives in a little deeper. These weekly posts are getting a little long for people, but I don't want to lose the nuance.

Nuance is important in the things we are talking about because I don't want this to turn into another hustle and grind, you-need-to-work-harder blog. I do believe in hard work, and I do believe in choosing the most helpful perspective in our lives, but this has to be kept in balance. Today's topic is a good example.

Two words did change my life - it's not meant to be one of those clickbait titles.

Young James was difficult to deal with for a variety of reasons. When I look back, what bothers me most is how dramatic and whiny I was. Going to therapy has helped me realize why I was this way and helped me come to terms with that a little bit, but it still annoys me.

The Danger of Drama

Being whiny and dramatic and always seeking attention led me to make things worse than they were. I saw a lot of things as the end of the world. I'm not trying to be mean to myself, I have learned to understand and have compassion for that kid, but he had to be annoying for the people around him.

When I first moved to West Texas, I didn't have any friends or a social life for a long time. I knew there were some things that I needed to sort out, and I was also burned out from being myself and being myself around people.

I remember driving around one day listening to the punk band Bad Religion on a battery-powered boombox buckled into my passenger seat (someone had smashed my window and stolen my CD player). I’d heard the song dozens of times, but for some reason, on this day, one line jumped out of the speakers and grabbed me by the throat:

“And then you told me how much you had to suffer. Is that really all you have to offer?”

I don't know what it was, but in that moment, I realized that I had created an entire identity around suffering and struggle. I made sure that everyone who was around me for more than ten minutes knew about my issues with drugs and alcohol, my mental illness, and all the crazy and terrible things that had happened in my life. I took all of it, and I wore it like a badge, and I was very proud of it.

This was a problem. Apart from making me annoying, it also created a self-centered perspective on the world, and this perspective was rooted in negativity. I realized there was no hope for me to ever change when the whole story I told myself about myself revolved around such a toxic identity.

This coincided with my having started dabbling in things like ownership and radical responsibility through different books I was getting at the library. Me being me, I did my normal thing and swung to the other extreme and decided to be the opposite of whiny and entitled and negative (this here is where the nuance comes in, but I will write a short post about that later this week).

OK, cool.

One of the changes I made was to refuse to allow any drama into my life. It was an affectation at first, but I started saying "OK, cool" no matter what happened. They were simple words, but they helped reframe the way I saw the world and how it worked.

I was working at a little CD store at the time. I was supposed to work one afternoon, but I got a call from the regional manager telling me that they were closing the store that day and they would pay me for the next two weeks if I came in and helped them box everything up and load it into a truck he was driving into town.

I wanted to be super dramatic about this. I'd always wanted to work at a music store. It seemed like a job that made you cooler. I thought of having to look for another job and all the hassle and subtle humiliation that comes along with that, but I also realized something else at that moment: none of that mattered.

This was a thing that was happening. All my drama and all my complaining and all my whining wouldn't change that. I was lucky to get another paycheck for a few hours of work, so instead of doing any of the drama I said “OK, cool.” I showed up and helped pack the store up, and then I started looking for another job.

I started applying this to all the little trials and tribulations of life I had always been super dramatic about. Over time, it became more natural, and it wasn't long before I was able to see how accepting difficult situations without being dramatic about them didn't only make my life easier, it helped me recognize that everything that ended opened the door to something new.

In this case, losing my job at the CD store led me to working the 3-11 shift at a local hotel. I enjoyed meeting people coming into town for medical procedures (we were right next to a hospital), and I was able to finish all of my homework at work, freeing up more time to hang out with my son.

 I've said "OK, cool" for so long now that it seems like a natural way of being to me, but it has required a little more effort as things have gotten more and more difficult over the last few years.

The Dreaded “Toxic Positivity”

I've learned that there are some things where this doesn't apply, which is something I'll talk about later this week. I say it here because I want to dodge the standard accusation of “toxic positivity” that gets thrown my way from time to time.

This isn’t toxic positivity. I do not understand the point or the purpose of getting twisted up and bent out of shape over things that I cannot control. I did it for years, and it made things worse, so I’m not going to do it anymore.

Difficult things happen to us in life. In and of themselves, they are events that happen and nothing more. By being dramatic and turning them into stories, we plant them deep into our lives, and they grow into something more than they are.

This is part of the reason I have such a problem with the way we throw around therapy words and concepts on social media. We training people to take the inconveniences and hardships that are part of life and turn them into a thing by talking about how unfair or traumatic they are.

I'm not denying unfairness or trauma. Both exist. Both are very real. But both are also beyond our control and once we've done what we can to address them, we need to be rational and do what we need to do to move on with our lives.

It wasn't “fair” that the CD store closed. If I wanted to take it personally, I could say that I was a good employee who showed up every day, interacted with customers, kept the store clean and organized, and enjoyed my job. I did everything I could to make it work.

That's all well and good. But this store was in a crappy little shopping center that was less than a quarter of a mile from the mall that had two giant CD stores in it. I was also working there at a time when the nature of how we consume music was changing as digital formats were becoming more prevalent. I was riding around on a dinosaur. Comets might not be fair, but they happen.

Don't Make It a Thing

Losing a minimum wage job is not that serious. I’ve lost at least 40 of them in my life. It was annoying, not traumatic. Over the last few years, I've learned that we don't have to be dramatic about the harder things in life either though. By extending it from saying "OK, cool" to taking the step of asking myself what I'm going to do next I have been able to minimize the impact of more difficult situations.

This was especially helpful when I still struggled with alcohol years ago. When I was younger, I would try to quit drinking or taking pills or whatever I was doing (usually both and more), but I’d created such a story around it that it was impossible. I thought about the struggle and how long I'd been using and all the good and bad times. I turned it all into a movie in my head, and the dramatic story arcs kept me locked into the behavior.

When I learned to say, "I slipped up and started drinking again. OK, cool - I've quit before, I'll quit again, and this is further evidence that I don't need to mess with it at all.” everything got easier because I didn't have the story making it more difficult.

Coaching is a difficult field to make it in.

It's easy to fail as a coach. I didn't have a problem having clients as a counselor. There are a lot of resources to help you get your name out there, and people see it as being more legitimate and helpful than coaching because you have a master's degree and state licensure.

This was daunting at first.

It's actually still daunting.

Ok, cool. This is an opportunity to be forced out of my comfort zone to put myself out there in a way that is not natural to me. It's driven me to work hard to become an expert in what I do and to establish credibility and legitimacy with people. This has allowed me to build a good practice that's still growing, along with a list of clients who have been willing to give me testimonials and refer people to me.

I have to work for every client I get. I'm a good coach, but that means that I have a lot of clients who move on after we accomplish the task they had in mind, leaving me to find the next client to replace them.

OK, cool. That keeps me on my toes. It forces me to maintain a focus on generating new business and finding new people to work with. This has led me to work with a wide variety of people on a wide variety of things and that keeps me interested. My ADHD would send me on too many side quests if this wasn’t the case.

Journal Prompts

·      Where do I identify with struggle or suffering? Have I built an identity around this?

·      What would happen if I stopped being dramatic about the difficult things in my life?

·      What opportunities might I be missing by focusing too much on the negative?

·      How could saying “OK, cool” help me change my perspective?

·      What is something I’ve held on to that isn’t serving me anymore?

·      How can I change the story I tell about my life?

·      Where can I embrace change instead of resisting it?

Housekeeping

A long-time reader sent me a message about this line in my last post:

“Lubbock was once voted the most boring city in America (I love it here, people are dumb).”

He pointed out, rightly so, that some people may misinterpret this as me saying that I like living in Lubbock because people are dumb here.

I definitely don't think Lubbock people are dumb, they are my favorite people. My wife and I talk about how we don't even like traveling around Texas anymore because people are not as friendly as they used to be - that's not true in Lubbock. I'll tell anyone who will listen how much I love it here and how it would take a road-to-Damascus-type experience for God to get me to move.

I think people are dumb for calling Lubbock boring, and don't even get me started on how only boring people can be bored. I appreciate him pointing this out to me! Poorly phrased on my part.

I'm working on a post about what I do as a coach, but I'm having a hard time getting it written. I've had a bunch of people send me emails asking about it, so I figured it would be good to write something about it.

Until Next Time

I will look forward to talking to you again in a couple of days. I hope everyone is having a good week so far. If you're not, say "OK, cool" to figure out what you're going to do about it.

Drama doesn't help any of us.

Thanks for reading, take care.

James