I had someone ask me a really interesting question the other day. Well, it was interesting to me, because it was a straightforward, simple question, but I was really surprised by how I struggled with the question, and really fascinated with the things that I learned about myself through continuing to contemplate the question. You see, questions are powerful paradigm-shifters. They can bring things from the background of our awareness to the foreground of our awareness and experience in a matter of seconds, and this can change everything. It can totally flip our experience of a relationship or situation and the options for responses that we see available to us.

The question I was asked was, “What’s the 3 worst experiences you’ve had in your life?” I thought for a while and came up with some stuff, but whatever I came up with, I found myself thinking, “But that seems like a bad thing to have happened, but it wasn’t really, because I survived/ it lead to me meeting Andy/ it’s what developed my ability to empathize with other people and work as a coach,” and so on. I just couldn’t find stuff that I thought was a bad experience that I wish I hadn’t ever had. Sure, I’ve had my fair share of trouble, but I’m not sure I can say these were the “worst” experiences of my life. Some of them turned out to be the best experiences of my life.

So what’s going on here?

It all depends on the story you’ve been telling yourself…

Whenever we have something happen to us, we tell ourselves a story about it, and we decide whether it’s a “good” or “bad” thing that happened, and that determines how we feel about the situation. No situation carries innate meaning – we make all of that up ourselves.

I know this might sound weird, so here’s an example:

About 10 years ago, just after Andy and I got married, we went climbing in caves in Cape Town with some friends, for the day. We had climbed about an hour into the ground in a cave called Ronan’s Wells, when Andy let us know that he was stuck. After some debate and attempts at problem-solving, we realised he really was stuck and we couldn’t get him out, because of the restricted space (we were in a part of Ronan’s Wells that was called, “The Narrows,” and we were hugged on all sides by the cave walls). So we sent some of our mates back, out of the cave to go fetch help.

They had to climb for an hour to get out the cave, then run an hour down the mountain so that they had mobile phone reception, and then get back to us, so it was 4 hours before we knew that help was on the way. During that time we were cold and wet, with a draft blowing through the cave, and our teeth were chattering so much that we could hardly understand what we were saying. We hadn’t eaten breakfast or lunch, so we were cold, tired, stiff and sore. We all found the scary “what if?” thoughts tough to ignore, but we knew we couldn’t entertain them, so we did our best to talk about other stuff to keep our minds off our predicament.

In the end, after 12 hours of stuckness, at around midnight we were rescued by a specialist rope access team who said that Andy was the “worst-stuck guy they’ve seen get out alive.” Apparently most people in that situation claw their fingers against the walls, till they’re raw and die of a heart attack or some other shock and temperature-related complication.

This is one of the situations that I initially thought I could include in the “3 worst experiences” answer, but in the end decided not to, because:

• Although we were scared and the future was uncertain (and scary) for 12 hours, we were actually physically safe all the time while we were stuck. And we had the fortitude to know this (on some deep level) at the time, which is why we didn’t go into shock and require medical treatment. I learned that you can actually be safe even when you feel unsafe – a powerful life lesson!
• I learned that, even in a potentially life-threatening situation, your response is what’s most important. We were able to respond to the crisis calmly and create a way to survive. That’s become a powerful reminder for me, which I have drawn on in other crises since, so that I’ve been able to respond calmly again. In fact, this experience is what I drew on when I did challenging child protection work and needed to protect myself mentally and emotionally from stress and fear, whilst working in very scary environments with often people who were often very threatening towards me (aggressive teenagers, angry and mentally ill parents, barristers in court, other scared professionals passing the buck!). And it’s a big part of the inspiration I feel when I share with people about the importance of staying calm in the middle of difficult situations, so that you can preserve the quality of your thinking and respond creatively to turn the situation around.
• Andy, myself and our friend Pete are so much closer, as a result of this experience. I wouldn’t swap that for anything.
• Ultimately, this experience made us all feel more empowered and resourceful and brave, so it was a gift, rather than a bad experience.

This story isn’t “true”

Of course there are many other ways I could have told this story, and many other meanings I could make of it. None of them are “true.” When I tell it this way, my biggest problem is that I struggle to answer the question, “What’s the 3 worst things that have happened to you?” and I get to feel free, safe and happy. It also makes it more likely that I’ll see other difficult situations this way, and spot the opportunities in other difficult situations.

And I’m not the only story-teller here. You’re all doing it too. Whether you’re telling yourself a story about that makes you feel awful or awesome, you’re always telling yourself a story. Wouldn’t you rather tell yourself the story that makes you feel great and opens your mind to finding or inventing opportunities to create more good feelings and more of the life you want? Well, you can learn to do that naturally and automatically, and skip the nasty part of feeling awful and stuck when crises hit.

If you’re in the middle of one of your life’s 3 worst experiences (or done with it, but somehow still dragging it along with you), and you’re feeling crappy about it and struggling to see a way out or find a way forward, then the Bottom-line on the Flipside will give you the tools for mining the resources in your tough situation and using your worst experiences to create more of the life you want.

In the Bottom-line on the Flipside, you’ll learn:

• What the two most important things are, that you need to do first, to prepare your mind for finding hidden opportunities, when you’re hit by a crisis.
• How to grieve without getting stuck in your grief.
• How your thinking is shaping your reality – and how that actually works, so you can spot the cycle and intervene at the most suitable place, to break the cycle.
• How to get out of a stuck mindset, when you feel like you just can’t see the situation any other way.
• How to dissolve your limiting beliefs so you can allow space for new, more liberating perspectives to develop.
• How to re-program your thinking and learn optimistic, creative thinking strategies.
• How to learn to think more like an entrepreneur, and spot the opportunities in the problems around you.
• How to invent opportunities if you can’t find them.
• How to stay cool and calm, think clearly, and feel free, in spite of the chaos and difficulties around you.
• A list of powerful paradigm shifting questions you can ask yourself (and others), to generate alternative perspectives and create opportunities out of crises.

Click here to get the Bottom-line on the Flipside

I’m releasing the Bottom-line on the Flipside sometime on the afternoon of 1st September. If you get there quick and sign up before I release the Bottom-line on the Flipside, you’ll get the Bottom-line on Martha Beck’s “Finding Your Own North Star” immediately and then later in the day you’ll get an email with the download details for The Bottom-line on “The Flipside.” Click here to join the Bottom-line Bookclub now.

Photo by Xose Castro

Tweet This Post