Ep.26: The One Unexpected Trick to Stay Calm When Everything Goes Wrong

Episode Transcript

What happens when you're triggered

What do you do when you're in the moment - when someone's triggered you, when someone says something that annoys you, when a situation doesn't go your way and you're stuck there? What happens in your mind? What happens in your body?

You can feel the emotions start to build, the lack of control, all the thoughts running through your head. It's important to ask these questions because it happens, and it happens so much. Then we spend the rest of the day, or the week, or the month wondering why that happened, even though we're "self-aware" and doing all these things and we still get triggered.

When you have a self-image that says I am practicing, I am self-aware, I am aware of why I do things, and then that doesn't match what happens when you're triggered and you actually react, it can get really frustrating, because what happens isn't in line with the way we see ourselves.

So remember the last time you were triggered. What happened? How did you react? Did you react, or did you respond?

I'm asking because I had a very interesting experience recently that truly tested whether I'm practicing what I preach - whether I'm actually self-aware. I don't mean that as a judgment, yes I am or no I'm not. I mean is there more work to be done in that area, because we can go through different parts of our lives and maybe in relationships we get triggered really easily, but at work nothing that happens bothers us. That's a very interesting thing to experience.

An interesting experience at Heathrow

I went to America recently for the first time, just for a small business trip, and I had an interesting experience at Heathrow. For those of you who travel to America a lot, you're going to think I'm stupid, because I just hadn't been before, and I did as much research as I thought I needed to before going, and yet I still made this mistake.

I'm at the airport, at the check-in kiosk where you get your boarding ticket. I put my code in and get an error saying I can't use this ticket. So it prints out an error ticket. I go to the front desk - about an hour and a half queue - and in that hour I'm thinking, something's wrong. I don't know what, but something's wrong.

An airport staff member walks by and I flag him down. I tell him what happened, that I got this error ticket, that I feel like I'm in the wrong queue. He looks at me and asks, do you have an ESTA? I say, what's that? And that's when his face fell.

For those who don't know, an ESTA is a visa waiver to get into the US. I had researched beforehand whether I needed a visa, and he told me no, if you have a UK passport you can waive it. I said, cool, I'm good. He said, no, you need an ESTA, and it takes three days to process. My flight was leaving in two hours, and I'd spent a lot of money on this trip.

Two things can happen in that moment

In that moment, two things can happen. I could break down - oh my god, I'm going to lose all this money, I'm going to miss this opportunity, I'm so stupid. You can go down that rabbit hole, and it was tempting. I'm not going to lie, it was very tempting.

But I still had some control. I could apply for an ESTA and hope for the best. So in the next half hour of the queue I went on the government website, applied for an ESTA, got to the front desk and asked if he could let me in. Obviously not. I was just trying my luck. He told me to sit down and wait - chances are I wouldn't get on the plane, but if I was lucky maybe I could wait around and see what happens. Boarding closes an hour before the flight.

So I'm thinking, there's nothing more I can do now, and I can feel the temptation to break down, to go into those thought loops and just sit there zoned out for the next hour. I could feel that temptation, and so I did one thing that stopped all of it - something so easy to do that it can break you out of these thought loops.

Where you put your focus

I realised I wasn't going to let myself go down that thought loop, because it had no benefit - literally none. There was nothing I could do in the situation that would help me, and if I have no control, there's no need to worry about it. A lot of us go through situations where we don't have control, and that's okay, but our minds say I need control, I need to feel safe, I need to feel secure - and then we panic, trying to grasp for control in a situation where we have none and can't possibly have any.

So I went outside, sat down, and looked around. It was luckily sunny, and there were a few birds around. The easiest thing to do when your mind is going crazy is to imagine your awareness as a ball of energy, and wherever you decide to put it, in your body or your mind, that's where it is.

Most of us go around life with that ball of awareness in our mind all the time - our energy, our focus is our mind. You can test this by moving that focus into your body instead, and you can feel it. So I sat down and put it somewhere else. Your focus is energy, your focus is food - wherever you put it, that recipient gains energy, gains momentum. It doesn't matter what it is.

I sat and looked at the birds, and truly looked, truly saw them. It's easier when the thing you're focusing on is moving, because there's more stimulus - a bit harder with something standing still, because your mind can pull you back into its grasp.

It's the same reason that when you're on a rollercoaster, or doing something intense that requires your full attention, you stop thinking. You're completely present when you're doing something dangerous or something that requires all your attention, because if you stop focusing on it, you're no longer safe. Imagine climbing, having to put all your attention into the next grip - if you don't, you could fall. Remember, the mind's job is to keep you safe. That's it.

Usually that works against us, because it's always looking out for possible threats, always thinking, always worrying. But if you can find a way to use that to your advantage - I'm not saying put yourself in dangerous situations, hear me out - this is why people love adrenaline sports, because it gets you out of your mind. All that is, is focus. All that is, is attention. So you don't have to be in a dangerous situation to put your attention there. It's easier that way, but through practice you can put it on anything and keep it there. And when you do, your mind stops, because your energy isn't there anymore - your energy, your focus, is wherever you put it.

Isn't that just avoiding the problem?

I just sat there. Occasionally your mind acts up again because your focus gets a bit split, and then you realise, okay, my mind's acting up again, let me put my focus back into something else.

I want to be intentional about what I say here, because some of you may think, that's great, you can focus on something, you can be disciplined, but isn't that avoiding the problem? Isn't that just putting your head in the sand and hoping it goes away? I see your point. But it depends on your intention.

When you do that non-stop - and that could be in the form of adrenaline sports, alcohol, or drugs - and you're always looking to avoid the situation, yes, it becomes a problem. But when you shift your focus with the intention of letting your body calm down, that's okay. Because the emotion comes first.

The emotion comes first

When I was in that queue and the airport worker told me I needed an ESTA, the emotion came first. I could feel the tension in my chest, and the emotion arose - oh my god, what am I going to do? Then the thoughts kicked in to justify and validate the emotion, to make sense of it. The mind wants you to be safe, and if it doesn't understand what's going on, it tries to make up a narrative to help you understand. That narrative is normally not positive, but as long as you see it as valid, it doesn't matter if it's positive or negative.

So the emotion comes first. When I shifted my attention to the birds, I did it to let my body calm down, to let the emotion subside. Have you ever noticed that when you're anxious you think of a million more things to be anxious about? Just like when you're joyful and in love and appreciative, you find a million more things to validate that emotion, to feel grateful about, to feel appreciative of.

If I'd let myself sit in that worry and anxiety, I would have found a million more things to be anxious about - maybe my check-in luggage is too heavy, maybe the next flight isn't for a day, maybe I have to sleep at the airport, maybe I'll miss the event, maybe I won't get a refund, and on and on. You go into these thought loops because the mind is trying to justify what's going on in your body. It's trying to understand what's going on because it doesn't know.

By putting my attention on something else, in a focused way, I stopped feeding the emotion. Because the emotion comes up, the thoughts try to justify it, and by doing that the thoughts feed the emotion more, and you get more and more anxious. So putting my attention elsewhere had to be in a focused way, because I know how easy it is for the mind to pull you back, to have you half put your attention on something while you're still really thinking about the problem.

It's not the easiest thing, because the mind has a way of pulling you back, and that happened to me multiple times - you're looking at something and there's a one second dip in your focus and the mind kicks up again. It's interesting to notice that, because the mind just wants to keep thinking about it. In this situation it was easier for me because I literally had no control - short of bribing the person at the desk, there was nothing I could do. So it was easier to think, okay, whatever happens happens.

ESTA approved

To finish the story: I'm sat outside trying to focus. I'm not perfect - I'm checking my phone every few minutes to see if my ESTA got approved. But every time I do it, I'm also letting go of the outcome, because the more I do it the more I realise, okay, this might just not happen, and that's okay.

Half an hour later, with maybe 20 minutes to get to my flight before boarding closed - about an hour and 20 minutes before the actual flight - I open my phone one last time. I feel different. For the first time I actually believed it would happen, but I also didn't really mind if it didn't. I open my phone and it says ESTA approved. I'm in disbelief - this is amazing.

I go to the front desk. They don't really care - I would have liked them to be surprised, but they weren't. I get on my flight.

It's not something to define ourselves by

It was such an interesting experience for me, because I had this belief, this presumption, that everything would go smoothly - that's just a belief I have, things just go smoothly for me. So it was a very interesting test. Do you deserve things to go smoothly for you? Either way.

My point is, these moments don't define us, because we can always change. If my flight had been in the evening or at night and I'd been more tired, I may not have reacted as well as I did. So it's not something to define ourselves by. It's a good marker to see where we are and what triggers us. But when we start holding on to "this is who I am, this is how I react, this is how I respond," it can become more of a self-image than a choice. And the more we build into our self-image, the more we feel compelled to stick with it and not change.

I had an amazing trip. I got back and I'm still jet-lagged a week later - it was an 11-hour time difference. But simply putting your awareness where you choose - it's a nice visualisation to imagine your focus, your awareness, as a small ball of light that you can direct. When you realise that most of the time your awareness is in your mind, it makes more sense why we're always thinking. Suddenly you don't see it as "my mind is against me," it's just where you're putting your attention.

When you try this for yourself, whatever situation triggers you, just change your focus if you can. It can feel really weird, because you're so compelled to act the reaction through, so compelled to stay there. Moving your focus can feel like you're avoiding the problem, like it isn't helping, like you're putting your head in the sand. I get that. But if you do it intentionally, even for a few minutes, to let your body relax, you can come back with a more balanced reaction - a response, not an emotional reaction.