Last summer I took some time to take stock. What I found was solidly…okay. For the past couple of years, I had put a significant amount of effort delving into family history that needed sorting out. Let me tell you! “Okay” was not the word I would have used to describe that experience. That was “miserable” and “difficult” and “exhausting” at times, although it was certainly worth it! I emerged the victor, able to lay things to rest in a far more peaceful state than they had been. (When I met my therapist I told her I had a lava monster named rage living under the carpet and I didn’t want to keep it. Happy to say, after a couple of years of hard work, it’s gone now.)
However, things still weren’t good. In fact, I sorta felt like I was scraping by. There were no obvious disasters–or lava monsters–lurking…but things just didn’t seem right.
So I gave myself the following exercise to see if I could suss up some progress:
Using the following color code, rank the different areas of your life.
- Green: Life-giving, joyful energy. Takes little effort from me, and I get a lot out of it.
- Yellow: Higher effort, higher stress, medium reward. Something’s not going super-well, has modest returns, or is otherwise a struggle, but not super problematic.
- Red: High effort, little reward. Negative feelings or association. Sense of something being super-burdensome or causing distress.
Areas of life I ranked:
- Work (yellow and red)
- Friends (smattering of every color)
- Family (yellow)
- Church life (yellow)
- Creative practices (green)
- Exercise routine (yellow)
- Living space (orange)
To summarize, what I found was not a lot of green, significant amounts of yellow, and some glaring red zones in some important areas for me: both work and relationships had some red in it.
After that, I did some brainstorming. How could I get rid of all the red and add a little more green in the picture? Since work was stressing me out, I added a daily walking regimen (two half-mile walks per day that got me out of the office and into some nature, and also into some rest and some perspective), and a daily meditation routine. With the combination of those two things, I was able to move that angry dial from red to yellow within a month or so. (There were definitely some occasional spikes back into red over time, but they didn’t stay angry and red for long.)
While it took me much, much longer to get the work dial from yellow to green, eventually I was able to figure out how to make some personal adjustments so I could enjoy my work a lot more. I struggle with not letting go, taking responsibility for things other people do, and trying to control things outside of my control. However, by focusing on the results I wanted, I was able to make a lot of small adjustments that eventually culminated in not overdoing it so much at work that it made me miserable. And not being so angry when things didn’t go the way I wanted or the way I thought they should. I can also say that most of the change I experienced was the result of a change in attitude and habits rather than a change in circumstances. Changes in circumstances are certainly warranted at times, but it is amazing what effects our habits have on our daily experience!
I was also able to make some similar adjustments in some personal relationships I found painful at the time. It can be difficult to commit to making changes in relationships because we are afraid of making it worse, either through loss or further conflict. Whether that relationship is a work relationship, a long-time friendship, or a romantic partnership, taking stock and setting boundaries takes time and that’s okay! Personally, I know I often hold on until the pain outweighs the joy. Sometimes, I even get used to something being lousy or painful, and I don’t let go until it’s unbearable. (I don’t recommend that, by the way, but I think you knew that). However, I was able to learn a lot last year about letting go earlier.
Now, I am working on cultivating greenery. How do you turn a yellow into a green, or replace a yellow with a green? I will talk about this another time, but one of the things I discovered through this exercise was that my apartment was “yellow”, and it took embarking on a month long de-cluttering project to get it to green again. (Although, definitely there are yellow days when the clutter and chaos start to creep back in.) This was definitely the first time I ever really reflected on how much one’s living space can contribute to daily joy or stress. Turned out to be an extremely relevant reflection for me.
What methods do you have to check-in with yourself and see how you are doing? When was the last time you did such a check-in? What in your life is a “red” area and how might you go about learning skills to transform it into yellow? Or kick it out of your life altogether! Let me know below!
