Reply To: Exercise 9: Adopt a Challenging Belief
Reflection #9: Adopt a Challenging Belief
For the 9th exercise of Leadership Step By Step, I had to do the exact same thing as in Exercise 8 (feel an unwanted emotion, identify the unwanted belief, find a belief to replace it with), but now with a challenging belief. The trick is…I feel like the two beliefs I ended up trying to change for the last exercise were both pretty challenging beliefs, and for this exercise I felt like I had to one-up myself.
In some ways, I feel like the belief I decided to try to change for this week was not the best choice for this exercise, partially because it was possibly too challenging, but also because I didn’t feel the particular unwanted emotions often enough that I had enough chances to try to change the underlying belief over the course of just one week.
The unwanted emotions I felt were discontent, disappointment, and frustration. The belief that was leading to those emotions was: happiness is something to aspire to or to achieve.
I actually identified this belief over the course of exercise 8, when, one very early morning, the sun hadn’t risen yet, and I was sitting in my darkened living room with my baby boy, both of us in a state of drowsy quiet and calm. I was doing what I usually do in my early mornings: being pensive, thinking about the coming day, thinking about my goals, and trying to meditate a bit. And as we sat there quietly on the floor, baby in my lap, both of us looking out of our glass sliding door, I happened to be thinking about the things that I’m not satisfied with – the goals I haven’t achieved or my lack of progress on some of my goals. I felt like maybe in some aspects of my life I haven’t come as far as I “should” have, and that I need to work on those things if I’m going to be happy in life, hence feeling discontent, disappointment in myself, and some frustration. After several minutes of pondering this, the sun started to come up, and I got out of my own head for a moment and thought “Look at the sunrise. That sunrise is completely unique to today. This is the only time this particular sunrise will ever happen. This moment will only ever happen right now with everything just as it is: me and my little baby boy just sitting here quietly watching the sunrise, with those pinks, purples, and oranges filling the sky filled with puffy clouds. If I can’t feel happiness in this moment, right here and right now, I never will.” That thought stuck with me through the rest of the week.
When I began to think about a belief I could attack for the challenging belief exercise, I thought, that sunrise thought could be perfect, and decided the belief I wanted to try to use to replace my unwanted belief was: “happiness is found in the now” as opposed to being something you wait for, or even work for.” With my life as it is right now, there’s absolutely no reason for me to be unhappy, and I wanted to challenge myself to find more happiness in the “now”. The emotions I wanted to feel were contentment, satisfaction, calm, and joy (happiness?).
As I alluded to previously, the difficult part of this exercise was that it was semi-rare that I felt unwanted emotions related to happiness. But they weren’t completely absent. There were a few specific times when I was doing something mundane like hand-washing dishes and was tempted to pull out my smartphone and turn on a video or podcast while I did it, but stopped myself and thought “Happiness is found in the now. Stop searching for happiness from something outside of you, find it within” and was instead able to just sit there, focus on my dishes, and feel how good it felt to just wash each dish and feel the satisfaction of knowing I did it well. It was a sort of meditation, and felt really good for the few times I was able to try out the new belief.
Thanks to this exercise and the previous one, I think I am starting to become more conscious of the beliefs of my inner monologue and noticing more when I feel unwanted emotions. Now it sometimes feels like I’m looking for opportunities to feel an unwanted emotion just so I can challenge myself to try to come up with a belief to combat it with. These exercises were a useful tool that I think is applicable to just about everyone and would highly recommend trying it. I can see where in leadership this skill would be invaluable: A person with the ability to change their beliefs at will has the ability to shift perspectives and in doing so alter their own reality – to create a world they want to see, first in their mind, and then in the real world.