It's cool by the Pool - right? [COLUMN]

Change your own reality - by Nick van der Leek

This week I'm going to offer some practical advice. If you're feeling overwhelmed emotionally, and need to manage your stress, what you need to do is recognise the parent/child construct in your own situation. The parent part of you - your inner you - needs to step forward. And the parent has got to say: "TIMEOUT".

It should be mentioned here that intuition is not a feeling. It's a creative thinking style. It's very visual, but it's thinking, not feeling. Intuition is valuable and insightful. What we're aiming to address here is that treadmill of feeling that traps you in a paradigm where you find you can't do anything, you cannot complete tasks, discipline, and willpower and particularly follow-through, are sadly lacking. As alluded to above, the first step is to recognise that this self-defeating process is underway, and to call a timeout on yourself.

That may not be enough but it is the first step. The next step brings about a psysiological response, which is what you're yearning for.

You want to feel differently, and if possible, just have a break from the episode you're in. Well, here's the answer.

What you do after taking the mental decision to have a timeout, is that you find a space where you can close your eyes. Close your eyes and move your eyes behind your closed lids from left to right, whilst looking in the direction of your jaw. Make approximately 24 swings [that's 24 in one direction, 48 pendulums in total]. And count them. You'll notice that very quickly your 'feeling-state' dissipates. Why? You have tricked your self into an REM state. Your brain then disconnects the feeling-aspect and allows you into a calm state of processing only. Try it. It works.

A third suggestion is that you project your thoughts, negativities, scenarios onto a best friend. Imagine that they have your thoughts, responses, ideas, actions. You will quickly see that these impressions are inappropriate, in fact not good enough if you value or respect yourself. It is easy to this when you project it onto another person.

What should then happen is that you begin to reject your self-imposed asylum, your ineffective feeling-thought paradigm. You then transition to performance, actions. This is how you change your own reality.