2 : Teeth, Meet Edge. Edge, Meet Teeth.
I’m writing this sitting in a café in a little town in the Highlands of Scotland – next door to my dentist who, in 30 minutes time, will remove my three bottom front teeth and replace them, plus two that previously gave up the struggle to stay attached to my jaw, with – Oh my God! – a denture!
This is a different type of edge from those we go seeking for the purpose of changing our life.
This one I didn’t choose.
Things happen.
Life gives (an unexpected bouquet of flowers from a client, delivered by the local bus) and life takes away (my teeth!).
Much of this we have little control over (though, it's true, I could have flossed more.
This week’s extra coaching tip : Floss more!).
What we do have control over is the meaning we give to events and the way we deal with them.
The event : Having some teeth out which are replaced with a denture.
The meaning? False teeth mean I’m old, right? (Hazy memories of my grandmother keeping them in a glass of water by the bedside). Being old is scary. Something has fundamentally changed. It’s all downhill from here on etcetera etcetera etcetera.
This is what my ‘Gremlin’ tells me. (Gremlin : An ugly little creature, lives in my head, has some quite simple and some extremely sophisticated strategies for keeping me down and keeping me scared). Listening to your Gremlin, provided you identify it as your Gremlin, can be a useful way of identifying what unhelpful, not to mention irrational and downright untrue, beliefs are running you and your life. Whereas acting upon what your Gremlin says is rarely useful.
So – when you find your first grey hair, notice a wrinkle, are told you need reading specs or start feeling creaky in the mornings – what will, or did, your Gremlin say?
Write these communications down.
This theme – event vs meaning attributed - is not new. In 60-110 AD, Epictetus stated that “Men are disturbed, not by things, but by their view of things”. (This probably applied to women too but no-one took too much notice of them back in 60-110 AD).
To summarise :
A : Something happens
B : We interpret what it means
C : We experience feelings based on our interpretation.
If you want to change C, and you can’t change A, then change B. You don’t even have to make it complicated by worrying about which interpretation is actually 'true'. Focus on what is useful.
My new B?
“I am getting a small denture. As a result my teeth will look better and I won’t be waiting for them to fall out every time I bite something. I will be the same age after the denture as before the denture. Dentures are just dentures. They don’t ‘mean’ anything.”
You get the idea.
Refer back to what you wrote just now. If there are any Gremlin messages in there rewrite them. Use neutral or positive words not ones which have a negative emotional charge.
Language is powerful.
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