How to stop letting things get to you

if you struggle with getting really put off or really upset when things change or when your expectations aren't met then our talk today on mental adaptability is going to be hugely helpful for you learning how to become more mentally adaptable is one of the number one things that leads to happiness fulfillment contentment and joy in our lives because the opposite of mental adaptability is mental rigidity and the more rigid we are the more stuck we feel the more trapped we get the more we struggle so i'm going to talk today about what mental adaptability is and how to start working on becoming more mentally adaptable if you're new here welcome to our incredible little corner on the internet take a second introduce yourself in the comment section below if you're back say hello if you haven't subscribe to the channel the button's about right down there either way my name is julia christina and i am a registered clinical therapist a researcher a coach and the creator of my incredible membership community full of the most incredible humans the shift society and the people in there are taking this work that we talk about here to the next level and being supported and helped and guided every step of the way you can get more information about that in the description below i help heart center go-getter people break through the crap that is holding them back so they can like themselves and their lives more every day and learning to become mentally adaptable is going to help you like yourself and your life more every day what is this what is mental adaptive adaptability all about it is about learning to be okay in life and even maybe loving your life when things are imperfect when things are not going the way that you want them to and even when life gets tough sounds so simple julia i know it's not always the most simple thing and i'm going to be honest with you learning to become mentally adaptable does take work and i can tell you that i used to be someone who was really mentally rigid and then started realizing how miserable i was making it was making me and then moved into learning how to become more mentally adaptable and life is just so much better and so much easier when we learn it but if you are someone who is mentally rigid who if things really bother you if thing when things change when expectations aren't met when things aren't going the way that you want them to and you get really you kind of put off about it really distressed or annoyed by it to know that just telling yourself to just be more easygoing to just get over it not let it bother you it's not going to work and it's actually going to make you feel worse because you're pushing against pushing right the mental rigidity is pushing against change and now you're pushing against yourself pushing against something and it's just creating a whole lot of tension and pushing further in the wrong direction mental adaptability is about learning how to go more in to the other direction and just take note if you're someone who finds change really hard don't be too hard on yourself because the truth is most human beings find change hard for the simple reason that our human brains don't like not knowing what's going to happen because different in our kind of survival brain means danger what if something terrible happens i don't know what's going to happen what's it going to look like what if i can't cope with it what if i can't deal with it what if it's awful what if it's dangerous so knowing that our brains like the status quo because it knows what to expect and so far things being the way they are you are alive and so it thinks that the good the way to keep you alive is for things to keep going the way that they are and so something outside of that threatens that pattern interesting how our human brains don't necessarily or very rarely go into automatically thinking the change is going to be great the change is going to be wonderful i'm excited for the change wonderful possibilities are on the horizon especially when it's not change that we have imposed especially when it's changed imposed on us our human brains resist even more but insisting that things have to be a certain way in order for you to be okay is both not true it's just a thought it's just a made-up expectation in your brain and it creates mental rigidity which creates a lot of resistance and therefore a lot of struggle unnecessary struggle and suffering so let's go into talking about this change thing a little bit more so when there is change on the horizon or even when you are in the middle of experiencing some kind of change in your expectation or in your situation or in your life or whatever that is you start to feel uncomfortable right because your brain is like i don't like this i don't like not knowing i don't like things not being the way that i expect them to be and so then you start to feel uncomfortable and then because our natural instinct is also to move away from discomfort right to move away from pain and towards pleasure you think that the way to do that is to reject the change to not be willing to accept the change because you're trying to get rid of feeling uncomfortable and you can kind of see where this is going that when i'm feeling uncomfortable i try to push away the thing that's making me uncomfortable but if i can't push it away then i'm just going to be sitting there trying to resist the thing that's making me uncomfortable and making myself feel even more uncomfortable so what do we do we learn how to make friends with that discomfort to know that it's natural and normal to feel uncomfortable when things are changing but it doesn't mean that we have to resist the change we have to do is embrace that discomfort to be able to sit with that and be able to say i am okay even if things are uncertain even if things are different it is only sort of the feeling of uncertainty that is creating my distress right now it's only the thought it's not even let's go back here it's not even the feeling of uncertainty it's the thought of what uncertainty means that is making me feel uncomfortable my thought that i won't be able to handle it that i won't be able to be okay that i won't get through this that is what is making me feel bad right now and so just sitting with that discomfort for a minute so just taking some time to process that discomfort instead of doubling down on insisting on the status quo and sitting in that resistance what happens when we get stuck in resistance is we end up blaming other people for things changing or we blame ourselves for making some kind of mistake and not doing something the perfect way and now look at the result look at how things are going to change and how i have to deal with it now or we end up just throwing up our hands and giving up and saying forget it and avoiding or just kind of sitting and feeling terrible because we think well there's nothing i can do may as well just throw in the towel none of these are helpful being able to just take a step back looking at the situation looking at what's happening and then deciding both how you want to think about it and what you want to do about it again knowing that you don't always have control over your circumstances but you always have choices within them and part of it comes back to choosing how you want to think about things do you want to think this is awful this is horrible i can't believe this happened i can't deal with this i can't cope with this or do you want to think okay this is not what i was expecting this is challenging me what are my choices what do i want to do now do i trust that i'm going to figure out a way to be okay do i want to adjust my expectation to something that is going to make this situation easier to deal with easier to be okay with if we are not willing to adapt if we are not willing to be kind of flexible with what is happening around us then it is saying essentially that things have to go my way in order for me to be okay and in psychology there's sort of this jargony term called external locus of control where we think that it's everything around us that is controlling how we are feeling and people who live like that go through life feeling really discouraged and defeated because they don't think they don't believe that they have any say over their emotional state they think that it's everything around them that is creating their emotions instead of realizing like okay things are happening but i always have choices with how i think about it what i do with it whether or not i believe that i can figure it out and work with it it can be really simple things it can be really simple something simple like making a plan to go out with a friend and then meeting them and then there's other people there that you weren't expecting to be there and then you can choose to be to think oh my gosh this wasn't what i was expecting i was expecting this like one-on-one time with this friend and now there's other people here and now i'm not going to get that it's going to be so awful i'm going to feel so uncomfortable i'm not going to get to have the you know kind of deeper more emotionally intimate talk with my friend that i've been waiting for and then you can feel awful about it right because something changed or you couldn't adapt to it and you can choose to think about it differently you'd be like okay i'm disappointed because this isn't what i was expecting and i was hoping for more of this one-on-one time but you know what it's also nice to be around other people it's also nice to meet new people and oh there's some other people here that i actually like as well and also just because there's a group of people it doesn't mean that i can't still have some great little one-on-one conversations i can choose to be miserable about this or i can choose to adapt to it and i can even say you know what i would like to have one-on-one time with friend with my friends so maybe next time we make plans i'll just be more specific and say hey can we just make it the two of us because i'd like some time to just you know have one-on-one catch-up um with you you could just adapt to doing something different the next time so that you will be more kind of assured to have the outcome that you were wanting to so do you see how we can adapt on all of these different levels instead of being rigid and being like this is going to be awful i'm going to be miserable i'm just going to sit stand here and sulk instead of being able to say okay i'm going to notice what i'm feeling i'm going to pay attention to those feelings gonna process those feelings and then i'm gonna decide what i want to think about this pandemic this has been a huge thing for living through a global pandemic the people that have i mean i think it's been hard on everyone but it's been harder on the people who have been resisting this reality this whole time it can't be this way this needs to end when's it going to end i can't cope with this i can't deal with this and even if things are hard it's okay to be like this is really hard and i'm having a hard time right now but there's a difference between being like this is hard this has to end i can't do it anymore i give up right this shouldn't be this way and kind of getting stuck in that thought pattern that's going to create so much more resistance and rigidity and and um distress it's going to make you feel terrible again not to say that you can't be struggling with something but it's going to matter what you do with that how mentally adaptable you're willing to be with it okay this sucks and it's hard what do i want to do with it how do i want to make the best of it how do i want to be taking my care of myself within this what kinds of things when this i'm in this hard situation what feels good what's helping me get get through and not just get through but also continue to live right now because this life in this moment this is all i have if i'm always just waiting for things to be different for me to start being okay or to start feeling okay for me to start enjoying my life i'm probably going to be waiting for a long time no matter what is happening not to say that i have to love it but how do i find a way to continue to love my life even if my i don't love my circumstances i've been doing all kinds of different things during this pandemic i was spending some time near the beginning watching a lot of stand-up comedy shows on netflix because i felt so good and i almost felt like with that kind of lack of initial human interaction when we're on lockdown there's something about watching stand-up where it's like someone's talking to you where you felt more of this connection as opposed to just watching actors you know interact with each other so i was watching a lot of stand-up made me feel connected sort of you know in a little bit of a way it was enough well it was passable at the time but then also being able to laugh i watched a lot of stand up i'm not doing that as much anymore isn't that interesting but at the time that's what i needed and then i moved into more recently i've been doing really intense workouts in our parking garage we have a big parking garage um you know and so i go down kind of later in the evening when no one's down there bring my speaker down and blast my sometimes motivational and inspirational sometimes really aggressive intense music and i lift weights and i move my body and being able to move my emotions through like that and just being able to feel kind of vital and alive like that that has been huge for me so figuring out a way to be okay or at least have moments of being okay no matter what is happening that's mental adaptability and also note that this isn't about just thinking positive all the time it's not about just pretending that everything is okay it's about learning how to adapt and how to be okay not pretending you're okay but how to be okay regardless of what's happening because if we're not doing this then we're going to be living in a constant state of rejection and resistance and that's going to feel awful this might be hard at first especially if you spent a lot of your time trying to make things be a certain way so that you can be okay and now realizing that you don't have to you might even be resisting the idea of not resisting so much but i want to invite you the next time something has changed something isn't going the way that you want it to and you notice that resistance come up to just take a second and take a breath take a step back show compassion for yourself for having a human brain that doesn't like change being able to kind of get curious and understand what's going on there and then being able to adjust and adapt your thoughts and your behaviors to be able to work with with what is happening instead of pushing against it of course i think you know this but just to note that this doesn't count for situations that are harmful or dangerous i'm not telling you to just be okay with being harmed in some way absolutely not but i think you know that this is more for those circumstances or situations in life that have changed that we can't really do anything about and so learning how to work with it instead of against it is going to be the thing that helps us be able to deal with it to actually feel good in the process of it if you need help with this this is something you struggle with come and join us in the shift society this is the deeper work we're doing in there more information in the description below and if you want to just get started with learning how to just be able to take a step back and not get so wrapped up with stuff not get so pulled into whatever your brain is doing any kind of drama it's creating i have a guided 10-minute mindfulness exercise that is going to make a big difference and really help you get started on that it's free it's in the description below you can grab that join us on the shift society by getting on the wait list grab the free 10-minute guided mindfulness exercise let me know what you found helpful from this would love to hear in the comment section below always good to have you here oh if you could like the video that would be great share it out if you thought for someone else that would benefit from this i think all of us could learn i know i needed to learn to become a lot more mentally adaptable and how how much of a difference that has made so yeah share it out if you think other people would benefit from it too and um always good to have you here until next time take good care

Channel: Julia Kristina Counselling

Views: 56,649

Rating: 4.9573998 out of 5

Keywords: be more adaptable, how to be be more easy going, stop letting things bug you, don't let things bother you, don't let the little things get to you, don't let things get to you, don't let things bug you, stop letting things bother you, stress less, be less stressed, Med School Insiders, don't sweat the small stuff, resilienc e, resilience, antifragile, resilient, get over it, easily irritated, be more chill, youtube therapist, julia kristina, don't let it get to you, cbt therapy

Id: Y_DVLIslfX0

Length: 18min 37sec (1117 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 08 2021