Step 1.2 of the 'Your Happiness Flywheel Challenge'
If you're participating in a 'Your Happiness Flywheel Challenge' this article will help build your awareness of the 3 biggest and baddest barriers to positive behaviour change. If you haven't read the first article 'Busting the Myths', please do so before you read this one 😊. Once you finish both articles, watch my short video giving you guidance on completing the 5 exercises to set you up for success with Step 2 of Your Challenge.
If you're not on a Your Happiness Flywheel Challenge, I suggest you read on, and if you're interested in learning how you can take 6 Simple Steps in 4-weeks to become happier, then hit this link to go to our website to find out more.
In the meantime, let's begin:
Many of us spend unnecessary time in the prison of our own minds due to our conditioning, trauma, and out-of-control subpersonalities (the barriers). For some of us, our ‘prisons’ are pretty nice minimum-security centres, with gardens to hang out in, day trips, and visitation rights. For others like my brother, it was more of a maximum-security kind of deal. Regardless of your ‘prison’, there are simple tools and techniques almost anyone can learn to reduce stress levels, improve confidence, resilience, and wellbeing.
My purpose is partly motivated by the loss of my brother Ben, along with Rich, Rhys, and Hamish - four good men who could not escape the prison of their own minds. Spending time with my brother in his final years, I learnt about his ‘prison’ and the steps he was taking to escape, steps that ultimately failed. Since Ben’s death, I’ve acknowledged that I am also in a prison of sorts. However, thankfully unlike my brother’s maximum-security prison, mine is more like a minimum-security correctional centre with conjugal visitation rights ☺️.
In this article, first I unpack three of the biggest and baddest barriers getting in the way of positive behavioural change (escaping your prison). And secondly, I share six simple tools and techniques to help you overcome your barriers so that you can be happier, healthier, and more content.
Three Big Bad Barriers:
1. 50,000 Years of Conditioning:
As a species, we’ve been around for about 300,000 years. While there is some debate over exactly when Homo sapiens evolved into ‘modern humans,’ most believe it was approximately 50,000 years ago. That’s when our ancestors' brains became like yours and mine; capable of abstract thinking, creating tools, art, and more.
Why does it matter? It matters a lot because for most of our existence, our brains kept us alive by being hardwired to see danger everywhere. As a physically weak species, we developed a “negativity bias” to survive.
For 49,000 or so years, our risk-averse, negative, and anxious ancestors survived, passing their genes down generation by generation. Meanwhile, their risk-taking, optimistic, and carefree cousins got eaten, stabbed, or clubbed to death.
1,000 years ago - a mere 2% of our existence by the measure of time - most of you would wake up every day asking yourself two questions:
What is my family going to eat today? (i.e. Will we go to bed hungry?)
What might eat me?
I suspect those two questions weren’t front of mind for you this morning when you woke up? Instead, you may have asked yourself what you would have for breakfast from the many easy options available. Or, perhaps you skipped breakfast completely to fast till lunch. In the blink of an eye, your brain’s core function - keeping you alive by seeing danger everywhere - is no longer helping you, it’s hindering you.
Scientific research and common sense tells us that negativity bias can contribute to increased levels of stress, anxiety, cognitive distortions, lower self-esteem, avoidance behaviours, and depression.
When it came to my brother’s negativity bias, he explained to me that often he felt like he was walking down a dark alley at night. While he knew no one was there, he felt anxious and scared that someone would jump out and beat him up (figuratively speaking). That fear may have been real 1,000 years ago during the Middle Ages, but not today in the sunny streets of Grey Lynne, Auckland NZ. I recognise that casual factors contributing to suicide are varied and complex, however, I know that one contributing factor in my brother’s death was his negativity bias.
Tools: At the end of this article, I share links to another two articles to help you overcome negativity bias: the first gives you 10 ways to be more optimistic, and the second shares 5 simple gratitude practices to embed into your daily routine.
2. Generational Trauma:
You don’t have to go back 1,000 years to discover generational trauma. It’s happening today, it happened to your parents, it happened to their parents, and their grandparents. Go back two to three generations, and you’ll find an overabundance of traumatic events that our ancestors suffered. Some of that trauma was passed onto our parents, who then unknowingly passed it onto us.
It’s not their fault; it’s called generational trauma, and it can be a nasty son-of-a-bitch.
When I talk about generational trauma, I’m referring to ‘Big T’ and ‘Little t’ trauma:
Big T trauma is usually linked to singular events. Examples include physical and sexual assault, natural disasters, life-threatening accidents, sudden loss of a loved one, war, and terrorism.
Little t trauma involves less overtly dramatic but still impactful experiences, often cumulative over time. Examples include relational conflict, rejection, ongoing criticism, and emotional neglect.
As I write this, I’m 53 years old, so two generations ago for me was the 1940s to ‘50s. Back then, if you were an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander, you were living through the Big T trauma of The Stolen Generations here in Australia. At the same time, regardless of your race or social status, you were experiencing the Big T trauma of World War II, where between 70 to 85 million people were killed. That doesn’t account for the many millions of survivors who suffered from PTSD. Bearing in mind that PTSD wasn’t recognised as a mental health condition until the 1980s. Can you imagine living for decades with PTSD, without knowing what was ‘wrong’ with you? And with little if any qualified help available. Talk about Big T trauma.
Still in the 1940s and 50s, let’s look at some recommended parenting/carer techniques, that could have created Little t trauma for your parents and grandparents:
Spanking and hitting kids with belts or paddles to teach respect and obedience (In New Zealand where I grew up Corporal Punishment - hitting kids in schools - was legal until 3 July 1990).
Withholding affection and praise to build character (according to one popular parenting manual* from 1928, you should kiss your child on the forehead only once per day - when you say goodnight).
Don’t express yourself or show creativity to fit in (conforming with social norms and expectations).
Remain silent unless you were spoken to, particularly in social situations (children should be seen but not heard).
If you were a boy, don't cry and make sure to repress your emotions. For girls your physical appearance is most important, as well as being obedient so that you’ll grow up to make a good wife (NB. I couldn’t find any advice for LGBTQIA).
* Source: ‘Psychological Care of the Infant and Child’ by John B. Watson who was an influential American psychologist and the founder of behaviourism, a school of thought in psychology that focuses on observable behaviours rather than internal mental states.
I acknowledge that not all our parents and grandparents experienced every one of these poor parenting techniques, however, many did. Unfortunately, today some vulnerable children still do. For the rest of us, we’re living with the effects of generational trauma.
If you are lucky like I am, with loving parents who are good people, then it’s relatively easy to work through your trauma. The first step is to remind yourself that they did the best they could with the tools they had (whilst managing their own trauma, realised or not). After that comes awareness, understanding, and forgiveness. From forgiveness, you then have the opportunity to take responsibility for our own actions by stopping passing trauma onto the next generation. One tool to help you do that is reframing - a technique used in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT).
Tools: At the end of this article, I share a powerful reframing exercise recommended to me by my therapist. I found it so useful that I built it into The Happiness Flywheel 3-Step Program.
3. Your Inner Critic:
My brother often talked about his inner critic getting in the way of him ‘rediscovering his mojo’, developing more self-confidence and self-esteem. Not long after we lost Ben, as I grappled with why I couldn’t save him, I came to the realisation that his inner critic was a contributing factor in his death.
Over the last few years, I’ve discovered more about inner critics and other subpersonality types, realising that I, like many people, have an active inner critic who can often control my thoughts, feelings, and reactions. Experts tell us not to try to eliminate your inner critic and other subpersonality types (it's impossible), instead we need to honour them and ‘invite them in for tea’, just as Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) did with Māra:
Māra is the ‘Evil One’ who in many Buddhist traditions represents internal struggles and external obstacles, he is the personification of temptation, desire, and death. The story goes that for many years after the Buddha’s battle with Māra under the Bodhi tree - on the evening before his enlightenment - Māra continued to visit the Buddha to tempt him with desire and despair to obstruct his spiritual progress. Rather than trying to ignore or push him away, he said “I see you Māra. Please be my honoured guest, and come in for tea.” The Buddha did not try to eliminate or judge Māra. Instead, he accepted and acknowledged him, ultimately disengaging from and disempowering the Evil One.
One way to view my brother’s death is that he lost his battle with his inner critic — unable to find a way to "welcome it in for tea." Instead, over the years his inner critic grew into a monster, relentlessly judging him and telling him that he wasn’t good enough, that he was weak, flawed, and a failure. I believe that if Ben had better understood his inner critic and other subpersonalities, he could have been happier, healthier, and quite possibly still with us today. With that in mind, let’s explore this important psychological concept to help us begin "inviting our inner critics in for tea."
Excerpt from ‘Embracing Your Inner Critic: Turning Self-Criticism into a Creative Asset’ by Hal Stone Ph.D. and Sidra Stone, Ph.D. 1993. HarperCollins:
“The inner critic is a self (or subpersonality) that develops to protect us from being shamed or hurt. It is extremely anxious, almost desperate, for you to succeed in the world and be accepted and liked by others. It really wants you to be okay. It really wants you to make it in the world, to have a good job, to make enough money. It really wants you to be loved, to be successful, to be accepted, to have a family. It developed in your early years to protect your vulnerability by helping you to adapt to the world around you and to meet its requirements, whatever they might be. In order to do its job properly, it needed to curb your natural inclinations and to make you acceptable to others by criticizing and correcting your behavior before other people could criticize or reject you. In this way, it reasoned, it could earn love and protection for you as well as save you much shame and hurt.”
An important step in accepting your inner critic, is recognising that its original job, along with your other primary subpersonality types, was to protect you. However, for many of us, including my brother, our inner critics got out of control, becoming nasty little monsters who:
Are a source of shame as it finds almost every aspect of the natural ‘you’ unsatisfactory.
Are a source of low self-esteem as its job is to tell you what’s wrong with you before someone else does.
Diminish your creativity and risk-taking as you feel you can’t try something new or different because you will do something wrong.
The good news is that similar to the first two barriers, once you become aware of and acknowledge your inner critic, you can learn how to better manage it. This journey begins with recognising the dominant and disowned selves influencing your thoughts and behaviours.
Tools: A great place to start this journey is to read the article ‘Embracing All Our Selves’ by Hal Stone Ph.D. and Sidra Stone, Ph.D. If you like what you see, then I recommend reading their book ‘Embracing Your Inner Critic: Turning Self-Criticism into a Creative Asset’, which I reference above. Noting that part of The Happiness Flywheel 3-Step Program includes discovering some of your primary (dominant) and disowned selves.
IMPORTANT: If you're participating in a 'Your Happiness Flywheel Challenge' you can choose to check out the Tips & Tools below. However, my recommendation is to save time and go straight to my short video giving you guidance on completing the 5 exercises to set you up for success with Step 2 of Your Challenge. Cheers, Gareth
6 Tips & Tools to Beat the Big Bad Barriers:
1. Learn simple new ways to be more optimistic. “10 Ways to Be More Optimistic” article.
2. Embed small moments of gratitude into your daily routine. “5 Gratitude Practices to Embed into Your Routine” article.
3. Get professional help to better understand and improve your psyche / mindset. Your brain is the most important "muscle" in your body, and just like any other muscle, it benefits from training and care. Professional athletes, elite teams, world-class thinkers, and successful leaders often work with coaches, counsellors, psychologists, or therapists to enhance their mental fitness because they understand that a healthier brain leads to better performance. If you’re looking to improve your mental fitness and performance, seeking professional help can be a game-changer.
4. Embrace The Power of “Yet”. This small but mighty three-letter word is closely tied to the psychological concept of a growth mindset. One simple way to foster a growth mindset is by incorporating "yet" into your language when discussing activities or skills you haven't mastered. For example, instead of saying, "I am not good at swimming," reframe it as, "I am not good at swimming yet." This subtle shift opens the door to possibility and highlights the potential for growth and improvement.
5. Realign your network. Social support is a core pillar of health, happiness, and resilience. As Les Brown once famously said: "If you hang around with nine losers, you’ll soon be the tenth.” I agree with him, and recommend that you take some time to review and realign who you hang around with so that your network better supports your growth. Here’s an exercise I often facilitate that will help you do just that:
Exercise: Vampire Sucker & Superheroes:
"Vampire Suckers" are the friends, colleagues, and associates who drain your energy. In contrast, "Superheroes" are the people who uplift you and make you feel great. When you're around Vampire Suckers, you often feel drained, stressed, or overwhelmed. They can be unreliable, push you into doing things you don’t want to do, and are often needy or poor listeners. In essence, they sap your energy.
Superheroes, on the other hand, energise and support you. While they’re not perfect and may need help from time to time, they’re generally low-maintenance and dependable. These friends are always there when you need them, allowing you to be your authentic self without fear of judgment. They’re great listeners, loyal, and trustworthy - just like any good superhero should be.
Steps:
Find a quiet place and 10-min when you will not be disturbed.
List all your Vampire Sucker friends, colleagues, and associates, and your Superhero mates. Sit back, reviewing your list and circling/highlighting all of the big energy sappers and awesome uplifting mates (some mates may sit somewhere in between both, for now you can ignore those).
For the energy sapping Vampire Suckers, ask yourself what barriers and enablers are hindering or helping you spend less time with them? What can you do to minimise those barriers and maximise the enablers?
For your uplifting Superheroes, ask yourself what barriers and enablers are hindering or helping you spend more time with them? What can you do to minimise those barriers and maximise the enablers?
Take action to minimise the barriers and maximise the enablers, creating a more supportive social support network.
6. Change the narrative by reframing negative experiences: The simple reframing exercise below was recommended by my therapist. When I first tried it, I was surprised at how effectively it helped me reframe a past traumatic event, reducing its power over me today.
Exercise: 1st, 2nd & 3rd Place Reframing:
Think of a negative experience which you’ve had in the past involving someone else. You can keep it light by choosing a relatively minor argument or disagreement. Or, you can go deeper by choosing heavier baggage from your past that you’re still carrying with you. This would be a more traumatic experience, such as a break up, or argument that has had a long-term negative effect on your relationship with said person(s).
Write down what was happening from your point of view (1st Place). What did you say and do? What were your thoughts? How were you feeling? Why were you feeling that way?
Now step into the 2nd Place. What was the other party(s) doing? Why do you think they were doing that? What were they likely thinking and feeling? Is there history to consider? Do you think there could have been an element of fear or worry behind what they said or did? Write it down.
Step back from the 1st and 2nd Place. View yourself as an objective 3rd party, a mediator - there is no judgement, just observation and insight. What do you see happening? What are you hearing? What advice might you give yourself and the other party? Write it down.
Finally, take a break and sleep on it.
Find 10+ minutes and a quiet place during the next day. Sit down and revisit what you wrote down the day before. See if you can step back from the 1st Place, reframing your experience either from the 2nd or 3rd Place.
Additional ways to beat the big bad barriers:
At home: Join a 4-Week 'Your Happiness Flywheel Challenge'. Join Gareth and a bunch of likeminded extra'ordinary' human beings on a 4-Week Happiness Flywheel Challenge. In 28 days, you’ll learn how to apply simple techniques to boost your happiness, resilience, and productivity. Register here.
At work: Boost business performance and employee wellbeing with The Happiness Flywheel 3-Step Program. Interested in The Happiness Flywheel for your workplace wellbeing program to increase happiness, boost productivity, improve collaboration, and reduce absenteeism? Contact Gareth @ gareth@happinessflywheel.com.au
Seek help from qualified medical professionals: With assistance from qualified medical professionals, and social support, mental health conditions are treatable. If you or any person you are concerned about are at risk of harm or harm to others, please seek professional medical assistance immediately. In Australia if you need someone to talk to call Lifeline: 13 11 14, Beyond Blue: 1300 22 4636, Kids Helpline: 1800 551 800, or the Suicide Call Back Service: 1300 659 467. In New Zealand call Lifeline: 0800 543 354, Youthline: 0800 376 633, or the Suicide Crisis Helpline 0508 828 865.
About the Author:
Gareth is one of Australia’s foremost experts on happiness and habits, having dedicated 6,000+ hours researching human behaviour over seven years. During that time he has coached and trained more than 2,000 people from 150+ organisations, bootstrapped a startup, and navigated personal challenges - summarised by the line: “four funerals and a wedding.” The culmination of his research and lived experience is The Happiness Flywheel and the 5Habits App.
Thank You:
Thanks for taking the time to read this article. If you found some value in it, I’d love for you to give it a 👍 and share it with your network. If you would like any further tips on happiness, habits, or communication feel free to message me or simply follow me on LinkedIn.
All the best, Gareth
#Flywheel #happinessbegins #Habit #Challenge #SelfCare #Resilience #Productivity #WorkplaceWellbeing #SkillsforSuccess #IamHappy #SkillsforLife #MentalHealthAwareness
Comments