The Most Important Thing I've Ever Written?
Tuesday, July 25, 2017 at 21:25 I published this in this blog in 2006, though I’d written it years before. Of all the things I’ve written this is the one that has had, and continues to have, the biggest influence on my own life.
Feeling Good
One way to improve your general ability to work and keep going is to monitor how good you are feeling. Procrastination, stress, overwhelm, burn-out are all very closely linked and it is difficult to be feeling good when one is suffering from any or all of these. However the reverse applies too. It is difficult to be suffering from stress, overwhelm, burn out and procrastination when you are feeling good.
So monitoring your overall state of mind can have a very beneficial result.
It’s very easy to do this. Let’s try it now. Stop reading for a second and ask yourself “How good am I feeling now?” Answer by giving a mark out of 10. If you are feeling tense and upset you might answer “3”. If you are feeling on top of the world you might answer “8” or even higher. Try it now. What was your answer? Write it down on a piece of paper.
If you did this in the way I just suggested, a couple of questions may have occurred to you. One might be what I mean by “good”. I quite deliberately didn’t give you any definition of what “good” means. The reason is that you will discover what “good” means for you by the act of asking “How good do I feel?” The more you ask the question the more you will begin to realise what your mind is looking for when it provides your answer. You will also notice which things in your life tend to affect the score. So don’t worry about the definition of “good”. You will find the right definition for you by practising the exercise.
Another question you may have asked yourself is how much you should think about the answer. Should you spend some time deliberating it? No, the best answer is the one you give straight off the top of your head. You may find it easier to give the answer as “4 or 5” rather than as a single figure.
Now, this is important: once you have given your answer do not try to make yourself feel better. Just carry on observing your feelings by regularly asking yourself “How good do I feel?” This will make you more aware of your state of mind and that in itself will tend to have the effect of increasing the score.
Ask yourself the question again now. Write the answer down again. Is it the same as the first time or has it changed? You may find that your score has increased already. If it has, that is simply because you have become more aware. Don’t worry if it hasn’t!
This technique is a very subtle one, but also very powerful. It takes time but you will find if you keep using it your score will slowly rise. If you started out feeling 3 or 4 most of the time, you may find that it rises within a few weeks until you are feeling 6 or 7 most of the time. Bear in mind that when this happens you have altered your entire mental sense of well-being. This will inevitably affect many areas of your life. I cured myself of a fear of flying (caused by being in a helicopter crash) by using this technique. During my first flight for over eight years I was able to maintain a score of 10 throughout the entire flight, including take-off and landing. Since then I’ve flown all over the place.
Reader Comments (46)
I will genuinely be trying this tonight.
May I ask you how specifically it helped you overcome your fear of helicopter flying?
After many years of using this scale to assess migraine pain, the numbers are very definite things for me, they each have a very clear meaning. There is a very clear difference (for me at least) between a 4 and a 5, or between a 7 and an 8, for example.
I could immediately see how this would translate into an assessment of stress / overwhelm / etc., and a number popped into my head that just felt right.
So, to that point, the idea here made a lot of sense.
But then the idea of assessing this every day, and watching the number get better over time, just didn't seem to resonate with me. The idea of getting the pain down to zero didn't seem like the right approach. The idea of your post is not to reduce or eliminate pain, but to establish a stronger sense of well-being, which is not the same thing.
That itself is a very interesting observation! It gives me the idea of looking for a Comparative Wellness Scale -- I wonder if anyone pain doctors / therapists have thought to use such a thing, instead of a Pain Scale. Might turn the whole practice of pain management on its head!
<< May I ask you how specifically it helped you overcome your fear of helicopter flying? >>
It was a helicopter crash that caused it but the result was a generalised fear of flying - and of heights too.
The important thing is that one does NOT target any specific complaint. The technique is applied to one's life as a whole as described in the article. Everything that causes one to feel less than good will get swept up by this. It's also very important not to make any attempt to make oneself feel good. The best technique when feeling stressed is just to ask oneself the question more often.
<< The idea of your post is not to reduce or eliminate pain, but to establish a stronger sense of well-being, which is not the same thing. >>
I prefer "feeling good" to "feeling well". It's perfectly possible not to be feeling well but still to be feeling good. In fact it's perfectly possible to be feeling a considerable amount of pain and still be feeling good. I've had plenty of practice in the difference between well and good recently!
There's also a strong moral component to this. If one has had a blazing row with someone, It's literally impossible to feel good. All sorts of defence mechanisms come into play which often make things worse. This technique is the fastest way I know of getting the situation back to normal with all fences mended.
<< How often do you recommend doing this daily? >>
There's no set interval. As a general rule the more stressed you feel the more often you need to do it.
I have been using it spasmodically since last night, and it's interesting, though I'm not sure yet what effect it's had.
<< May I ask how you think this process works to improve mood >>
It places one's awareness on how one is feeling. It's pretty well established that awareness leads to improvement. In other words if you become aware that your score is a 3, there is a natural tendency for the score to rise. If you do this often your mind becomes more and more aware of the factors that lead to a low or a high score, and again there is a natural tendency to seek out the good.
<< and how you came upon it? >>
Sometime in the 80s or 90s I read about the use of scoring in relaxing strained muscles in sports therapy and had the idea of applying it to psychological states as well.
<< I have been using it spasmodically since last night, and it's interesting, though I'm not sure yet what effect it's had. >>
I can't stress enough that this is not just a short-term pick-me-up. When I started working with this seriously I was usually around a 3 or a 4. That is to say that I was in the sort of mildly depressive state that a large section of the population is in. It took me several months before I hit a 10, and quite a while beyond that before 10 became my normal state. As you can imagine that represented a major revolution in my life.
It gets better than that though because when you reach a steady 10 your mind's concept of what a 10 means starts to expand.
Ever since trying this, this has happened to me, I just instantly become aware of things that are troubling me and need attention. If I fix them, the score will probably rise and rise.
<< If I fix them, the score will probably rise and rise.>>
"Now, this is important: once you have given your answer do not try to make yourself feel better. Just carry on observing your feelings by regularly asking yourself “How good do I feel?” This will make you more aware of your state of mind and that in itself will tend to have the effect of increasing the score."
Interesting my feeling good scale is directly linked to the number of works task on the todo list.
<100 - great
100 - 150 not so great
150 - 200 worried
200 + headless chicken.
300 = happened once, lets not go there.
Rest of life all good, so this tells me work was the first think that popped into my head when thinking about the 1-10 scale.
So if I felt like a 4, I would set a timer for 8 minutes. Then when the timer goes off, I would ask myself again how I felt. If I felt like a 5, I would set the next timer for 10 minutes. I usually started at a 1 or a 2 at the beginning of the day, so i would only have to resolve to work for 2 or 4 minutes before checking in again.
The net effect was that when I was feeling like procrastinating, I checked in with myself more often, and I found that by checking in more often, I was effectively regulating my emotions more. After reading your article, I think I need to return to that system to get a little more focus at the beginning of my day. Thanks for the post!
<< I've benefitted from this variation: http://www.nowgetcreative.com/CJExercises/feelnow.htm >>
It sounds a very good exercise, but I wouldn't describe it as a variation of mine. For a start, you have to identify exactly what you are feeling and write down any significant results. Secondly it takes some time to do and requires a period of peace and quiet to do effectively.
None of that applies to mine. It can be done any time of the day or night and takes two seconds (I timed it!)
Why is this?
Also, I've noticed that when I listen to music, it increases to really high levels. God bless music!
You might ask how it is possible to go "deeply" into something this simple. Mark gives a clue above when he writes, "This technique is a very subtle one, but also very powerful. It takes time but you will find if you keep using it your score will slowly rise."
The Radical Self-Acceptance course strips it down to an even more subtle level. Below "How good do I feel?" is "How do I feel?" Below that is "What am I experiencing?" and under that is "What am I doing to resist my experience?" If you ponder any of those for a minute or so, you will probably catch a glimpse of how much is going on down there and how subtly it is shifting and changing.
You could explore those things by yourself satisfactorily, but by following Joey Lott's course, you have the benefit of a seasoned guide who can show you things it might have taken you years to notice on your own. In particular, it is very, very tempting to try and fix what you are noticing, to make it a whole new thing to resist. But as Mark writes, "Now, this is important: once you have given your answer do not try to make yourself feel better. Just carry on observing your feelings..." Joey's course treads this very same path and relentlessly deconstructs layer upon layer of things that lead us to suffer and fight ourselves in all aspects of life. It is amazing how much can be unearthed through this simple inquiry. It will not fix you or your task list, but it will show you how much you are burning yourself up trying to fix things, and it will draw you in to where you just might not need to fix anything.
I don't have any affiliation with Joey or his course, and I won't receive any kind of payment if anyone here inquires or signs up. I am sharing this because it is one of the most valuable things I've ever done, and the segue Mark has created by writing this post is too fortuitous to ignore! If a few people benefit from this, then I will have given something back to this community that I've been visiting and learning from since (I think) 2011.
More information is available at http://joeylott.com/services/ under the heading "Radical Self-Acceptance Immersion Program." Don't worry about giving Joey your email address. He has had mine for a long time now and has never spammed me. I hope this provides some benefit to some of the readers here.
Now I want to know how to know when new material from Mark gets posted. I access this site through google every time. Is there a better way?
Savannah
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I think I'd spend more time trying to remember the formula than I would actually checking my feelings. Since it's a 0-10 scale you don't need to specify both ends of the scale so you could abbreviate it to "How much am I being the self I want to be?" or words to that effect.
I get the same answer to both my original question and your question.
Also I don't think your question is as versatile as mine. Would your question be capable of curing someone from fear of flying or get them through multiple chemotherapy and radiation sessions, plus being in a wheelchair unable to walk, type or eat solids? My question did.
Smooth! I needed this!
Gratefully,
Djorn
Somehow your posting reminds me of this video I've discovered a while ago - maybe there's a connection (awareness?) between your method and his?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRBhyTWGlIc
Thanks for posting this. I've not seen this particular video before, but the principle is quite a well-known one.
There are numerous ways in which it can be used effectively in addition to how good you feel and cookie consumption.
A few examples:
Pain control. You can reduce pain quite effectively but putting your attention fully on the pain. Not only does giving it your full attention make the pain easier to bear, but it does actually reduce it.
Pain monitoring. You can use a 1-10 scale to monitor a chronic pain. That can reduce the pain.
Sports training. It's very common to set oneself targets for weight lifting, running times, etc. But in fact recording your results without a specific target can be just as effective.
Weight loss. Just recording your weight on a daily basis can actually be more effective than setting yourself targets.
Reading a book. Record how many pages you read each day. One easy way of doing this is to leave a book dart at the place you finish for the day. If you miss a day, leave another dart at the same place. That way you get a visual presentation of daily progress on the book itself.
With weight issues, it might be a problem if you're suffering from eating disorders, like I did. I had to get rid of the scale completely, otherwise the daily monitoring would just put me under too much pressure. Ignoring that number on the scale helped me to be much more relaxed about food.
One more question about your Feeling Good method: How you do react when your score does actually go down rather than go up? Just accept it and keep going? I catch myself hoping to have reached a higher number and being a little bit disappointed if I haven't. Do you know what I mean?
First of all, this idea is of course in no way a substitute for qualified medical advice. But I personally have always found it effective in a large number of ways as a simple method of taking advantage of how our bodies and minds work together.
The answer to your two questions, eating and feeling good, is that you do nothing about either of them.
You just go on recording the numbers.
I suggest you go back and watch Hawkins' video again. You will see that in his example of eating cookies, the total number of cookies eaten a day frequently goes up. He doesn't get in a panic about it; he doesn't make resolutions to eat less the following day; he doesn't start giving himself punishments. He just goes on recording the number eaten every day and the number will eventually go down all by itself. That's certainly been my experience.
In the Feeling Good method, you score WILL go down as well as up. What do you do about it? Nothing. Just keep checking the numbers. Eventually the numbers will go up all by themselves.
If I remember correctly, it took me several weeks before I hit a 10 for the first time, and about four months before I had a steady 10.
That doesn't sound much, but it involved a complete transformation of my mental outlook on the world.
I don't keep checking the score now any more than Hughes would keep counting cookies once he no longer ate them. But if he did start eating cookies again, he could start counting again and it would still work.
If I become conscious that my mental state is slipping, my first reaction is to check my score - and I would now expect to be back at a 10 within the day.
Just as another reader remarked before, I find it especially fascinating that it even helped to cure you of your fear of flying. (I'm dealing with a lot of fears, unfortunately, so I can relate.)
So you just recorded your numbers and the fear subsided on its own, without you doing anything about it? I wish that could work for me, too!
Also, you wrote about using this method with problems that include other people as well (like conflicts or quarrels), did I understand that correctly?
<< Just as another reader remarked before, I find it especially fascinating that it even helped to cure you of your fear of flying. >>
Yes, this was remarkable - especially as the fear had actually been caused by being in a helicopter crash in which I was injured. So it wasn't an imaginary fear.
<< So you just recorded your numbers and the fear subsided on its own, without you doing anything about it? >>
Three points here:
1. For a simple 0-10 scale I don't record the numbers. I just note them mentally. It's easy enough to remember where one is on the scale without needing to write it down. For something more complicated like weight or exercise timings, I would record it in writing.
2. I don't target individual fears. I just note how good I feel overall. That automatically sweeps up all negative feelings.
3. You don't need to do anything consciously about it. Awareness will produce improvement on its own. In fact any attempts to consciously manipulate how you feel would probably get in the way.
<< I wish that could work for me, too! >>
I can't guarantee that it will work for you. But you will lose nothing by trying it out.
<< Also, you wrote about using this method with problems that include other people as well (like conflicts or quarrels), >>
To be clear, what you are aiming to change here is your own reactions to the situation. You can't directly effect the other person's reactions, but they will tend to respond to the improvement in yours.
<< As a trivial example I am currently aiming to lose weight so I have a line from my current weight to where I intend to be and track my deviations (over or under) from it, week by week. >>
I lost a considerable amount of weight using the method you describe twenty or more years ago. The trouble was that once I reached the target weight, I immediately started to put it back on again. And unfortunately I have never succeeded in getting that method to work again.
On the other hand I have found the method I have been describing here to be entirely replicable.
Just one more question: How often in a day did you ask yourself the question "How good am I feeling now?" in the beginning of your experiment? And did you have to remind yourself to ask that question at certain times in a day or did you just do it when it occured to you?
I hope I don't ask too many questions but I find this approach fascinating and want to make sure that I get it right.
Thank you!
(Sorry if my English is not perfect - I'm writing from Germany.)
Your English is fine!
I've never had a set number of times to ask the question, but as a general guide you need to ask the question often at first, and then less often as you get into a more steady state.
So it took me several weeks at first before I hit 10 for the first time. I would have been aiming to ask the question several times an hour during those weeks, though I'm sure I often forgot to do so. You can't do it too often at that stage, but if you forget, don't worry about it - just ask the question. Worrying about how often you should be asking the question just adds to the stress.
Once I had hit 10 I would ask the question every time I felt I might have slipped away from it. So basically any time I felt stress. Again, if I forgot or didn't get round to it then I just asked the question when I remembered.
Once you are at a steady 10 you don't really need to ask the question unless you are in a particulary stressful situation. So for example I would have definitely asked the question before and during an air flight. Nowadays I don't even do that because flying doesn't bother me at all.
Basically - especially at the beginning - it's better to ask it too much than too little.
Blazing rows with your nearest and dearest are also a good time to ask the question!
I think this clarifies it for me and I have all I need to start the practice. In fact, I've already started and can't wait to see how it goes for me. I'm glad I happened to stumble upon your website and appreciate you sharing this!
Yes, that sounds like much the same principle.
I have a minimum target to keep in my bank account. Whenever it falls below that, I find that it adjust itself upwards virtually automatically.
"Better" is then techniques for getting calmer when stressed or anxious (slow breathing etc) and gaining focus (being aware of external opportunity). The 2 together balance internal attention on self with external attention on opportunity.
<< Assuming "good" is calm/peace balanced with seizing opportunity (Kairos) >>
But as I say in the article you should make no attempt to define what you mean by "good".
Curious - where did you find the inspiration for this? Would love to know.
<< where did you find the inspiration for this? >>
See my comment in this thread of July 27, 2017
Thanks for all your posts here. I came across this post more or less as Mia, in a very complicated moment of my life. I started practicing this today (I put the question in my Long List). Every time I came across the question during my scannings, I write down the question again with the actual number.
I'll report the results of this.
<< NLP (neuro linguistic programming) has a similarly helpful question: "What state am I in?". >>
I'm wondering what sort of answers one is expected to give?
bored to death
OMG, I've only got 10 minutes before the meeting
isn't it lunch time yet?
why can't this person shut up and go away?
why can't they ever just do as they're told?
my feet hurt
why did I drink so much last night?
I am in a state of masterful superiority
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!
bored
anxious
bored
irritated
frustrated
pained
regretful
delighted
contemplative
And the follow on question perhaps being: What would I prefer instead?
I think I would have used "vainglorious" instead of "contemplative" for the last one. The line is from Shelley's Ozymandias - but you knew that.