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You don’t have to live your life as though you’re the star of “As The World Turns” or “Eastenders” to be a drama queen.

Too many people spend the bulk of their time wrapped up in the drama and detail of their lives.

I can’t believe she said that. You’ll never guess what he did. Why can’t they just sort it out? I don’t want to feel like this any more. You simply don’t get it. She went and did it. Who do you think you are?

The drama and detail of your life is just a lot of who did what to whom, and while it might make a good TV storyline if you’re into that sort of thing, it makes for a really crappy life.

If all you’re seeing is the drama, you’re missing everything that’s good

There’s a better way of experiencing life that gets you more of the good stuff and much, much less of the draining, shouty, nit-picky bullshit.

Here’s how it works.

ActionPoint >>

1. The aim is to move up this diagram, from the bottom to the top, aiming to spend your time above the line.
2. Starting at the bottom, this is where all the drama and emotion lives. If you’re spending your time down here, your life will feel out of control and you’ll feel very much like a victim of life. To get a better experience, make a deliberate choice to move one step up.
3. The detail level is where you pour over the minutia of your life, as though you’re narrating what’s been going on or telling others about all the tiny details of what’s been happening in your life. There’s always more detail to dredge up and roll around in so it’s not a great place to spend your time, but it’s a step in the right direction from the maelstrom of drama.
4. Knowing the detail inside-out affords you a curious opportunity – the chance to name the problem. Resist the temptation to keep bathing in all that detail and ask yourself “What’s the real problem here?” Step up and out of the detail and look for where the problem is, even if it’s with how you’re looking at things. With clarity around the specific problem you’re able to move up another step.
5. With insight into the real nature of the problem, you’re gifted with another opportunity. To look at a way through; to navigate through the problem in order to get to something better on the other side of it. So what’s a way that you can move forwards? What might be sitting on the other side of the problem that would be a decent (or perhaps even great) way for things to turn out? What’s a good solution?
6. To help you move up a step from problem into solution, be at your best. It’s no good looking for a solution when you’re at your worst or just pretending to be interested in a solution, when you’re like a pig in shit swimming around in all that drama and detail. Remember what you’re like when you’re at your very best, then look at a good solution from that vantage point.
7. The next step up from the solution is the vision. This can represent your vision for how you want things to go, but I think it’s more useful to look at what truly matters to you and how you want your experience of life to go. So what kind of texture or richness of experience are you looking for? What’s your big picture?

Your life will always be better above that line

You don’t have to bury things or pretend like everything’s roses when it’s full of thorns. You can still feel what you feel, be in the moment and fully experience what happens in your life, but you don’t need to stay down there in the drama and detail of it all.

There’s so much more to you and your life than that.

Where do you spend your time?

There’s just a month to go until I attempt to walk a marathon to raise awareness and funds for CFS/ME (your basic no-cure, chronic debilitating illness, destroying hundreds of thousands of lives around the world).

Oh shit.

Of course, awareness and funds can’t be raised in a vacuum, and this invisible illness can’t be made visible without others seeing it.

So I need your help.

Walking a marathon might not sound like a big deal, but lemme tell you that it’s just about the biggest challenge I can imagine. CFS/ME is with me every single day and often feels like I’ve been beaten with shovels. Some days walking 100 yards has me wanting to throw up and sleep for a week. In my book, walking a marathon is akin to walking to the friggin’ moon. With an elephant on my back. Who’s beating me with shovels.

I have no idea how far I’ll get or what the impact will be on me physically. I only know that this matters enough for me to give it my best shot.

Here’s how you can get involved.

Donate

1. Send your donation today by visiting http://www.justgiving.com/runforme2013.
2. If you’re in the UK, you can donate in seconds by text message. Just text “RFME71 £10” to 70070 and you’ll have helped enormously.

Share

1. Share this post using the buttons on the left hand side of the page.
2. Click here to tweet about what I’m doing.
3. Share what I’m doing on Facebook.

Join

1. This is the route I’m walking on June 9th. I’ll be heading round this bad boy twice, taking in some really nice parts of London, and I’d love some company! So if you can join me for some of the walk I’d love  it – clicking the markers on the map will tell you how many miles I’ll have covered and roughly when I’ll be at that location. I’ll also be broadcasting live progress on the day, so you can see exactly where I am at any point (I’ll tweet the link for that on the day – ain’t technology great!). Drop me a line if you can join me for a mile or two!

View London 13miles in a larger map

Anything you can do to help is massively appreciated. Both by me, and by the many, many people suffering with CFS/ME who you’ll be helping out.

Thanks so much!

Interoception is the in-built sense you have of the physiological condition of your body, so this ActionPoint has you using and growing your interoception muscle.

Why bother?

Because you’re a complex biological organism. You’re a living, breathing being with a living, breathing body that’s with you every second of every day, a body that will be seriously compromised without appropriate nourishment, sustenance and attention.

Because with all the demands placed on you it’s all too easy to spend the bulk of your time in your head; just thinking and doing and forgetting all about what your body needs and how wonderful it is to just be.

Because your physiology is such that your body mirrors what’s happening in your mind, so hearing what’s happening in your body can be a great indicator for what’s happening in your life.

And because you know how it goes when you don’t listen to your body. You get run down. You feel disconnected. You feel exhausted. You get stressed. You experience struggle. You perform below-par. You become half-hearted. You get judgemental. You feel pain.

Tip of the iceberg, right?

If natural confidence is about integration and grace – and it is – then interoception is how you get to integrate your body as a valuable piece of your whole.

Hearing your body is a simple demonstration of natural confidence

Give this your best shot.

ActionPoint >>

1. Sit quietly for 5 minutes without any distractions. Slowly, gently, move your attention into your body, and get a sense for how it is right now. Is it feeling tense? Relaxed? Tired? At ease? Pumped? In pain?
2. Don’t judge how your body is or try to do anything with it. Spend 5 minutes simply getting used to sensing it.
3. Is there something your body needs today, what would it be? If it’s aching, maybe it needs to stretch. If it’s hungry, perhaps it needs nourishment. If it feels tight, maybe you can breathe and let go. If it feels tense, take a walk to clear out some cobwebs. If it’s tired, how about a 20 minute nap or hitting the hay 30 minutes earlier than normal.
4. What one thing will you do today to honour your body?
5. Every day for the next week, keep this sense of your body with you. Just check in to see how your body is, what it’s telling you about how you are and what it might need.

Let me know what you find.

Twice in my life I’ve been through the crucible.

First when my Dad’s aorta exploded and second when I had a fundamental breakdown aged 30.

Each of those things tested me to my core. Pushed me to places I never wanted to go. Made me confront truths I never wanted to acknowledge.

Changed me

I’m going through the crucible again right now, with CFS/ME, an experience that’s transforming my life.

That’s what passing through the crucible does – it leaves you changed.

Like me, you will have had experiences that threatened to shake you to your very foundations, experiences that were either thrust upon you or that you entered into, trembling.

The crucible forces you to dig deeper than you ever thought was possible. It reveals what’s at your core, for good or ill. It shows you what lies ahead and it makes you responsible for your legacy.

When you’re in the midst of the storm it’s hard to see what the hell’s going on; sometimes all you know for sure is that it’s loud, chaotic, painful and sometimes tortuous.

And life will always have this stuff up its sleeve.

Not a thing you can do about it.

It’s only once you’ve passed through it that you can look back, using hindsight to derive meaning from what you’ve been through and to get a feel for how it affected you and how you see your life and world differently.

But with CFS/ME, I’ve regularly found myself facing the heat of the crucible over such an extended period of time that I’ve been able to find the calm centre of it.

I’ve been able to to sit inside it and breathe

I believe that crucible experiences are the universe’s way to test you; to see what you’re really made of.

I believe they’re a mechanism to make sure you face up to who you are, and own it.

As painful and disruptive as they may be, they might just save your life.

Don’t shy away from or hold back on this ActionPoint, and if you’re willing, I’d love to hear your crucible story in the comments.

ActionPoint >>

1. Write down the story of one of your crucible experiences. What happened? What did it feel like? Forget about creating a compelling narrative or even having it make sense – you’re not writing for anyone but yourself. Just write how it was for you.
2. What did this crucible experience reveal to you? What parts of yourself did it show you, or what truths did it make you confront?
3. How did this crucible experience leave you changed? What can you never “unknow” or “unlearn” having passed through it?
4. What do you have to thank this crucible experience for?
5. Write down one thing you can do this week that will honour this crucible experience, and commit to doing it.

I guarantee you that you possess the confidence you need to do what you want to do.

You can make a change happen, start something, finish something, step out of the norm, do something different, clean out the old, bring in the new. You can learn the tuba, make home-made shoes or open a penguin hotel if you really wanted to (although I’d maybe stick with the tuba thing).

Whatever it is, you already have natural confidence that will make it simpler.

Maybe, you’ve just forgotten what it looks like.

This ActionPoint will help you remember. Bookmark it and use it when you need it.

ActionPoint >>
1. What do you do in your life where the question of whether you can do it or not never arises?

It might be something you do at home (like cooking a great dinner, painting a great picture, laughing with your partner or anything else), it might be something at work (like taking part in a meeting, writing a report, leading a team or anything else) or it might be something you do while out and about (like hitting the gym, going for a run, ordering wine in a restaurant or anything else).

Just think of one thing you do where there’s no question in your mind about your capability. Something you just trust yourself to do.

2. Now look at something specific you do or something you have coming up where you’re lacking confidence. Whether at home, at work or out and about, what do you do or what are you about to do that has you doubting things or wanting to run and hide?

3. What’s the thought that’s triggered in the second situation that isn’t there in the first? What do you tell yourself in this second situation?

4. How do you feel when that thought appears in your head? When you think that thought, what feeling emerges?

5. What’s the impact of this feeling on what you do? How does this feeling affect your subsequent behaviour?

6. Now go back to the first situation. What’s the thought that’s triggered here that isn’t there in the second? Or perhaps, what thought is absent in the first situation that is there in the second?

7. How do you feel when this thought appears in your head, or what feeling emerges when this thought is absent?

8. How does this feeling affect your behaviour? What impact does this feeling have on what you do?

9. What’s a better thought you can have the next time you’re faced with a low-confidence situation like the one you identified above in question 2? What’s a different, simpler or more enabling thought you can have in a situation where you’d ordinarily expect to be lacking confidence?

10. What insights or conclusions are there here?  If there was something for you to learn, what could it be?

You already have natural confidence.

Now it’s just a case of applying it.