journaling exercise - morning ritual
Mo Gawdat, author of the best seller Solve For Happy, has the following morning ritual that he uses to clear his busy mind.
Sit down and do this exercise that he calls “Listen to Becky”. I call it “Listen to Debbie Downer”. It’s best to personalise the exercise name to something that resonates deeply with you based on your personal history.
Becky/Debbie is your brain. Becky was a very pessimistic girl at school who was always pointing out to Mo what would go wrong rather than what could go right. Debbie Downer is one of my all time favourite characters from Saturday Night Live and for me she perfectly encapsulates and mocks how ridiculously negative my brain’s internal thoughts can be sometimes.
The human brain is highly evolved to seek out any dangers or potential dangers in its environment and let you know about it to protect you. It also reminds us about things we need to do. The problem with this feature of our brain is that it isn’t always rational. And it can get quite repetitive. So making sure you take time to acknowledge it and filter through what’s useful and what’s not is critical. But that’s not something many of us are ever taught to do.
“Becky” needs to be listened to. If you try to ignore your brain it will chatter away at you all day long. Worse still those thoughts you hear in your head from it can be quite alarmist and can really affect your mood and your day. So it’s best to give Becky proper attention and help settle your brain at the start of the day before you set to work.
Exercise:
Set your phone alarm for 25 mins.
Put your phone face down.
Keep a piece of paper and pen with you in case important thoughts come up.
Just listen.
Your brain often starts with weird ideas like “the world is going to end”.
So reply to it; “I’m not sure that’s true, what else?”
“We need to buy oat milk.”
“Great, I’ll note that down. What else?”
Keep listening.
As thoughts continue something amazing happens.
Becky realises you are actually listening, so then wants to say something smart.
So the brain then visibly slows down and starts to give you really good thoughts.
You’ll get enormous insights about what is going on inside you.
To make sure this happens for you give your brain the rule that it cannot say the same thing twice.
After some time (say 12-13 minutes) Becky will likely repeat herself…
“We need to buy oat milk.”
Reply; “Yeah, you said that before, what else?”
Then the brain falls silent and starts to access different parts of the brain not accessed before.
The second half of your 25 minutes can be absolute bliss and can offer massive insights.
As a norm you may set the alarm to 25 mins. But Mo has found normally once the alarm goes off he repeats the exercise for another 25 mins, since it was so blissful.
Once you can sit with yourself for 25 mins and just objectively understand what’s going on inside of you then you will be ready to create a 2nd ritual for yourself, which is a very analytical approach to topics that your brain presents you with.
2nd ritual:
Pessimistic brain topic “We’re all going to die from this lockdown. We’ll get so bored having to socially isolate!” .
Sit down for an hour.
Let’s debate if this is true.
Ask the brain to list every pessimistic thought it has.
Then do a very simple exercise.
For every negative thought, write down a positive one.
Then you start to come up with alternative perspectives that the brain can consciously start to digest and - most importantly - then implement and make real:
“I can use this time to catch up with loved ones.”
“I can learn a new subject.”
“I can connect to friends through the internet.”
“I can read a book.”
Then identify one action from the list of positives that you feel most excited about implementing and make it happen that day.