Fight, Flight, or Freeze

Our basic lizard brains respond immediately to threats with one of the following survival strategies: fight, flight, or freeze. Thinking back, I tend to be evenly distributed between fight and freeze, although it's hard to distinguish between them at times. Are you frozen and just waiting for danger to pass or ready to fight but holding still until the danger is closer? I know that I don't tend to attack, I prefer to wait and judge the situation. But I can't remember a single time in my life when I ran from something physically intimidating...

Until this morning.

It started out typically. We recently built a dock down by the creek and I have created a habit of eating breakfast down there, watching the water, listening to the creek sounds, gazing at fish, or relaxing with the sunbathing turtles. It's peaceful, and even the obnoxious squirrel that chatters at me can't ruin the moment. Which might be why my reaction was so extreme.

I brought my breakfast and coffee down, along with a cushion for the deck chair. Breakfast and coffee went on the table as I arranged the cushion on the chair and adjusted the footstool. I glanced up and not five feet from where I was adjusting my lounging chair, I see this.

 

 

 

Now, I'm not afraid of snakes. I actually think they're pretty cool. Their skins are dry and muscly, and I like to hold them and feel them wrap around my arm in the sanctuary of pet stores, zoos, and experts who assure me they are not poisonous.  

 

 

I do not, however, like to be startled. I'd react worse to a scurrying mouse than a stationary snake... unless that snake startled me, like today. Needless to say, I ran halfway to the house before my conscious thought broke through and I realized I was running. My flight instinct completely took over. I have never had that happen before...ever. And let me tell you, it was a trip. When I came back to being me and I had lost those four or five seconds of conscious control and just reacted without thought at all, I was a little freaked out. I guess it's good to know that I've got sharp instincts, even if they take over a bit.

 

Anyway, once I settled down and rational thought took over, I knew that if I hadn't scared it off, I needed a picture to show my husband. I grabbed my phone and went to the camera, then crept back down so as not to startle the snake. I shouldn't have worried; that snake hadn't moved a bit. After a few pictures, I moved my chair back a few feet and sat down to eat my breakfast, albeit one eye stayed on the snake the whole time.

 

So that leads me to the idea of instincts and how overwhelming they can be. I've had kids scared or hurt or angry before and I've tried to talk them down, assure them that they were safe and should calm down. I've always thought that rational thought could supersede even primal instincts. I even accused a kid once of overreacting intentionally when a mouse ran across the floor and he ran screaming from the room. Before today, I believed that he couldn't possibly have been scared enough my a little mouse that he would do that. I owe that kid an apology. I have never been so completely and irrationally caught up in my instincts before, and I now understand that sometimes it's not a matter of self-control; it's a matter of recovering from whatever embarrassing or awkward behavior your instincts caused you to perform.

 

 



Better Late Than Never

I usually try to write in the morning, but chaos on the home-front derailed that fairly easily.

I want to write today about SuperBetter, a game to make yourself better--from whatever physical or mental ailments you may be suffering from. SuperBetter focuses on four realms of health- physical, mental/ cognitive, emotional, and social. The game is simple--complete quests and defeat bad guys in order to meet your personal goal. It's a real-life goalsetting game played online, but your quests or tasks exist in the real world. So, I guess just the scoring is online.

Jane McGonigal (personal hero) invented this game to recover from a serious concussion. According to her, as soon as she started playing the game, she felt better. The physical pain was still there, but she was no longer suffering the depression and anxiety that the pain had been causing her.

I signed up yesterday, created my secret identity, and completed the first few tasks. The game offers packs with predesigned tasks or allows you to make up your own to fit your personal needs. This--blogging--is one of my tasks. I want to do it every day, because even when I don't feel like I have anything valuable to say, I still feel better for having said it.  

That being said, I had one of those It's a Wonderful Life moments today. I dropped the dogs off to get haircuts--early, after my alarm failed to go off and the morning was chaos, etc.-- and when I got home, I got right to working on a project that I've been stop and go on for two weeks. I have to push hard to find motivation right now, and I think I'm going through some mild depression about not going back to school this year. I know I made the right choice, but I'm struggling to reconcile that those bargain bins of school supplies in every store I go into have nothing to do with me...whew!

Anyway, I got started this morning and knocked out a big chink of work. In fact, once I got going, I really rocked it--great new idea for a segment, focused and creative. It was amazing. Then, I get the call to pick up the dogs and I realize that I haven't been up and down letting one dog in, the other out, or calming them when whatever chattering squirrel, cawing bird, or muffler-less car next door has threatened their turf.

I bring them home, they settle in, I settle in and just as I start to pick up the thread of focus--bark, bark, BARK, BARK, BARK! And for a minute I thought, "I wish I didn't have dogs!" and what's worse is I meant it. They are frustrating and irrational, they bark incessantly at the wildlife through the open windows, they make my life so much harder than it needs to be. And yet...

When I come home, they are ecstatic to see me, even if I was just outside doing yard work. When they play--one's a chaser, one's a tugger-- it always makes me smile. The only thing I ever miss when I'm on vacations is my dogs nestled up to me at night and licking my face awake in the morning.

So, as frustrating as it can be, I would never, ever give up my dogs, not in a million years and not for a million dollars...

But maybe I put them down for naps so I can get some work done!

Keeping It Simple

I have a working theory that people have optimum and maximum work pressures that push them towards getting things done. When you are working at your optimum pressure, you have just enough on your plate to feel as if you are being productive and your work is meaningful. Optimum work pressure keeps you focused, determined, and working at your very best. Maximum work pressure, on the other hand, is the absolute most you can have in your work queue without completely shutting down. Maximum work pressure is characterized by frenzied, harried behavior and appearance and is a hard state to maintain for long periods. Think: all-nighter studying for a test or writing a paper you've been putting off.

Some people believe that their optimum pressure and their maximum pressure are the same. These are the people who intentionally procrastinate to feel the rush of adrenaline when they finally get started. I used to be one of those. I used to think that I could only do great work if I had some outside pressure and deadline looming over me. I've had some very successful projects completed by procrastinating and letting it come down to the wire to complete.

Here's the problem--there's a third work pressure and that's breaking pressure. When you max out your maximum and slip past the point where you feel that completing the work in front of you is possible, you've hit your breaking pressure. Breaking pressure shuts you down. You lose all interest, focus, and determination because you believe that it's not possible to get something done. Some people still go through the motions and will complete an inferior work product, but most people just move on. It's like missing your exit on the toll road: most people just go on to the next one and pay the extra money. Oh, well.

So, here's the life hack: break things into small pieces and only allow your optimum work pressure on your schedule at a time. Easier said than done, I know. But here's what I've found. If I can set small goals and feel as if I've accomplished something, I'm more energized and willing to tackle the next thing. I'm working at my optimum level.

Sometimes I break my up big goals into smaller ones by scheduling game breaks as rewards. If I get that first three paragraphs of my blog done, I'll go collect my gold in a video game. Or, if something is really big and I know it's going to take a LONG time, I'm set physical breaks. After each little bit, stand up and walk around the room, go freshen up the coffee, take a bathroom break (after all that coffee!)  

Another strategy for feeling accomplished even when you should be overwhelmed is to record (and hence, celebrate) all of the small things you get done. For example, if my big goal is clean the house, then I'm not done until it's clean. I can make a list of all the things I need to do, but that can be really overwhelming and push me to my breaking point--especially since cleaning isn't something that I enjoy doing. So, instead of making a to-do list, I'll just do something, then record when it's done on the dry erase board I have hanging on the fridge. There's a lot of satisfaction in writing down your accomplishments. In fact, once that list of "already done" things get long, I feel pretty good about myself. I start walking around seeing what else I can get done to write on the list. Just recording the accomplishment is a mini celebration of your hard work, which makes the work rewarding. So, just keep it simple--you'll get it done.