Episode 120: The 3 Steps of A.S.K.: Slow Down And Get Into Your Body
In today’s episode, we continue our discussion of A.S.K. with the second step of the system: Slow Down and Get Into Your Body.
To deal with the Monger, you have to get out of your head and get into your body.
Most of us live predominantly in our heads. We literally aren’t even aware that we have a body unless it starts to hurt, and then we just take a pill to make it better. Our Monger takes up a lot of space in our heads, so the more time we spend in our heads, the more we stay out of our body and the louder our Monger gets.
Last week I introduced A.S.K. and talked about the first step: Acknowledge your Feelings. If you missed it please go back and give it a listen.
This week we are talking about the second step: Slow Down and get into your body.
When we hear our Monger talking and berating us or our BFF judging other people or sabotaging us, the goal is to bring in the voice of Biggest Fan.
One key to channeling your Biggest Fan is getting into your body. When we can slow down and get into our bodies, we change our perspective. By changing our physical presence, we can see more options and the last step – Kindly pull back to see the big picture – can happen with greater ease.
Listen to the full episode to find out:
How accomplishment and drive can take up the same space as slowing down and intentional living
How to create a practical meditation practice that will actually work for you even if you’re not a “super meditator”
What the research has to say about slowing down and the mind-body connection
And some tips for practicing the Slow Down and getting into your body when it is the last thing you want to do
Research and resources mentioned:
+ Read the Transcript
He lovingly grabbed my shoulders and said, “Honey, I think you need to take a deep breath.”
What?!? I thought to myself, resisting the urge to punch my husband in the face. Take a deep breath! That is the LAST thing I want to do.
This was a common scenario in our house, me coming downstairs to share my stress and anxiety and my husband trying his hardest to help by reminding me to take a deep breath.
He didn’t mean to anger me to the point of violence (ha!). He meant it as a kind, loving activity that he knows works in decreasing anxiety, but for me, taking a deep breath when I am that anxious is torture.
“You’re listening to The Happier Approach—the show that pulls back the curtain on the need to succeed, hustle, and achieve at the price of our inner peace and relationships. I’m your host, Nancy Jane Smith.”
It’s not just deep breathing.
Any attempt to reconcile the idea that I need to slow down with my desire to push push push and accomplish as much as possible has always been a challenge, and I am sure will continue to be. The idea of sitting down to meditate for any considerable length of time makes me want to jump out of my skin. But I have found a way around it, a way to get into my body and take a break from the never-ending chatter of my Monger.
In December, we talked about the 3 characters that play in our minds the Monger (inner critic), the BFF (the voice of false self-compassion), and the Biggest Fan(the voice of kindness and wisdom) when we hear our Monger talking and berating us or our BFF judging other people or sabotaging us, the goal is to bring in the voice of Biggest Fan. All this month, we will be talking about HOW to do that. We will be diving deeper into my 3 step A.S.K. system for calling in the Biggest Fan.
Last week I introduced A.S.K. and talked about the first step A. Acknowledge your Feelings. If you missed it, please go back and give it a listen. This week we are talking about the second step – the S. Step, Slow Down and get into your body.
Okay, here’s the truth. To deal with the Monger, you have to get out of your head and get into your body. Most of us live mostly in our heads. We literally aren’t even aware that we have a body unless it starts to hurt, and then we just take a pill to make it better. Our Monger takes up a lot of space in our heads. So the more time we spend in our head, the more we stay out of our Body and the louder our Monger gets.
One key to channeling your Biggest Fan is getting into your body. When we can slow down and get into our bodies, we change our perspective. By changing our physical presence, we can see more options, and the last step, K. Kindly pull back to see the big picture, happens with more ease.
When I share this step with my clients, their eyes glaze over, and I can almost hear them internally saying, Yeah, yeah, yeah, get into your body. It is a similar reaction to the idea of feeling your feelings. Helpful but the LAST thing you want to do. Thanks to more and more research being done on the mind-body connection, we have heard so many times that we need to slow down and get into our bodies that we don’t even hear it anymore. And I know that when you are in go-go-go mode, checking off the to-do list and running from activity to activity, the last thing you want to do is get into your Body. Trust me. I get it.
I fought for years the idea of getting out of my head and into my body. Whenever you hear the words “get into your body,” the next word you often hear is “meditate.” Meditation is awesome if you are able to meditate and/or have a regular meditation practice. Rock on. You can use that practice with the second step of A.S.K., S. Slow down and get into your body.
A meditation practice is amazing, and meditation is not for everyone. Honestly, I couldn’t meditate for five minutes even if you held a gun to my head! For way too many years, I beat myself up for the fact that I couldn’t meditate. My Monger convinced me that there was only one way to get into your body, and it was through meditation. So if I couldn’t meditate, I would never be able to slow down and be present. (See how wily the Monger can be?!)
Finally, I accepted that I was not going to be a super meditator (or even an average meditator), and I tried to find a way to hack it. To create a meditation practice that would work for me. No, I don’t do 30 minutes of meditation a day or even five minutes, more like 10 seconds. I realized that even if I just touched my toes or wiggled my Body for a few seconds and took some deep breaths while doing it, I was able to shift out of the headspace of the Monger.
Mindfulness Hacks are simple and quick ways to slow down and get into our bodies. They work in two ways: Action and Prevention.
Action: This is the S. part of A.S.K. When you notice your Monger chatting or one of the behaviors that indicate your Monger is running the show, practice a 10-second Mindfulness Hack. This allows you to get out of your head and into your body and to channel your Biggest Fan. One of my favorite practices for this one is to literally wiggle my body because it makes me laugh and also because it changes my perspective and reminds me to literally give myself some wiggle room. But it doesn’t have to be that dramatic. I encourage clients to choose several go-to Mindfulness Hacks such as taking three deep breaths, feeling your feet on the floor, touching your thumb to your fingers, doing a neck roll, or stretching.
Prevention: You can also use Mindfulness Hacks to cultivate more awareness of your Monger. Randomly throughout the day, do a quick movement that puts you in your Body: touch your toes, look up and notice the clouds, or take three deep breaths at a stoplight. Frequently I will set an alarm on my phone to remind me to take a break. These Mindfulness Hacks help break the endless chatter of your mind (aka your Monger) and allow you to spend some time in your body (and with your Biggest Fan). Your Monger tends to lull you into a trance of being critical and shaming. Because these Mindfulness Hacks pull you out of your mind and change your physical state, you can start to break that trance and notice your Monger chatting. The more you can break the Monger trance, the less power your Monger will have.
The other thing is it took me a very long time to reconcile that accomplishment and drive could take up the same space as slowing down and intentional living. One of the issues with High Functioning Anxiety is that slowing down is HARD. To slow down requires us to work against our anxiety and our drive and our push push push mentality. (This pull is so strong I wanted to punch my husband, who I adore!) I realized that it took some big-time TRUST on my part to actually slow down. The issue isn’t that we don’t know HOW to slow down. The issue is that we don’t WANT to slow down because we don’t trust that slowing down is a good thing.
Here is a great example: You’ve heard that slowing down is good for you, and you agree wholeheartedly. You want to slow down; you decide to attend a yoga class or do a 5-minute meditation every morning. And (here’s the part few people talk about) at first slowing down is PAINFUL. It causes us to be more aware (uh-oh!), feel more (blech!) and gives space for that nasty voice in our heads to tell us how lazy and slow we are (hello Monger!). And then, after our painful morning experience with slowing down, we meet a friend for lunch who is all about sharing everything she is accomplishing, how early she is getting up, and how she is killing it on a daily basis (all hail the to-do list!). And your BFF jumps in to say, screw this slowing down thing, let’s just keep pushing.
Slowing down is like working out. That first workout after months or years of not working out can cause us to be incredibly sore, so to the act of slowing down. Except society usually supports our idea of working out, and society DOES NOT support the idea of slowing down and especially the idea that slowing down can increase productivity (that’s crazy!!)
So yes, slowing down will initially be painful. AND then after a few days, weeks, months, it gets less painful. Those thoughts and feelings aren’t so scary, and you realize that being intentional and aware opens up your life in a way your to-do list can’t touch.
Here are my tips for Practicing the Slow Down and Get into your Body when it is the LAST thing you want to do.
Tip #1 Start Small.
A 5-minute meditation is a LONG time to be silent when you haven’t done it before. Some of us are hard-wired to go go go, so slowing down is the LAST thing we want to do. I have added slowing down to my life by practicing mini rituals throughout the day.
Start where you are:
Being in the shower when you are in the shower, notice how hard this is to do.
Take 3 Deep Breathes at the stoplight.
Pick a task and hyper-focus on it. Go through your senses as you complete the task. e.g., cutting vegetables for dinner, cleaning dishes, writing an email.
Do anything slower. Drive slower, eat slower, walk slower.
Do a full-body movement: Wiggle your Body.
Dance to your favorite song
Touch your toes
Reach for the sky
Roll your neck
Tip #2 Visualize your thoughts and feelings on a conveyor belt.
Visualize a conveyor belt running above your head with packages. Each package is a thought. Ranging from what we are going to have for dinner to I shouldn’t have spoken up at the meeting. That conveyor belt is constantly moving with thought after thought afterthought. When we are still, we can notice those thoughts moving quickly and randomly down the conveyor belt. Occasionally we will pick up a thought package off the conveyor belt and obsess over it. The thought of ‘I shouldn’t have spoken up at the meeting becomes what were you thinking! You are such an idiot! They were all staring at you like you were speaking Greek! When I notice myself obsessing over a thought, I take my hands as if I am holding a package and lift the package up on the conveyor belt that is above my head. This is a reminder to me that I have a choice, I can CHOOSE to obsess over a thought and beat myself up, or I can put that thought up on the conveyor belt and let it roll on by. Yes, most likely, the thought will come back, and you just rinse and repeat. Lifting that thought back up and saying, nope, not right now. This visual helps us to remember that we don’t have to be consumed by our thoughts. We can take them or leave them. Our thoughts and feelings are separate from us.
Tip #3 “Stay in Your Own Car.”
You have heard me talk about this analogy before, but it is one of my favorites. As we start to loosen up our go go go mentality, we start comparing ourselves to others. Yes, your friend might be accomplishing a ton in her life. Yes, your co-worker might be able to function on 5 hours of sleep. Yes, your neighbor appears to work full time, raise 3 amazing kids and keep her yard pristine. Good for them. But as your Mom told you, YOU are not your friend.
You can only take care of you. Don’t worry about how much other people are accomplishing or how driven they are. Comparing ourselves to others is 100% Monger activity. You are you. Stay. In. Your. Own Car.
Tip #4 There is No Right Way.
The point of slowing down is to create ways for you to get out of the hustle, notice your Monger chatting and be more engaged in your life. Slowing down by its very nature will make your Monger more chatty, and she will have a lot of tips for how you SHOULD be doing it. Remind yourself repeatedly that there is no right way. One day you might be great at slowing down, the next day, you might forget completely. That is ok. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It is a practice and a process.
Tip #5 Keep Practicing
When I first started intentionally slowing down, I had to keep bringing myself back over and over and over ( I still haven’t made it through a shower without getting lost in my head, but when I started, I couldn’t make it through the shampoo portion of my shower). It doesn’t matter how many times you have to remind yourself to ‘slow down’ just keep practicing.
Slowing down and getting into your body is a key step because it changes our physical perspective. We are so often in go-go-go mode, where our Monger chats unchecked. Pulling ourselves out of that mode to slow down and get into our body is challenging, which is why the Mindfulness Hacks work so well. Pick a few of your favorites and put them on sticky notes around your house, or set an alarm on your phone to remind you to practice one of them. When you do the S. Slow down and get into your body step, you can literally shut out the continual blah blah blah of the Monger as you concentrate on what is going on in your body. Which then allows the next step, K. Kindly pull back to see the big picture, to flow that much easier.
If you don’t do it, who will? If you’re not hustling, pushing, and keeping it all together yourself, nothing will get done.
Look, you don’t need me to tell you that. You tell yourself every day. There’s that voice inside your head constantly pushing you to do more, be more, and get closer to perfect.
And there are all the people--your family, friends, and random people on the street--who congratulate you on how productive you are.
Mixed messages, am I right?
I know I’m right because I’ve dealt with high-functioning anxiety too. I know what it’s like to relish the accolades that come your way one minute and shame yourself for being so tired and overwhelmed the next.
And, I’ve been working with women like you living with hidden anxiety every day for over 20 years as a coach and counselor.
I wrote The Happier Approach to give you a framework for dealing with your anxiety and start living happier.
The Happier Approach will help you understand the voices in your head and what to do with them. It’s not another woo-woo self-help book that asks you to think positively and live your best life. It’s a practical guidebook for getting out of survival mode and finding a genuinely happy and productive life.
Know someone who has High Functioning Anxiety and a VERY LOUD Monger. The Happier Approach makes a great gift.
Find The Happier Approach on Amazon, Audible, or Barnes & Noble!