Hi Brooke,
My indulgent feelings are : Worry, Guilt, Weakness/Hopeless, False Fear (worry disguise as fear)
The interesting thing about these feelings is that the thoughts that cause them are highlighting real risks or failures such as
C: Dogs have less than 3 activities with me a day
T: I’m not spending enough time with my dogs
F: Guilt
A: Beat myself up/ buffer
C: Weight plateau
T: I’m backsliding on protocol
F: Worry
A: Eat, buffer
C: Not current with new technology
T: I’m loosing my skills
F: False Fear
A: Start a new project, buy a book, buffer
All of these are true in the sense that I’ve been allowing my calendar to overfill again, causing life gridlock and buffering in order to not deal with things… which results in not spending time with my dogs, I have not been on protocol this month and my technical skills absolutely need sharpening for my job.
However…. none of these feelings result in my taking any valuable action, as you can see. Good to know.
But I don’t think I should just discount the circumstances (And I’ve added some descriptors in my C lines above, normally I would just write Dogs, Food, Tech… but wanted to show why I can’t discount them)
I’m not sure how I make a plan to not indulge in the emotion. The though loop comes up quickly:
Look at dog’s nails. They are long, I’m not grooming them enough, I should be spending more time with them, I’m a horrible person, feel guilt, AND so I buffer instead of actually doing it. It’s as if I punish myself with guilt and that gives me a pass on taking the correct action. GAH…
I can catch myself cycling through these thoughts, usually by the time I get to I’m a horrible person I realize where my head is at.
What plan would you put in place to not indulge in this? The only one I’ve come up with is: When I catch myself thinking I SHOULD…. I will change the thought to : I’m going to put that on my calendar right now.
But I’m not sure that will work. My calendar being overloaded is one of my weedy issues. It seems to come up somewhere else every time I pull it up.
