Do Yourself Over Again
Jake Eagle — Saturday, June 26th, 2010
I love the simplicity of this concept. When you interact with other people and you displease yourself with your own behavior, or a particular result that you create—tension, misunderstanding, frustration, embarrassment—just do yourself over again.
One aspect of Green Psychology is something we call The Process of Growth. There are 5 steps in the process. I won’t explain them all right now, just mention them:
Awareness, Acceptance, Ask, Await, Act.
How do these relate to “doing yourself over again”? First, you become Aware of your own discomfort. Then, Accept how you feel, don’t try to minimize your experience. After you Accept your feelings, thoughts, needs…whatever it is that’s going on for you, then you Ask:
- “How do I want to conduct myself?”
- “How do I want to use my personal energy?”
- “How do I want to feel?”
Chances are there is something you can do, or redo that will allow you to renew yourself (make yourself or the situation anew.)
Here’s a metaphor. When you make a video or a movie, you get to do several “takes.” If you aren’t happy with one take, you can do another. I think life is pretty much like this. Most of the time, not always, but usually—we get to do another take. We get to apologize if we behaved poorly. We get to ask for what we want, and if we don’t get it, we get to ask in another way. We get to speak again, using a different voice tone, when our original message didn’t get properly conveyed. We get to touch when words don’t work.
If you want to see an example of me “doing myself over again,” check out the following video. It’s just meant to be fun…but it serves as an example of “doing ourselves again.”
Tags: Videos
I’m making a choice this afternoon to answer this (and maybe another blog entry too) instead of playing hooky to watch Spain play Portugal. I loved your series of outtakes and I love the notion that a conversation isn’t ever over if I want to go back and do some of it again. I do actually put this into practice, having had some coaching from you already in this area and I liberate myself with it. To not be stuck with an outcome that feels wrong. Also, with kids, two things strike me. One, I get a chance to do myself over with them too when I don’t like my behavior, and two, they get to learn that they don’t need to be stuck either. I got to practice last night after I discovered dog pee on the rug and yelled at the dogs — my son told me he doesn’t like it when I get angry. I asked him if I could rediscover the pee, he said yes, I raised my hands to my head in mock astonishment and asked theatrically, “What is WRONG with these dogs?” We laughed and got to connect more deeply. Plus my feelings shifted about the pee and the dogs. Thanks for this playful reminder.
I had several good laughs, your intent was realized with me. I am appreciating the richness I create from knowing some of the stories behind the “takes”, knowing Char (the dog), Hannah, and how much I have you wanting to do yourself well.
I relaxed myself when I first heard you speak of the concept of additional “takes”. I have tended to consume significant amounts of personal time and energy analyzing what I could have done better in an interaction, what will be the affects, and how to recover. The first time I caught myself doing these things in life, I dramatically freed me, I already knew exactly how I wanted to do me, so I did, back to the interaction, different me, new out come, and a huge amount of time and energy consumption prevented.
Also I support my practice of seeing everything as changing and fluid, temporary with the awareness of “takes”, with the permission I give myself to re-do-me. Even if the chance doesn’t come, I don’t see the person again, I am freer knowing I am flexible to do me differently.
I appreciate you for doing this clip,
Artist