Happy Accidents
I used to watch the public access channel when I was a kid. Riveting, I know! What can I say, I was clearly one of the cool kids. Just kidding. Anyway, I was particularly partial to watching “The Joy of Painting” featuring the late artist Bob Ross, who primarily painted landscapes and nature scenes. He’d be painting a forest of trees and then suddenly start to paint a stream randomly in the middle of a tree trunk. He would promptly turn to the camera and instruct the viewers not to panic. “There are no such things as mistakes, only happy accidents,” was his signature saying. I didn’t connect it to a broader meaning then, but now I see that phrase as a way of figuratively training the mind to take a metaphorical paintbrush and deliberately paint brushstrokes of positivity over a seemingly crappy situation for the purpose of overshadowing any negative perception associated with it. This is the proverbial “canvas” of Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy-(REBT) developed in 1955 by Albert Ellis. It’s neither rocket science nor magic: its simply a tool (or a “Bob Ross paintbrush” if you will) called Cognitive Reframing or Cognitive Restructuring.
When I was a young mother of 4 little ones under age 5, my life was a chaotic and constant cycle of various forms of messes and accidents that I did not consider happy at the time: figuratively and literally. I remember the insanity of “Family Car Hell”, which I define as: “A completely non-cool vehicle of pure necessity, used to transport the results of one’s marital trysts to and from one form of insanity to another, primarily driven in most cases by the stay at home parent (if there is one.)” Parents, I know you feel me on this. You have some of the same stories as me, and some equal but different cringe-worthy vehicle stories of your own: Toddler potty training accidents in the car, spilled milk or protein shake soaking into the carpets because I put off ordering the all-weather car mats, car puking, backseat food fights, enough (unwashed) clothing items to dress an army, enough half-eaten granola bars to potentially feed passengers stranded in a car for 6 months, “mystery smells” too pungent to bear without a face mask. As they grew from toddlers into kids, all the odds and ends of life accumulated during the endless processional of driving to and from after school activities. (Plus of course, the bitter and instant resentment when riding in the working parents’ vehicle, which looked and smelled like they had literally just driven it off the showroom floor.)
I actually think I have PTSD from “House Mess Hell”: Definition: “A structure formerly known as a house, but appears at times to be the victim of a home invasion and is now inhabited by a host of small, feral animals.” There was the time someone spilled a container of parmesan cheese under the couch and left it-for days and for the love of God we couldn’t figure out where that heinous smell was coming from. Or the time the potty chair mysteriously levitated (all by itself, apparently!) from the bathroom tile into a child’s bedroom- and shockingly, it spilled, ensuring that human waste soaked into the carpet and through the carpet pad. (Best part of that was when the elderly carpet cleaner came out, he announced to us that it was the worst carpet stain he had seen *in his entire career*). What can I say other than it was humbling in several ways to receive such an honor! There was the time we had a new refrigerator delivered in a box full of styrofoam packing peanuts. In a fury of screams of toddler excitement, my stairs and balcony were transformed into the snow-capped Swiss Alps in the span of about 5 minutes. (Spoiler alert: Who knew styrofoam packing peanuts disintegrate into basically microscopic little white pebbles when one’s spirited children jump on them and smash them?!? Even more exciting is the fact that a shop vac will barely put a dent into the mess and you’ll be finding remnants of that very day for years to come!) It’s truly the gift that keeps on giving. To this day my husband shudders and practically curls up in the fetal position when he recalls cleaning up that disaster.
Isn’t it interesting how some of the worst messes are the ones that provide the biggest belly laughs now? Sometimes turning a negative situation into a positive one happens organically, as it did in these stories of A-Team life messes over the years. Time seems to accomplish this fairly well in many cases. Every week we take our older 4 kids out on a “Big Kids’ Date” and these are they types of stories that inevitably surface and provide copious amounts of entertainment around the dinner table. What were tears of frustration in the moment have transformed into hilarity and treasured moments; almost magically…beautifully.
But what about those other times where we get stuck in a negative mindset? For example, when I graduated from college in 1998, I decided to work as a nanny through the summer just until my wedding a few months later. After my interview at the nanny placement agency, instead of a nanny job, the placement counselor who conducted the interview offered me a job to work with their company, in the placement agency office. So I never ended up nannying for any of their clients. That was all fine and good until one day I was at work and happened to stumble upon the paperwork from my interview. I could have chosen in that moment not to look, but my curiosity got the best of me and I opened the file. At the end of the interview notes was a section “For Office Use Only” where the placement counselor had a list of options to choose from, based on their summation of how qualified the candidate was to be a nanny. There were about 5 different choices the placement counselor could select from to categorize the candidate, such as “Excellent Candidate”, “Good Candidate”, “Candidate Shows Potential; Needs Additional Training” “Candidate Under Qualified”, and finally, “Candidate Would be Right for the Right Job”.
Well. Guess which box had been selected to categorize me? Yup. “Candidate Would be Right for the Right Job.” Now that’s not necessarily a terrible rating, but I remember thinking “Jeez, am I really that bad? What exactly does that mean, I would only do well working for a certain family? With certain kids?” It wasn’t lost on me that my selected category was also the very last box on the list. Now, perhaps in today’s market, that category would read totally differently to me, in a more positive light (like the importance of being a good fit was prioritized over cookie-cutter qualifications.) But back then, I remember getting a flushed face as a wave of self-doubt and negativity washed over me. Even though they had actually placed me in a role they felt I’d be best suited for- with the actual placement agency-I couldn’t shake that feeling of rejection. Even though I was basically hand-picked by that placement counselor to be their co-worker. I felt like a total failure, and my mind adhered to that label like my grandmother’s dentures Poly-gripped to her gums.
The old familiar metaphor of the “half empty” glass and the “half full” glass is primarily about looking at a situation through the lens of loss or gains. The theory is that people tend to look at the glass half empty as a “loss” or negative frame. The glass half full is looked at, obviously, as a positive frame in the mind. Much research has been done on this topic, and I’ll share one of the studies I personally find most fascinating. In a 2014 study, Psychologists Ledgerwood and Boydstun conducted a study where they presented 2 test groups with the following statement: “Imagine there’s been an outbreak of any unusual disease, and 600 lives are at stake?” Then they divided the participants up into 2 groups and asked them a question.
Group 1 was asked: If 100 lives are saved, how many will be lost?
Group 2 was asked: If 100 lives are lost, how many will be saved?
Both groups just had to calculate 600-500 and come up with the answer, but one group had to convert from gains to losses, while people in the second group had to convert from losses to gains. The psychologists timed how long took each group, on average, to come up with the answer to this simple math problem. Interestingly, it took the second group twice as long (average time taken was 11 seconds) when they had to convert from losses to gains, whereas it only took the first group about half that time (average was 7 seconds) to easily convert from gains to losses.
This study suggests that once we think of something as a loss, it tends to adhere to our brain in that negative mindset. It’s then twice as hard to reframe, as the brain appears to naturally resist our attempts to change it. We literally have to work harder to see the positive side of things when we have labeled them as negative. If you’ve experienced this, as I have, it makes sense, yes? So. Ellis’ Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy is the theory that human emotions and behavior are predominantly generated by ideas, beliefs, attitudes, and thinking. NOT by events themselves. Consequently, changing one’s thinking leads to an emotional and behavioral change.
When I had those first 4 babies under five, it was the those “Roomba” robot vacuum cleaners first came out. You could turn this vacuum on and set it loose on your floors. It would move along until it bumped into a baseboard or a piece of furniture, and then it would self correct and change course. That’s how reframing works. We move through our life and when we crash into something we perceive to be a negative situation, we have the power to course correct through Cognitive Reframing.
It’s no secret of science that the mind is our most powerful tool. As Dr. Wayne Dyer puts it, “Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life.” So just for shits and giggles, here’s a peek into my personal toolkit where I’ll share with you how I practice REBT, for the purpose of creating new narratives of positivity from seemingly negative situations. It’s basically my own simplified version of Cognitive Reframing. Give it a whirl, if you want to, or adjust it to suit your own self and circumstance. You do you. :)
Cognitive Reframing for Manufacturing Synthetic “Happy Accidents”:
Breathe: Lots of times when I’m in an emotional spin, whether it be anger or stress or anxiety, I realize I’m kind of holding my breath, or at least not taking full and complete breaths. Since this takes a bit of mental attention, my brain needs more oxygen to reframe the situation. So as dumb as it sounds, I take 3 long deep breaths, which also helps me to center myself and remember my goal, which is to create a new narrative of positivity.
Question: First: I ask myself:A) IS THIS TRUE? Many times the negative narrative I’ve attached to an experience isn’t even real. It’s assumed. Assumptions are limiting beliefs that leave me stuck, like my parents’ old record player playing their scratched up vinyl copy of the 1968 song by Cream called “White Room” on their Freedom Rockers album. B) I ask myself: “What’s the probability that I will care about this with the same intensity I feel right now…..in a week? In a month? In a year?” Most times, the answer is no. In fact, many times I can’t even remember the person’s name. #Truth.
Provide Evidence: This step is crucial for 3 reasons: A) It should provide hope. It’s the reminder that I’ve made it through this same scenario in different forms many times before- and practice makes progress. :) B) It’s extremely empowering and encouraging to realize that I may be powerless over the situation, but I own the desire and power to shift my thinking. That’s possibly the greatest internal success I will ever achieve, and this helps increase self- worth. C) The hope and the reminder that I’ve accomplished this in the past helps motivate me to do the work to change my brain and quit wasting emotional energy on toxic negativity, which only breeds more negativity.
Stop, Step Back, Observe & Look for the Root. It’s far easier to foster a perspective change on a situation when I stay back and get a little distance- same concept as looking out the window of an airplane during takeoff and landing- it’s a totally different view at 36,000 feet- which in this case is what I'm going for- a broader view, so I don’t get hung up on little petty crap. From this vantage point, I see the expanse of the landscape, and it’s easier to look for the root. It’s rarely what it first appears to be. I know you’ve seen or experienced this your own life or in others: on the surface it may look like something else: the victim mentality, false bravado, arrogance, martyrdom to name a few. When we stand back, we can see there’s a root cause there that has been triggered by the situation. Usually, it involves fear hiding under that disguise: fears are natural instincts- fear that we won’t get something we want or think we need-which is a normal human instinct, it’s how our species survived as we evolved-and it’s still how we evolve today from a personal growth standpoint.
Identification and Detachment: Once the root has been identified, it’s power over us isn’t quite so binding. It’s like the “Wait a minute, I’ve seen this one before- that’s just that old false narrative I’ve been believing.” Once the root has been identified, it’s much easier to give ourselves grace and forgiveness. Like getting one’s hair colored, growing roots back can be a fairly predictable process- so it shouldn’t be a surprise when old psychological junk rises to the surface every now and then. Sometimes we get lucky enough to attack the root once and it never comes back. Other times the root remains and becomes a beacon to remind us to be gentle and loving with our humanity: When the root of our ego reappears, it’s nothing to get pissed at ourselves about, it’s just a gentle reminder to detach from whatever situation is triggering that root today- and then put ourselves right back on our own path. Detachment is the closure: it’s releasing the situation and turning it over to God/The Universe and sending it on its’ way in love. When we detach, we have made a deposit into our bank of self-love and self-care.
Reconstructed Result: This final step is like the end of a home improvement show. Usually there is a flashback to a photo of what the house looked like in its’ “before” state-which was often a dirty, old, rundown ramshackle existence. Now the designer takes the homeowner on a tour of the newly remodeled home. There is beautiful lighting and there are sparkling finishes and intelligent floor plans. The emotions in their air are joy, delight, satisfaction, and success. Similarly, I get to look through at the situation through a fresh lens and reveal to myself the outcome of my work. The emotions in the air are peace and personal power through acceptance.
In the example of the “Right for Right Job” incident, here’s how I could work though this real quick today, if it were still bothering me:
3 deep breaths to get centered.
Yep. It’s true, but perhaps it wasn’t the negative statement that I took it to be, and no, 20 years later, I remember the incident, but I’m not losing a REM cycle over it. :)
A) I’ve flipped from negative to positive many times before, so I know that B) if I change my thoughts, I can change my life. C) I like the results of how that’s empowered me in the past, so I’m ready to do the work.
The root of this is a fear that I’m not good enough. I’m letting it affect my self-esteem and by taking it personally and focusing on it negatively.
This is just another reminder of a normal human habit that doesn’t serve me well and I can let go of: Letting someone else’s categorization of me determine my worth.
I actually see now that label could have been an accurate assessment….maybe not in terms of me as a nanny, but my current job is fairly unique: I don’t actually personally know another person who is both an executive wife and mother of 8. So guess what? It’s not negative at all, it’s correct:
I’m the right person for this job.
“We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude… I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.”-Charles Swindoll
