“Feel Good Fridays”
“When we are no longer able to change a situation- we are challenged to change ourselves.”- Victor E Frankl
It was a hot summer Friday in New York City, and I was getting ready to run my 11:00 am group. I had recently moved to the city to pursue my career as a therapist at an outpatient chemical dependency program. To say I had it together would be a huge understatement. During this time, I was dealing with the following:
Unfamiliar chaos in the workplace
A lack of confidence as a 20-something year old clinician
A deteriorating personal life (specifically a toxic relationship and living situation)
These issues created a fear that filled the trajectory of my life and left me feeling powerless. During this time, I created “Feel Good Fridays”, a fun tradition where each group member was given the opportunity to share a quote that spoke to them and discuss it with the group (Although I did not originally anticipate that I would benefit from the creation of an exercise to ultimately benefit my clients, this was instrumental in helping me get through these rough times in my life). On this Friday however, no one brought in a quote. I remember frantically running to my desk, pulling out my phone and googling “best inspirational quotes”, original, I know! After scrolling through pages of sub par quotes, I felt so defeated I wondered if it was even worth continuing “Feel Good Fridays”. A few minutes before the group was supposed to start, a group member came up to me and asked if he could share a quote he found with the group. He shared the quote with me “When we are no longer able to change a situation- we are challenged to change ourselves.” As I wrote the quote on the dry erase board, something clicked, and my perspective changed. I remember thinking
Why am I allowing myself to be in a relationship that makes me unhappy?
Why am I settling for things I don’t deserve?
Why am I rationalizing another person’s poor behaviors?
Why am I agreeing with things I don’t want?
Why am I doing this to myself?
As I discussed above, at this time in my life I was feeling powerless and that I had no control. Hearing this quote, I realized that this was not the case. I have come to learn that everyone likes to feel they have some type of control in their life. Whether it is control over finances, health, relationships or work, we crave it in our lives. Although there are certainly situations that we cannot control (other people’s actions, the weather, construction that starts at 7:00 am on a Saturday morning, etc.), we can choose to look at how we react, adapt, and improve our circumstances. I had always thought control was closely tied with the idea of having power (more on that in another post), but now I am thinking that having control is also a means of avoiding discomfort (FYI I spoke at length on discomfort in my previous post, IF you haven’t read it this is your cue to go check it out!). When I was writing that quote on the board, and asking myself the questions above, I realized I was accepting unhappiness as opposed to feeling “short term” discomfort, ultimately regaining power and control over my life.
