There’s a secret I’ve shared with few in my life. I’ve held it close to my heart for so long, afraid of being judged, ridiculed, or worse—called a hipster.
But it’s time to come clean: If you ever hand me a menu that lists a dish with sun-dried tomatoes in it, there’s a 90% chance I’ll order it.
In these uncertain times, those are incredible odds.
If you’re in marketing or advertising, I’ve just handed you gold. Sunny, delicious, tomato-ey gold.
WHEW. The sense of liberation is beyond words.
If you’ve been trudging through life with the bone-crushing burden of hiding deep, dark secrets, I highly recommend making peace with them and (thoughtfully) coming out. Oh the release! Dropping that weight will lift you right up.
Back to my tomatoes.
Sun-dried tomatoes may not be trendy, cool or even remotely glamorous in a cuisine par excellence, but they are my trigger words. I hear them, and I’m hooked.
Bookstore. Bread. Bakery. Bed time. These words have me not just hooked, but lined and sinkered. I get so predictable it’s pathetic.
But in recent years, I’ve made efforts to learn. Instead of hiding my trigger words and using every ounce of will power and intellectual and emotion energy to restrain myself and act “normal”, I’ve used them to help me build better habits, cut back on lazy ones, and in general improve my life.
On the temple of Delphi are inscribed the words: Know Thyself.
Well, I’m knowing myself all over the place.
Let me illustrate: I tend to procrastinate doing things I detest. I know I’m not the only one. But instead of writing “clean desk” on my to-do, I write “declutter desk”. This is because the word declutter lights a tiny spark in me that the word ‘clean’ just does not, giving me glimpses of fantasies of things in their proper place, stacked neatly and in order, where no child-related toy or game has the audacity to show up unannounced and haphazard piles of unknown junk do not exist. In my fantasy, I’ve out-Mari-Kondoe’d Mari Kondo herself.
And that’s just the tip of the trigger-word iceberg. The possibilities are limitless.
Maybe you don’t want to ‘sort through your closet’, but ‘curate your wardrobe’.
Maybe a day off while kids are in school could be a ‘personal retreat’ to help ditch the mom guilt.
Just imagine the power you behold in simply changing the words you use to deal with parts of life that make you stumble, slap your hand on your forehead in despair and ask, “why me?”.
Finding your trigger words (or phrases) is a power that doesn’t have to be used for evil, guilt, shame, or a monumental effort to control yourself, or to pretend being someone you’re not.
It’s a power that can be used for good, for self-compassion, for getting the job done on terms you can live with, for doing better at things that feel difficult or distasteful while expending less emotional energy, for re-setting your mindset and making better choices when you want to satisfy competing and conflicting desires, like cleaning out the garage or working on your work project. I mean, ‘organizing your garage’ or ‘knocking that project off your list’.
All it takes to begin is self-awareness. Observe what exactly compelled you those times when you got things done with the least amount of internal struggle. What hooked you into it that made it worth the effort?
How did you feel when it was done? Because you liked feeling like that, it’s important. And useful.
I love the feeling of space (no/less clutter), of reasonable order (no/less mess), of ease (I can find what I want without yelling at the kids), of peace (less visual noise to jar my mood) and of beauty (less stress and noise are beautiful, plus then you can enjoy the music).
Know thyself. Then wield your power.
When you’re hooked, you’re pulled rather than pushed. That’s a better way to move forward, don’t you think?
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