Identifying Survival Based Thinking and Behaving

I will be the first to admit that if you asked me to identify survival based thinking I would likely call that my Tuesday. There have been seasons in my life where I would not have been able to tell you that there was a difference between survival based thinking and something more. For many of us, to live is to survive. They are the same. When I first started working on my survival based thinking, I began by asking myself, “Does life have to be this hard?” With this question in mind, I began to evaluate areas where I could be choosing hard out of familiarity or habit. What I found was a subtle awareness of shifts in my mood. When operated from survival based thinking patterns, I felt pressured, rushed, and irritable. When I operated from a place of peace and mindfulness, I felt present, productive and happy. The same behavior could literally be motivated from two different thinking patterns. For example, when I noticed that I felt tense and frustrated while I was cleaning, I was able to understand that I was choosing good behaviors for the wrong reason. I was choosing busyness out of obligation or a desire to feel worthy. In contrast, when I cleaned the house up to the point where I noticed these feelings and then took a break, I felt a mixture of productive, proud and peaceful. While we can’t always choose the circumstances that life hands us, we can choose how we relate to these circumstances. At it’s core, I noticed that my survival based thinking patterns sounded like, “I must,” whereas my thriving based thinking patterns sounded like, “I can.” Similiar to our lesson on boundaries, we can only thrive when we realize that we are free to choose.

Recap of Topic: Survival based thinking and behaving

For many of us, survival based thinking patterns have become synonymous with who we are. We have never considered that we don’t have to live in such a way whereby we constantly feel rushed or stressed. While these thinking patterns can result in high productivity, they come with a cost on the back end. They come at the cost of your joy and peace. To begin identifying how survival based thinking patterns show up in your life, ask yourself the following questions:

Where in my life do I notice internal messages that contain the words must or should?

When do I notice feeling stressed, anxious or rushed?

Are there times when you notice doing the same task but feeling differently about it? What was your mindset in both scenarios?

Making Choices to Move Away From Survival Based Thinking

As previously mentioned, one of my subtle ques for survival based thinking was a change in my emotional state. My survival based messages are oppressive and restrictive, as they should be. When we are trying to survive a dangerous situation, we don’t need a set of ambiguous instructions. We need clear and concise directives of how to get to a place of safety. While these messages are helpful for the context with which they were created, they are suffocating in everyday life. Choosing a path out of these thinking patterns, meant that I had to honor the need and determine how I could achieve this in a way that is respectful to myself and others. While this will likely be a lifelong journey for me, some choices that I found helpful were to:

Attend to the emotional shifts and give myself a break when I felt stressed or rushed.

Practice letting go and allowing others to do things for me or alongside of me.

Ask for a break when I need to just hit pause on everything going on around me.

Find small ways to create joy and relaxation (i.e. eating snacks in bed while watching a movie with my husband, doing nothing while the babysitter takes care of our son, prioritizing a mindful activity over a productive activity).

Allow others to communicate their needs to me even though it may conflict with a task that I desire to complete.

Recap of Topic: Making Choices

Survival based thinking can cause you to feel stressed, anxious and tired leading to burn-out and mental illness. With awareness, we can learn to attend to our thinking patterns and make alternate choices. Understanding that you have choice, is your first step toward thriving. To begin adjusting your behavior to support new thinking patterns, consider attending to your emotional states when completing tasks, letting go and allowing others to support you, asking for a break when you need one, and finding small ways to create joy.

Creating a Lifestyle Where You Thrive

When we fully exercise our right to choose, we can begin to thrive. Sometimes this may mean that we need to make lifestyle changes such as ending an unhealthy relationship or finding a new job. Sometimes this may mean that we alter our behaviors such as cutting back on spending or downsizing because we are choosing financial freedom. Other times it may mean that we choose to alter our thinking about a situation, person or circumstance. A common example of this subtle shift in thinking is found among parents with young children. While there are incredibly difficult moments associated with caring for a young child, most parents cope with these moments by reminding themselves that this child will grow up in the near future and these moments of frustration will be a cherished memory in the past. In that moment, we understand the role of choice in our willingness to see this temporary moment as frustrating and a reasonable cost for the joy of parenting.

To become the architect of your life, you have to start by identifying ALL choices available to you. You are free to work or not work. You are free to stay in your marriage or leave. Your are free to parent or not parent. The choices you make are going to be predicated on your values. Next, I want you to identify the areas of your life where you notice stress and ask yourself what choice(s) you are making and why you are making it? Is this a situation where you need to make another choice in your behavior, your thoughts or both? You will know when you are adopting a thriving based mentality when your internal dialogue sounds something like, “I choose this job because it allows me to fulfill a larger purpose.” versus “I have to do this to provide for my family.”

Recap of Topic: Thriving

Thriving begins with our awareness that we are free to choose. You are free to choose what you do and how you do it. You are also free to choose what you think and what meaning you place on a situation. When we are thriving our life is one of our choosing versus a life that has been given to us. You may not always choose your circumstances but you can always choose how you think about them and respond to them. Thriving is a mixture of loving acts toward self and others and personal acceptance of the choices we are making.

Recommended Product of the Week

This week’s recommended product(s) is Dr. Teal’s Lavendar Bubble Bath Dr. Teal’s has a fantastic product line of epsom salt, bubble bath, body wash and pillow scents. They are great tool during seasons of survival and a loving way to treat yourself when you are thriving.