do you remember stop, drop & roll?

Hello Beautiful One,

Do you remember Stop, Drop & Roll?

I remember in grammar school being taught that if I caught on fire the best thing to do is Stop running, Drop to the ground, and Roll until the fire went out. And it is a good phrase to remember. But what do you do if the fire is in your mind?

I say do the same thing, only think of it a little differently*. The instant you feel that intense emotional response to something …

1. STOP. Observe your first reaction – your first thought. Stop long enough to recognize that you are having an emotional response that more than likely began in childhood. This is not about judging; this is about noticing. Stopping allows us to move toward responding, as opposed to reacting. So the second you feel that intense emotion, STOP long enough to notice.

2. DROP. Step back – pause – understand your first thought. It’s ok to take a moment and drop back to observe what just happened. Drop back in your mind and recall previous times when this strong emotion has come up over the years. Stepping back from reacting may allow you to experience the feeling of waking up from a bad dream. It allows time to make new choices.

3. ROLL. Be open to a new thought or insight. Roll into a new thought pattern. Choose a thought that’s closer to how you would want to be treated, something closer to being open and curious. Notice that the person standing in front of you is not the person that created this upset from many years ago (and they probably don’t deserve those decades worth of anger directed towards them). Roll into observing yourself and your feelings.

Observing what you do when you are triggered allows you to begin to see, maybe for the first time, that you do have the power to begin to respond to things differently. Think of a time when something happened and you had a strong emotional reaction (i.e., anger, numbness, retaliation, etc.) If you look at that, can you see a connection between the strong emotional reaction and a childhood memory? More often than not, strong emotional reactions do come from our childhood memories.

If this is intriguing to you click here for a more in depth 2-3 minute read called “Self-Observation Basics”. If you’d rather talk to someone in person, email me or message me and we’ll schedule a time to talk.

My wish for you, Beautiful One, is to realize how powerful the practice of Self-Observation can be in helping you learn to respond in a new and better way.

Huge hugs and big love,

Debbie Pearson

Transformation Coach, Author, Speaker

*Special thanks to Laura K. Greiner for introducing me to the phrase “Stop, Drop & Roll” as representative of this practice.