Indexing

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INDEXING - A LITTLE KNOWN TECHNIQUE FOR OPTIMISM

There are many reasons why a person can feel overwhelmed and some of them are beyond the scope of this article.

However, if you do, at times, get stuck feeling overwhelmed then there are some simple tools that can reduce the perceived 'size' of the problem and help you to re-access your personal resourcefulness. If you tend towards unhelpful (what some people call 'negative') thinking then you can even begin to develop more optimism.

So what is 'indexing'?

By indexing you limit the extent and influence an event has in your life.

Our minds generalise as a natural thinking process (all grass is green, all dogs bark etc) but the world is more complex than that. When we feel overwhelmed we often generalise the problem way beyond its original context and we feel overwhelmed which used to mean 'submerged under water'. We feel like we are under pressure, that something is over our head and we are in it, rather than above it in a position of reflection and control.

Using indexing you ask questions that get your very specific answers.

Who was I with?

When did it happen? : The day, the hour, the exact time if possible. There is a reason for this which I will explain below.

How long did the event last?

Where was I?

What exactly happened? Use sensory words like "He said xyz" to me rather than "He criticised me"

Notice there is no 'why'.

This may seem a pedantic exercise but how does it help? Well, we can let one event spoil our entire day (or week!). If we reduce the event to something that happened to me:

It was the 15th of the month, Monday.

9am - the boss called me in to his office.

9.03 (roughly) He said that he was not happy with report I spent 10 hours on.

9.05 - he said he wanted it rewritten by the end of the day.

So the entire event lasted 5 minutes, was about one thing, happened in one particular place and nothing was said about any other aspect of my work.

So it was not stated to be personal (not about you), it was about the report.

It was not about all your work, but one report (it was not pervasive).

It was not going to affect your whole life, it was something that happened over one day.

Now you may feel it was about you, that all your work was under attack and worry about how it will affect your future at ABC International. But that's how you feel. That's your untrained mind generalising beyond the original context.

If you take a deep breath, step back and ask yourself the questions above you can stop the problem 'blowing out of all proportion'.

Even better, from the three points above we can ask questions developed from the work of Martin Seligman in his books Learned Helplessness and Learned Optimism.

Take the event:

Is it about you, the central core of who you are? Is it personal?

Is it about everything? Is it pervasive?

It is for all time? Is it permanent?

Is it about some thing, some event, even some thinking you did rather than about your value as a person? (Non personal)

Is it about a specific thing at a specific place and time? (non-pervasive and non-permanent)

When you can begin to 'index' things to specific times and places you realise that they are just 'events' that happened - or you took part in - but their effects are limited. In turn, this helps you develop the ability to see beyond the events and develop optimism that you can do better next time.

That is personal power and, as Victor Frankl said in 'Man's Search for Meaning' is 'the last of the human freedoms...the ability to choose one's own attitude whatever the circumstances.'

Douglas Cartwright is a personal clarity engineer who helps people 'renew their minds and live their words'. To find out more, visit http://www.livingwords.net and book your free introductory session. This powerful change experience is not for everyone. But it might be for you. Come to the site and find out.