Is life happening to you?

Part 6 in our series teaching YOU how to take control of your mental health.

5% of life happens to you, and the other 95% comes from how you choose to react to it!

Heard that before?

The 95% all comes down to your beliefs – how powerful and helpful are yours? – take our free emetophobia quiz today…???

To recap the content from last week (and, if you’re new here today: Welcome! We suggest you scroll back and read the previous four posts) as we covered some really important topics.

✅ You’ve never been taught the skills you need for mental health – until now

✅ Your mental health is your responsibility and within your control: you CAN feel great

✅ Psychological foundations are essential: these are created by your thoughts and beliefs

✅ You can change your thoughts and beliefs, and it’s easier than you think

So, a question for you today:

Is life happening TO YOU, or are you HAPPENING TO LIFE? ?

The emotions, stress and anxiety we experience are our REACTIONS TO life – they are not directly ‘caused’ by what happens in our lives.

This is why some people get stressed and anxious very easily, and some don’t.
This is why some people are terrified of dogs, and some people love them.
This is why some people are anxious about needles, lifts, flying, spiders etc and some aren’t.

What makes us different is how we REACT to the different pressures and hurdles in life… and this comes down to our foundations, which comes down to our beliefs and day-to-day thinking.

For some people it really feels like ‘life happens to them’, for others, it feels like they ‘happen to life’. It all comes down to how you REACT to life, and how you react comes down to your beliefs.

The more powerful and helpful your beliefs, the less pressure you feel from life, the less life gets you down, the less life gets you stressed and anxious.

When you feel powerful and in control, you are able to bounce back from almost any situation.

It can be helpful to identify where you already feel calm, powerful and confident, and those areas where you need to adjust your thinking. The aim is to have a strong Sense of Power and Control over your Experiences (SPACE) in all areas of your life.

✴️ Fate, luck & chance

✴️ Religion and spirituality

✴️ Social influence (authority figures, parents, teachers, employers)

✴️ Thoughts, feelings and emotions

✴️ External factors: work, your health, the weather

✴️ The past: your thoughts and beliefs about your past including your childhood and past relationships.

Most people have areas of strength and weakness. For example, you might be a high-flier at the sports field and have a strong sense of SPACE in this domain, but be terrified by the prospect of a trip to the doctor. Or you could have had a terrible time at school and be clinging on to limiting beliefs about your career potential and feelings about whether you are (or are not) worthy of a promotion or a pay rise, but feel at peace with yourself as a lover or spouse.

Perhaps you can think of someone who has few limiting beliefs and so acts and behaves with strength and positivity in ALL domains. That person… could be you.

Our Sense of Power and Control can be subdivided into two different skill-sets:

1. Control: these are the skills you have to directly control, manage or avoid a situation.

2. Coping skills: as the name says, these are the skills you have to cope with difficult, challenging or stressful situations.

Everyone has these two skill-sets – as everyone has a Sense of Power and Control – to a greater or lesser extent.

Generally speaking, the lesser your coping skills, the more control you try to exert over life. For example, if you believe you couldn’t cope being in a room with a spider, you’ll do everything you can to avoid that spider. You can’t ‘cope’, so you ‘avoid’. Think of ANY phobia or anxiety at all, and you’ll see that they are all – in essence – the same: you believe you couldn’t cope, so you avoid.

What do you think happens to your skill-set when you learn to cope with something? You no longer feel as stressed or anxious in that situation, you don’t worry or brood about that situation, you no longer fear that situation… you feel powerful and able to cope.

People who feel powerful and confident about public speaking never worry about a speech or presentation they have to make, whilst people who have lots of social anxiety might agonise for weeks before such an event. Either the event is terrifying or it isn’t, right?

WRONG! It’s not the event (or situation) it’s how powerful you feel about it – what you believe about it – that matters.

Think about your own life: what situations do you try to control (or over-control?) manage, or avoid because you feel you couldn’t cope?

One of the main symptoms of this ‘desire for control’ (the absence of coping skills) is anxiety. We create anxiety by worrying and brooding about future events we don’t believe we’ll cope well with. There is also a huge amount of research linking depression to a ‘lack of control’ and feeling powerless.

Remember: you NEVER create stress or anxiety about situations you feel powerful and confident about. Your Sense of Power and Control is all about your psychological foundations – the beliefs you hold about yourself and life. Basically, the more powerful and helpful your beliefs, the better your mental health.

So, just how powerful and helpful are YOUR beliefs? ?

Over the last ten years we have created a number of helpful quizzes and tests so that you can measure a number of important variables in relation to your mental health, happiness and ability to thrive. Today, we are going to give you access to our free SPACE Quiz. This quiz will look at a significant number of important beliefs you hold about your life, and will report back to you how powerful you feel in those areas. If you take the quiz you will be emailed a full 6 page report that will not only give you an overall SPACE/Foundations score, but will also split the score into your Control and Coping skills, AND further identify in what areas your beliefs are most helpful.

Do you feel powerful about your past, or do you feel that your past still has some effect on your life now?

Are you superstitious? 86% of UK residents are highly superstitious – not realising that these beliefs are really powerless and unhelpful!

Do you believe that your mental health just ‘happens to you’ and there is not much you can do about it?

Does life happen to you, or do you happen to life?

Self-awareness is fundamental to increasing your SPACE and this quiz will really help you.

To access the full emetophobia quiz, drop us a message on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, or email us at help@emetophobia.co.uk

If you’ve missed anything, have a read of our full Thriving at Home series here.