Traffic light challenge can change how you view your world: Andrea Morrison

I recently undertook a study in reducing stress amongst female entrepreneurs, as part of my MSc Thesis.

One of the attendees kindly wrote a blog about her experience.

She described the impact that it had in these terms: “I don’t feel punch-drunk from life. I feel quietly confident, capable, and above all, peaceful.”

What struck me is that her life hadn’t changed and the challenges that she had were still there – she hadn’t, as she wrote, met a millionaire who adored her!

Her words struck a chord with me.

I remember that feeling of being ‘punch drunk’ from what life threw at me, feeling out of control, helpless, a victim to my circumstances and dreaming of ways in which I could change my life.

For me, I did change my life, although not by choice.

What I found was that it didn’t matter how different my outside circumstances became, the way I felt on the inside and how I experienced life, changed very little.

What I learned was something that proved to be my biggest challenge.

Life wasn’t happening to me in the way that I thought it was and whilst things were happening that I may not choose, I was the creator of how I wanted to experience them.

In other words, the pain, suffering and stress was something that I was creating in my own mind, and was, for the best part, completely optional.

I still remember what triggered that insight.

I was asked whether I felt the same each time I pulled up at a red traffic light or was it the case that sometimes I would welcome the pause in my life, but at others I’d be frustrated and cross that I my journey was being interrupted.

It was put to me, that if life was ‘outside in’ or in other words if my circumstances caused how I felt, then pulling up at a red light would have the same effect on me, because the experience was coming from the light.

But of course that isn’t the case at all.

It left the uncomfortable conclusion that I was the creator of my experience each time.

At times, life doesn’t feel like this at all.

It feels like it happening to us and that is ok.

It’s not that we should be doing life better, in fact that in itself is an important function of our psychology and one to explore another time.

However, in my mind the 80/20 rule applies.

If 80 per cent of the time we are aware that we are the creators of our own experience and we have a choice how to experience the moment we are in, then we could find ourselves reducing the stress around the challenges we face by that same 80 per cent.

That, in my mind, would be a great result for 2023.

Andrea Morrison is a Yorkshire-based transformational business coach and mentor.