Fight for Success-Series 2--Kill the Monster while it's small

Kill the Monster While It's Small

This is a very successful technique in interrupting your pattern.
Killing a monster while he's small refers to jumping all over a challenge immediately, before it grows into something that you can't control. Imagine a little T-rex about the size of your shoe - or maybe smaller. And you're stuck in a room with that t-rex. And it becomes loud and annoying, and you want to get rid of him. Can you at this point? Yes, you can. You can solve the situation. He's no bigger than your shoe. He might bite you a little bit. He might run around. He might cause you a little bit of frustration, however at this point in time, you can control him. You can take your other shoe off and whack him over the head. You can kick him against the wall, or you could just step on him. You'll eventually get that little t-rex.
Now, five days down the road - or five months down the road, however long it takes - that t-rex is now as big as you. Although he's not even full grown, he poses a serious threat to you and everybody else around him. Let's go out another six months or however long it takes for him to be full-grown. Now the situation seems overwhelming. It seems like you can't defeat him. And yes, he will eat you alive.
In this scenario, the tyrannosaurus rex resembles the challenge that you're going through, an issue that you're going through that can spin out of control and take over your life. Can you see the similarities between a small t-rex and a big t-rex? Small t-rex: manageable. Big t-rex: out of control.
One of the first things we want to do when confronted with an issue, a challenge, or a situation, whatever it may be, big or small, is you want to jump all over it immediately, and you want to interrupt your pattern. Let's say it's an intermediate challenge. Say you just broke up with someone after two or three months. You had a lot of feelings for them. You were hoping things would go well. Then all of a sudden they just drop off the face of the earth. They won't return your phone calls. You're thinking that there was something wrong with you. And guess what, you're starting to get depressed. You're starting to mope around. You're starting to talk to all your friends about it. You're starting to check your cell phone frantically. You're starting to check your e-mail to see if you got one. You're wondering what they're doing. You're contemplating how you could have done it differently. Instead of beginning to fix yourself, repair, get on and move on. You're spending a lot of time on what I call the negative quicksand, or the misery pool. And you can swim in it all day long, because no one is coming to get you out. Only you can get yourself out of that one.
So, what is the first thing we want to do in this say intermediate challenge that we're having? You're feeling rejected. You're feeling like maybe you got your heart broken. However much attachment you had towards this person, it appears by all means to be over at this point. They're moving on with their life. The only thing you're not doing is moving on with yours in a healthy manner. Maybe you're trying, you're just not succeeding.
By interrupting your pattern what you're going to do is go on a happy binge. And we're going to list several things you can do for a happy binge. It also includes being spontaneous, so if you're not spontaneous you may not like this chapter. But you better learn to like it if you want to make a change. It DOES work. You HAVE TO do it.
Interrupting a pattern doesn't necessarily work with one small detail. You're doing things over and over and over again to sidetrack, to confuse your brain, to get yourself out of the thought pattern of poor me. Basically through staying busy and doing things you don't normally do, and surrounding yourself with a positive atmosphere, with positive qualities, it tends to erase what's going on in your life - it tends to lessen the effect and lessen the pain and help the healing process. Because it is incredibly hard to focus on being negative and miserable or being sad and depressed when you're constantly busy doing things on a spontaneous level, on a positive level, and keeping yourself busy on a daily basis. Ultimately, the time is healing you, but you're filling the time with fun activities.
Several steps to starting your "happy binge":
I like to start off by hammering yourself for the first three days. You should, especially if you're coming up on a weekend and you don't like to be alone or you're trying to fill the time, you should go rent some of the funniest movies, or go see a movie that you've never seen. Something that you've always wanted to see. Invite someone over that you haven't seen in a long time that you've been putting on the bottom of the list, whether it's your brother or your sister, a good friend of yours, a parent, or maybe one of your kids if your kids are 10, 15 or 20 years old and they like to sit through movies. For three days, watch a movie a day that makes you laugh.
During those three days, get rest that you normally don't get. Sleep an extra two hours. That's not depression, that's repairing your body. That's so you're at an optimal peak in energy. Because if you're not getting enough sleep, if you're staying up late and drinking and getting up early because you can't sleep, guess what, ultimately your body begins to break down and then you get sick. And that perpetuates depression.
During those three days, call up two people, and go somewhere you haven't gone in a long time. For instance, if I'm not doing anything I like to call one of my friends who I used to work in the police department with and let's go out to the beach and eat at one of the seafood restaurants for lunch on a Wednesday. We don't normally do this. It's a lot of fun, and I haven't seen you in a while, and everything in this experience will be positive. You're in a new place, it refreshes your mind. You're eating food you like. You're out near the beach. And you're with a friend you haven't seen in a while.
These are things you should do anyway in life, but now you're forcing yourself to do them, because it's taking the place of that fear and that pain and that depression. This is what you're going to substitute all these feelings for.
And the last thing I like to do in the first three days to try to recover, to try to repair, or to try to do damage control, is to go on a mini-adventure. If you live next to the ocean, one of the best things you can do is go rent a kayak and just start paddling. You don't even need to care where you're going. Just make sure there's not a hurricane in the ocean, make sure that the seas are adequate for kayaking and understand exactly how to kayak. I'm not advocating that you just jump out there not knowing what you're doing. But they'll tell you what to do once you get there. Or rent a bike and go on a nature trail. No matter where you live in this world, there's always something to do in a town near you, or a city, or even out in the country. Do something that you haven't done before but you've wanted to do in the past.
Numerous things can fall under mini-adventure. You can go for a very long bike ride. You can go rollerblading and pack your lunch that day and then go to the local rec center and swim in the pool. That's a mini-adventure if you're not doing it all the time. It's not called a workout at that point. Going kayaking. Going on a fishing trip. Renting a fishing charter with a bunch of other people and going out in the middle of the ocean or the middle of the lake and going fishing. Going paintballing. That was one of the craziest experiences I ever had before I did it. A lot of fun. You've got a lot of people shooting guns at you, and you're running and diving behind bunkers, and hoping not to get shot. You don't do that on a daily basis. It's a lot of fun, and it really breaks the routine. It interrupts that negative pattern that you've got going on.
Let me demonstrate what we're actually trying to achieve here. By killing the monster when it's small and by interrupting your pattern - follow this scenario with me. And this is exactly how this chapter will play out. You're in a serious business meeting. You're looking across the table at your opposition or at your boss. Everything is very tense. Everyone is complaining about the budget. People are worried. The drama is high. Attitudes are down. And all of a sudden you hear a cell phone ringer go off, and it's the theme song from the BeeGees, Staying Alive. Can you just picture it? Everyone is so serious. Nobody is lightening up. And all of a sudden you hear Staying Alive coming on by the BeeGees on somebody's cell phone. Immediately everybody changes their attitude. Immediately people begin to smile.

It's not that bad. Lighten up. It's an interruption of an intense pattern. Everybody was intensely focused on being down, or focusing on the negative. Or they were just focusing on fixing a challenge, but they just couldn't get out of a rut, and they needed something to make them smile.
So that three days of an intense Happy binge is one of the first things you can do to interrupt that negative pattern.