Finding Your Power In A Chaotic World (Simple Tools 2/5)

Simple Tools for Challenging Times

These 5 lessons were developed by Dr. Jan Russell & Keziah Gibbons as the world went into lockdown in the Spring of 2020. The intention was to apply the tools of psychologically informed environments to help to empower people as we went through this state of uncertainty.

Although designed specifically for lockdown, & recorded in a cupboard due to limited resources, the tools are good & can be applied to any situation to ease pressure and increase a sense of agency.

Transcript

Hello and welcome back to session two of this psychologically informed practice for quarantine course,

Finding your power in a chaotic world.

When we are feeling trapped and uncertain it's important to create worthwhile outcomes for ourselves on a daily or even hourly basis.

This means taking a little time to think about what we really want within our restricted circumstance.

In this session you will learn a simple method to create goals that are valuable and which are within your gift.

I want to take a moment and really acknowledge here that your world may have been turned upside down in the last weeks.

Goals which you may not even have been consciously aware of as goals may have been removed from your control.

But even when we can't have control we can have some agency over managing and meeting our own needs.

Today's tool is a simple version of the goal ladder,

A coaching tool developed by Jan Russell and Graham Dexter and which we have used with effectiveness in various contexts.

Perhaps the most powerful example of goal ladder use that I have ever seen occurred the very first time I taught Pi.

We had a magic wand which Jan passed around the room and asked everyone to make a wish.

We asked our participants what they had wished for and I will never forget this,

This one lady told us with tears in her eyes,

I wish my dad wasn't dying.

Well this was a real and serious situation that was completely outside of this lady's control and unfortunately her wish was also well beyond our gift to grant.

Her father was seriously ill and she was about to lose him.

We couldn't save her dad but we could help this lady to regain some sense of control and some comfort in the times that were to come and here's how we did it.

Wanting her dad to stay alive was what we call a grand goal.

It's one of the big goals in life.

It's fairly high up on the goal ladder but there is a higher level which is pure or abstract goals.

If you're wondering about all this talk of ladders and levels by the way I will go into this in more detail in a moment but for now I just want to talk you through this particular lady's experience.

The question to discover the higher level pure or abstract goals is what would that get you?

This question always takes you up the goal ladder.

Now there were many things which a continued relationship with her living father would bring to this lady and one of the higher values that came up was love.

Now we know that love is a pure or abstract goal precisely because it is abstract.

It's not something material,

Something you can touch or hold and it's not a specific event.

It's an abstract concept albeit one imbued with great meaning.

As soon as this lady had an idea of the higher level goals which her wish could get for her we were able to support her in finding other ways to achieve that goal which were within her control.

The goal ladder has five levels and if you have a pen and paper handy you might like to write this down so that you can visualize it as we work with it.

The top level is pure or abstract goals.

Goals such as love,

Security,

Peace,

Health,

The intangible needs which all of our desires are geared towards meeting.

The next level down is grand goals.

These are big life goals,

A specific relationship,

A new house or job,

Traveling.

They are often semi abstract in nature but are different from the pure or abstract goals by being specific to you and your circumstances.

In the middle level is behavioral goals.

These are goals related to the kinds of behaviors which are associated with your grand goals.

When you have the grand goal what will you be doing?

Below that is strategies.

This is the how of your behavioral goals,

Ways in which you support those behaviors.

And the bottom rung of the goal ladder is micro strategies.

These are very specific actions which support your strategies and behaviors.

So we had this participant who had a grand goal beyond her control which was that she didn't want her father to die and an associated pure or abstract goal of love.

And from love on the top rung we were able to take her down the ladder.

So we asked her how many different ways might she experience more love in her life and she found some other grand goals and one of them was about tending to her relationship with her son.

So once she had this grand goal of tending to her relationship with her son we were able to ask her about what kinds of things might she be doing if she were to pursue that goal.

And so she came up with a behavioral goal which was of spending more time with her son.

At this point we start to ask how might you do that?

And for this lady the answer which is on the strategy level was to create an evening a week which was sacred time just for them no other commitments and no distractions.

So we now already had a very clear picture of something that this lady could do that was within her control to help her to fulfill that need for love in her life.

The final step was to take her down to the bottom rung and envisage some micro strategies.

Micro strategies are the details of how you do what you do and so in this case we had putting the time in the diary so that other appointments weren't made,

Switching off phones and finding specific activities that she and her son both enjoyed.

So the goal ladder is not some quick fix and it doesn't take away from the realities of life but what it can do is to help you to identify the psychological needs that those currently ungrantable wishes fulfill and give you specific and actionable ways to begin to meet those needs in ways which are within your control and to reframe your wishes towards the grantable while attuned to these needs.

Let's talk through another example related to the current crisis.

Let's say that I wish I could visit a loved one who is far away or perhaps nearby but one of us is quarantined.

This is a behavioural goal,

It's something that I want to do.

Now there are actually a couple of ways I might use the goal ladder to work with this wish.

The first is to just take it up one level.

So from the behavioural goal of visiting my loved one I might get to the grand goal of nurturing my relationship with this loved one.

Already just by going one step up I've created more options.

I might ask myself how many different ways can I think of of nurturing my relationship with this loved one and immediately I could come up with a few different behaviours which do precisely this.

Let's say staying in touch virtually,

Making plans for when we can meet up,

Helping to organise a support network around them.

Once I have a behavioural goal which works let's go with staying in touch virtually.

I can start to create some strategies which resonate with me.

Again there might be many options and let's say I go with the strategies of daily video calls,

Sending photos and messages.

My micro strategies to do this then might be about scheduling the video calls,

Finding specific photos to send,

Sending messages in a specific way.

So that's one way in which I might use the goal ladder to help me to reframe the currently unachievable behavioural goal of visiting my loved one into things I can do to continue nurturing the relationship.

The second way is once again to take it all the way to the top.

So I already know that the grand goal of this behavioural goal is to nurture this relationship.

I might ask myself what that gets me and there might be several things.

We worked with love in the previous example so let's say that one of the things that nurturing the relationship gives me is joy.

Once I know this I can ask myself how many different ways there are to have a little more joy in my life and that might give me several grand goals.

Perhaps let's say establishing a gratitude practice might be one of them and then I would take it down through the behavioural goals rung.

This might be writing down three things I'm grateful for every morning.

The strategies,

Dedicating a particular notebook and micro strategies,

Setting a reminder for myself to do the practice.

This is why it's so important to apply the goal ladder yourself and this is something I'll guide you through in just a moment.

Before we go into the practice there are a couple of points I would like you to bear in mind to get the most out of this practice.

The first is to move up the goal ladder first.

Try going up just one or two wrongs before coming down and if this doesn't work for you try again but this time going all the way to the top.

The second is that as you are coming down the goal ladder for each step ask yourself not only how can I have more of whatever it is that you've identified but also how many ways can I have more of what I want.

Then brainstorm.

Come up with at least five answers and let them be silly if you want to.

This is not because we want you to do the silliest behaviors and strategies although feel free to do that if you wish but because the act of brainstorming opens your mind up to more possibilities allowing you to come up with solutions that you might not otherwise have thought of.

And allow yourself to accept more of.

It may not be possible for me to be a hundred percent joyful today but it might be possible for me to find ways of being five,

Ten or even fifty percent more joyful than I'm feeling at this moment and that in itself is a gift and an improvement.

So the practice.

Grab a pen and paper and feel free to pause the audio after each stage.

Remember that when we write things down or say them aloud we activate different brain circuitry than when we just think them.

So the invitation is to engage your whole brain in this activity.

Firstly imagine that your pen is a magic wand.

Twirl it three times above your head to make a wish.

What do you wish for in this moment?

When you have your wish write it down.

Identify which rung on the goal ladder this wish belongs to.

Remember we have pure or abstract goals,

Grand goals,

Behavioral goals,

Strategies and micro strategies.

When you know where your wish lies take it up the goal ladder.

You do this by asking yourself what does that achieve for me?

Keep asking this until you have goals all the way up to your pure or abstract goal.

From here ask yourself how many ways are there for me to have more of this in my life?

How might this look in practice?

How might it sound?

What might I be thinking or doing differently?

Pause the audio and do this exercise now.

You can now if you like check your answers against the goal ladder.

Have you covered every rung?

If not what else might you add to what you have answered?

You now have some possible actions which you can take which are within your control to begin to fulfill your own needs and grant your own wishes.

And remember you can always come back and redo this practice whenever and wherever you need to.

Thank you so much for sharing this time with me and may you receive what you need from this tool now and in the future.

In the next session you'll be joining Jan on adult state or keeping your core in confined conditions.

Have the best possible day.

Reviews

Wonderful! If only I could get my magic wand 🪄 back in order. I guess it’s the ladder 🪜 for me. Thanks, Jan and Keziah 🤍🤍🤍