Look for the Bright Spots

When going through difficult times of change, it's easy to forget that there are bright spots out there, guiding the way. (Even if our mind tries to ignore them...)

First, A Look Behind the Scenes

Hello, and greetings from a recliner in my neurologist’s office. I’m getting my first infusion of a new-to-me MS drug. In my nearly 10 years with the disease, I’ve never had an infusion, which is where you sit for an hour—or many hours—with an IV in your most opportune vein and a slow drip of a heavy duty pharmaceutical making it’s way into your body. They say this will be good, they say that people do well on this drug. You also have to sign many waivers acknowledging some heavy duty possible side effects. So, is it fitting that I brought my computer to write this week’s newsletter on resilience and getting through life’s hard moments? Yes. But did I also take the first hour to text with friends, scroll IG and cry a little? Sure. Because, getting through hard moments doesn’t mean you look like a superhero while you do so. It just means you do what you can, with what you have, putting one foot in front of the other just just enough to keep moving, if even a little.

Okay. Now, on to looking for the bright spots when we need to get through tough times….

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Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Program

When we’re in the dark, we look for the light. Literally and metaphorically. 

I’ll correct myself to say, we almost always look for the light when we’re in the dark. There are exceptions. Like, when we’re in a cozy room trying to fall asleep. That’s a time when we want darkness. Or in a movie theater, we want a deep cloak of dark to blanket the audience so everything falls away and we can feel alone, at one, with the story on the screen. So, yes, there are times when we enjoy the literal dark.

But most the time, we need some illumination to figure out our way forward.

That could be when we’re camping and need the moon to show a path, or, figuratively, we could be in a deep mental hole, so deep down we’re not even sure which way is up, and need to strike a match to see our way forward.

Today we’re talking about those times of figurative darkness in our lives.

When we feel nearly blinded by a depth of fear or emotion or unknowing that sits on our chest, fills our mind and blindfolds our eyes.

It’s that type of depression-inducing void that we can find ourselves in when everything that was familiar falls away. I.e. during times of great change.

This is what makes changing our circumstances so FREAKING hard…we don’t yet know our direction and where the path forward is.

AND to make matters even more difficult, as we try to piece together our orientation, trying to figure out where we are and how to move forward, our lovely brains love to focus on all that isn’t working instead of what is.

Science shows that we preoccupy ourselves with the which is not illuminated.

Let me explain.

Photo by Thor Alvis on Unsplash

The research

In their book Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, authors Chip and Dan Heath explain key factors for, and misconceptions about, change.

To quickly sum up some of the relevant factors from their book:

1. Our brain has “two independent systems working at all times.” There’s the emotional, impulsive side and the rational, conscious side. You might remember these as Freud’s Id and Super Ego (with the Ego mediating them in between). Some term for these are the Doer and the Planner. Throughout their book, the Heaths use terms created by a psychologist in The Happiness Hypothesis: the Elephant and the Rider. The Elephant gives in to temptation and emotional cues while the Rider tries to lead and direct toward rational, sensical, long terms goals. But the Rider is in no means perfect. While the Elephant wants to throw its weight toward wants and desires, when its directed well, the Elephant is what gets us over the finish line. The Elephant is the backbone and forward motion that make the Rider’s rational aspirations come to life.

2. When looking at how to change, we have to realize that our Elephant can be distracted by desires. BUT ALSO that the Rider has some serious pitfalls, too…namely that that part of our brain loves to spin its wheels. It loves to think on a problem (and think and think and think) and may not move into action to *solve* the problem.

3. In all of the obsessing that our rational brain does, it forgets to obsess about what’s *working.*

   The Rider loves to contemplate and analyze, and, to make matters worse, his analysis is almost always directed at problems rather than bright spots. (You can probably recall a conversation with a friend who agonized for hours over a particular relationship problem. But can you remember an instance when a friend spent even a few minutes analyzing why something was working so well?) (The Rider’s) analytical qualities can be extremely helpful, obviously—many problems get solved through analysis—but in situations where change is needed, too much analysis can doom the effort.¹ …In tough times, the Rider sees problems everywhere, and “analysis paralysis” often kicks in. The Rider will spin his wheels indefinitely unless he’s given clear direction….And that’s why bright spots are so essential, because they are your best hope for directing the Rider when you’re trying to bring about change.

What it means

Our brains love to solve problems. Mine does, that’s for sure! Over and over again. Middle of the night, let’s think about alllll the problems we can solve. (Call this anxiety-induced insomnia or insomnia-induced anxiety…. My brain his here for all of that.)

There’s a validation and satisfaction to solving a problem, so our brain (my brain, at least) will spend so much time in pursuit of solving a problem that it gets distracted by the problem, and not the solution. I will say that again, we like to look at the problem and not the solution.

But when we’re presented with a big challenge or the need to change our circumstances, we MUST focus on the bright spots, on those things that are working.

In Switch, the Heaths give an example from a newly appointed local lead for Save the Children in Vietnam, who was tasked with solving childhood malnutrition in the region in just six months. The problems where evident and well known—poor sanitation, universal poverty, and clean water not readily available. These were legitimate reasons for widespread malnutrition…but they weren’t the answer to solving the problem. To change these factors would take years and truckloads of bureaucratic red tape. He had six months to make a difference in children’s lives. So, he didn’t fixate on the root causes for the malnutrition, he started looking for the children who were healthy in spite of these challenges. Because even with these pervasive issues, there were some healthy children in each village. He zeroed in on the Bright Spots and found common factors that were producing the few healthy children. Then he replicated what had previously just been chance success stories.

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When I was diagnosed with MS, I didn’t know about the Elephant and he Rider, but I knew about Fear and how pervasive it is as a controlling force in our minds and souls. I’d been a meditation guide, leading groups (small business entrepreneurs, people with very astute Riders who were often victims of over analysis) through fear-releasing exercises (like the one I talk about here). I used this practice for myself during and after the diagnosis. I cut through the negative considerations of the diagnosis and instead, focused on the Bright Spots, even though I didn’t know that’s what I was doing.

1. I realized that I was diagnosed at a time when medications and understanding about the disease were much more developed than they had been even just 20 years earlier.

2. I also was grateful that beyond conventional medications, people like Dr. Terry Wahls where sharing insight about how food and environmental factors can shape our disease progression.

3. And I (somehow) ninja-ed my mind into seeing this as a call to understand myself, my body and its needs more fully.

I resisted letting my Rider over analyze that which I couldn’t control and put my effort into what *was* within my capabilities. I changed my life in almost every way possible. Not just my diet; I left the life I’d loved in New York City to pursue a lifestyle that was an easier pace, a more gentle existence in Texas, surrounded by nature, big skies and a bright sun, animals and family. I focused on what I had instead of what I didn’t.

In Conclusion

Life will surprise you. It can hit hard when we least expect it. Or, it can just be mildly yet profoundly difficult to show up for amid the grind day in and day out. But in any situation that we’re presented with, we have the option to focus on the Bright Spots.

Keep looking. They’re there.

x M

1. MIC DROP.