Hi, everybody. I’m Mike Staver. This is Mondays with Mike, a weekly video series where I answer questions from people just like you.
“What causes a person to struggle with embracing or fully experiencing the joy or good feelings about a success or great experience? I have a friend that cannot experience joy or excitement for long because they anticipate the other shoe to drop.”
Mike: What do you think Marty?
Marty: You know, I feel like that that speaks a lot to potentially their past experiences. And when something has gone right in their life and all of a sudden either they have a setback or, you know, something really bad does happen and they’re traumatized from it. And, you know, that
just brings that experience up for them. I definitely have people in my life.
Mike: Yes. Yeah, I think so, too. You know, some time ago we did our Mondays with Mike on how important stories are. And I think usually what happens is that if you can’t embrace joy for long, if you can’t hold on to it, at least with positive memories, there’s probably been a time in your life where you learned that good things don’t last, but bad things are just around the corner.
Now to be honest with you, all of us have our share of ups and downs. All of us have our share of good times and bad times. Difficult times and happy times. It isn’t a question of whether we do or we don’t. The question really is how do you manage those things? Can you store joy? Can you store positive memories in the memory bank so that you can fully immerse yourself in those stories?
So let me give you a phrase that I help clients with that might be helpful. “I don’t know what’s going to come next. But for now and for today, I’m going to feel this joyful moment.” Who knows what’s going to happen? But I call it delaying worry. Don’t worry about tomorrow until you fully experience it today. And maybe you can only do it for 5 to 10 minutes. But that’s a start and it will take practice.
Hope that’s helpful. Thank you, Marty. Always great working with you.
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