Check-In Time, with Ourselves: Patterns and 'Why Did I Do That?'
'Who has been steering the ship? Because now... I’m the captain of the ship. I am. Me.'
Patterns develop in our lives: helpful, less than helpful and problematic. We may not always recognize the latter two if we’re not pausing to assess our thinking, decisions and actions.
Creating a check-in time could be a way to unlock what isn’t working and why. It was a point that New York Times journalist Lulu Garcia-Navarro recently asked Sandra Oh, the Golden Globe, Primetime Emmy and Screen Actors Guild-award winning actress, about in regards to her sharing some of her personal writing.
“… one of your journal entries, and there’s a line in there I want to come back to,” Garcia-Navarro said to Oh. “You wrote that you thought maybe the journals could be ‘one fell swoop to see all the patterns, where I grew and how I didn’t.
"Why did I do that? Who has been steering the ship? Because now, on this back half of my life, I’m the captain of the ship. I am. Me."
Questions and reflection like this aren’t always top of mind and that, if not a mistake, can lead to missed opportunities.
“Periodically checking in on ourselves is necessary for evaluating our progress,” says Kim Rippy, a licensed professional counselor, trauma and anxiety specialist and practice owner at Keystone Therapy Group.
“In order to increase our chance of success and guide our progress, we establish smaller goals or checkpoints along the way. Reflecting on these smaller checkpoints is a great way to understand our progress or growth.”
It’s more than goals, Rippy points out. It’s learning what we’re doing, our habits.
“If we are challenging ourselves to improve our behaviors, we'll only be able to tell if our behaviors are actually improving if we checked in with ourselves along the way,” she explains. “That way, we can understand what is working, what isn't working and recalibrate as necessary to improve our chances of being successful.”
Examining where our life is and whether we are developing as we’d like or not is better done with moderation.
“It is beneficial to check in on ourselves,” says Kayla Meyer, a licensed professional counselor and psychotherapist who supports young adults at Kayla Meyer LPC, although she adds, “The frequency of checking in on ourselves is important to consider though.”
She explains that it can be overdone.
“Checking in too frequently can lead to unhealthy, obsessive behavior,” Meyer says. “Honestly, you're probably not going to see much change if you're checking in too frequently anyway.
“It is hard to say without the context of what specifically someone is trying to change, but I'd say somewhere between a weekly and monthly check-in is good.”
"Why did I do that," normally isn’t an automatic and simple question we ask of ourselves. We also don’t always answer accurately or honesty either.
There is, however, value in developing this as a habit.
“This is incredibly helpful,” Rippy says. “Asking ourselves ‘Why did I do that?’ helps us to reconnect with our emotional context at the time of that action, as well as our personal values and whether or not that action was aligned with our values.
“Understanding times where we act emotionally can help us learn how to cope with our emotions more effectively so that we can better act in line with our values.”
If it is perplexing or overwhelming to do so, going it alone isn’t the best path.
“I think unless the person is more psychologically-minded or very self-aware this can be a difficult question to answer,” Meyer says.
She points to a common challenge.
“If someone is curious about why they do the things they do and find that question difficult to answer, I recommend therapy. Sometimes, therapists know the right questions to ask and areas to explore to get the underlying issue behind behaviors,” Meyer details.
Oh’s mindset revealed her confidence in the agency she possesses in impacting the unwanted and harmful patterns she might be repeating, at least at this point, “on this back half of my life, I’m the captain of the ship. I am. Me."
This understanding of one’s personal authority and power can feel empowering and is a smart conclusion.
“Extremely vital,” Meyer says. “Life is about acknowledging the areas of our life that we cannot control and taking action in the areas we can control. This is how we make peace with things beyond our control.
“Oftentimes with clients, when there is something outside of their control, we first, recognize it as being (such). Then we discuss how we acknowledge the feelings regarding whatever it may be and validate those feelings instead of sweeping them under the rug.”
Meyer details how this makes way for improvements.
“Then we might shift our focus to what we can control in this situation, or what might help us cope with whatever it is we cannot control,” she says. “For individuals who obsess over things they cannot control, they are fighting a losing battle.”
Continuing on the part of being the captain of one’s ship, Rippy had a thought come to her.
“In a way, this reminds me of the Stockdale Paradox,” she says. “The Stockdale Paradox was identified by Jim Collins, where an individual can both confront the brutal facts of their current reality, while they maintain unwavering faith that they will succeed in the end, no matter how distant that may be.”
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