Ep #45: Solving Life's Problems with the One-Two Method
episode summary
No one escapes life's annoyances and difficulties. My secret (not so secret?) weapon is the one-two method. Listen to this episode and learn to change your situation or change your mind. Try it out the next time your kids have a half-day of school or you're in the longest grocery store line in the history of the world.
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CHAPTERS:
3:54 - The One-Two Method
9:16 - Using the One-Two Method with Crabby Teens
listen to the episode:
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Hey, I'm Michelle Gauthier and you're listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast. Hello friends, today we are going to be talking about a method that you can use to solve any problem of any kind. Now, it's not always going to immediately solve the entire problem, but I guarantee it will make you feel better in the moment, which will enable you to take the steps that you need to solve the problem. The method is called the one-two method. When I came up with this, I was like oh, I love that. It's like a one-two punch. Then I thought to myself but what is a one-two punch really? I've only done boxing the one time, and I think I talked about it on the podcast, so I looked it up in case you're wondering. Here's what it is: a sequence of two quick punches, a jab with the left hand, followed at once by a hard blow from the right. When I read that, I was like, "I don't hate that". I think that's exactly what we're doing to a problem, with no actual punching involved, of course, unless you're in a desperate situation. So that's what we're going to learn how to do today - is to give problems the one-two punch or the one-two method. Sometimes using both of the steps helps. Sometimes you only need the one or the two, but I am going to give you all the details on how to solve everything from the small annoyances in life to the bigger problems in life. Before I jump into that, though, I want to tell you that today is the day that group coaching registration opens. This current round of group coaching will start - we'll have our first class on March 1st, and it's a 12-week program, so it goes to almost the end of May, so you will be ready for summer. If you join this 12-week group, your mindset will be clear. You will have solved one of your biggest problems and you will be feeling good by the time summer starts. I'm going to give you some of the details about the group coaching in case you are considering doing it, and I hope you are. Like I said, it's 12 weeks. Every week, you will get a video and exercises to do from me. So, for example, what I've done is I've taken everything that I work with my one-on-one clients on, all of the methods that I teach, all of the exercises that we do, and I've put them into bite-sized pieces. So each of the 12 weeks, you will learn a concept or a tool, or both, and then you will journal about those with the prompts in your beautiful workbook that is also included as part of the group coaching. So you'll get those videos on a Saturday; you can do them anytime that you want before the following Friday, which is when we have group coaching. So we will have our group coaching on Fridays at noon central time. So on Fridays you will come to the group, you will have watched the videos and completed your workbook, and then you can ask me anything, tell me anywhere that you're stuck and I will coach you so that you do not feel stuck anymore and you are able to solve your number one problem. One of the things we work on in coaching right off the bat is to figure out what you want your life to look like. So you start focusing on how you want it to be instead of how it is now. So every week we are just working towards that goal, for you to get there. Registration is going to be open, starting this morning, which is February 12th, and ending on February 15th. So if you are interested, act quickly. The group is limited in size, so if you feel like this is the place for you, come and join us. There's more details at the link below in the show notes. Okay, back to our boxing lesson with the one-two method. So here's how you're gonna do this. The first piece of the one-two method. The one is to change the situation going forward, and I'm gonna explain what that means. And the second is to change the way you're thinking about the situation. So, for example, I realized - and I sent out an email about this last week - it got to be almost the end of January and I realized that I had worked out four times in the month of January. Now, for me, I like to work out three to four times a week. So I realized that and thought, oh my goodness, this is a problem, what is going on? So I have my two options. My number one is to change the situation going forward. So when I realized I had this problem, I could just start working out more. One of the methods that I use is to sign up for classes ahead of time and then, once I'm signed up, I'm much more likely to go. But honestly, I wasn't quite ready for that, because it has been a busy month and I am very strict on not becoming overwhelmed, and so I just didn't quite feel ready to commit the time that it would take to get my workouts back up to where I wanted them to be. So, changing the situation going forward, I will and have plenty of times eventually done, but that was not the solution in the moment. So the number two option is to change the way that I'm thinking about the problem right now. So when I initially realized I had done four workouts in January, I was like, oh crap, this is a problem. I need to change this. How did I not notice this? Why am I not working out? What's going on with my schedule? I had all kinds of negative thoughts, a lot of them about myself, and how I was spending my time, which, honestly, is just BS, because I have been doing lots of things that I want to do in January and I'm proud of the progress that I've made in many areas. So the way that I changed the way that I was thinking about it is to realize - and this is using the gap versus gain thinking; I've talked about that book a lot on this podcast - is looking at what I *did* do instead. So, "I worked out four times in January" could be a positive thought as easily as it could be a negative thought, and working out four times matters. I haven't lost my habit. I have such a habit of working out, so I haven't lost my habit. My habit's just on pause or slow down. (It's not on pause because I'm still going sometimes.) And I need to tell my brain this sometimes, and this is just a good thought to keep handy, which is, "this is not an emergency, everything is fine". Sometimes, when we realize we have a problem, our brain goes straight to like, oh my goodness, you can even feel it in your body. Sometimes you can feel that stress and overwhelm takeover. So, using a thought like everything is fine, this is not an emergency, it just reminds you to calm down, reminds your body to calm down. So that's one example. Another example would be, let's say, you're having a tough interaction with someone. Maybe it's your boss calling after hours and you really don't want to talk about work at that time, or your teenager having major attitude before school in the morning. Of course, that's a fake example. My teenagers would never, ever do that. Just kidding. One of them is really, really good at that. So if you're having an interaction with someone and it's stressful, like someone is talking to you in a way that is outside of your boundaries or the way that you allow people to talk to you, you have this one-two method. Option number one is to change the situation going forward. So a rule that I have in my house and I may have even talked about this on the podcast before is just, essentially, you can't talk to me like that. You can be upset, you can be frustrated, you can be mad, you can have any feeling you want, but you have to be able to communicate. You can't take it out on me. So if I'm in that situation where someone in my house is talking to me in a way that is not productive, I will just walk away and go in my room. I learned this from my mom, actually, my mom used to do this to us when we were teenagers and we would get infuriated because, of course, when we were little, she'd just send us to our rooms. But then when she would go to her room and shut the door and we couldn't get in, then we would get super mad. But it's a way for you to keep your own peace. So if I'm gonna change the situation going forward, I can just say "okay, I hope you have a great day at school, I'll see you when you get home, I love you" and just go in my room, lock the door and that's that. So I've solved the problem by changing the situation. Number two way that I could do is just change the way that I think about it right now. So I could be thinking okay, someone's feeling stressed, she must be feeling stressed, he must be feeling stressed, they're leaving in a few minutes. I'm just gonna do everything I can to help them get out the door and I'm not gonna make a big issue of this right now. So when you're hearing that, you might be thinking, oh my gosh, I would never pick that option. That's cool. You can choose whichever one of these options work for you. Sometimes option two in that situation is the best one to choose for me, but you get to choose for you. Another example - this is kind of a funny one. As I was preparing for the podcast, I was writing down all the things that have been getting on my nerves lately. So you guys are getting a list of what has been getting on my nerves and how I've been working through it. But this is random, but it has been driving me crazy. It's been cold here for probably a month. We had some snow, it's been rainy a lot and our garage has just this little part where there must be - you can't even see it, but there must be a dip - because there's constantly a puddle in the middle of our garage and it's right between where I park and where my son parks, and I can't get to my own car without walking through what is now muddy water, essentially. So every time I get out or walk out to the car I'm like, oh, I gotta go around the other way or try to jump across this puddle, but honestly, it's too big to jump across. Or when I get out of my car, I'm gonna walk this muddy water into my house if I walk through it. So when I have my two options, one is to change the situation going forward. We have tried to figure out what is happening with this puddle. Sometimes we will move the cars out and sweep the water out, but the truth is in the winter it's just kind of there and it's not the end of the world, it's just annoying. So changing the situation going forward, I mean, I can't really avoid it. If I wanted to change the situation, I could park outside, which, if you live somewhere cold and potentially snowy, you know what that means - that's like a definite no. I could also walk around the other way, which means like shimming past a whole bunch of stuff, but it's not, there's not a great option for changing the situation going forward. Or, I can change the way that I think about it right now. So one thing that I can change is just to remind myself - and I have been thinking about this every time I go in and out of my car - one of these days it's going to be Saturday and it's going to be sunny and the weather's going to be nice, and I'm going to back both of the cars out and we are going to clean our garage and get it all dry, and it's going to be lovely because this, too, shall pass. This is not a long-term, permanent situation. I'm not going to get irritated with it every time I see it. And this kind of thinking, or this application of the one-two method, can work for being in traffic. When you're in traffic, it's a great example of if you wanted to change the situation going forward, you could maybe like take a different route the next day, but in the moment you're kind of stuck in it. So changing the way you think about it, like this, too, shall pass, or having a thought like, I have plenty of time today, I'm actually not in a rush. Those kinds of things can help in that situation. Same for long lines, same for cold temperatures, h alf days. My daughter has a half day today. I've seen a few memes about this on Instagram and it makes me laugh, and it's so true. It's like okay, so you help them get all ready for school and then they go to school and then they're back like 45 minutes later. It's not really true, but it does kind of feel like that after a long month of January where one of my kids has been a home sick a bunch, there's been lots of holidays, etc. I just want them to both go to school for the whole entire day. So, changing the situation going forward, I don't know, maybe I can look for a school that doesn't have half days, but it's pretty much out of my control, so I'm just going to make it mean nothing. I'm going to just think about it differently, like okay, that's cool, not a big deal she can enjoy, I don't know, watching TV for the afternoon while I'm working or something to that effect. So the moral of the story here is you always have a way, in the moment, and long- term, to make a problem feel better or to just solve the problem entirely by using the one-two method. First, ask yourself: can I change the situation? Number two: can I change the way that I think about it right now? The answer to one of those two questions is always yes. Sometimes both of them are a yes and sometimes one of them is a yes, but either way, you can make progress and feel better in the moment. Okay, that's it for this week. Do not forget to sign up for group coaching. I would absolutely love to have you and I will see you next week.
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