“And how are you feeling?” asked Patrick. “Oh, I’m grand.” Augustus Waters smiled with a corner of his mouth. “I’m on a roller coaster that only goes up, my friend.” ― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
Even we experience these roller coaster rides ourselves. And if you've observed, they come in phases or patches. Either you're going up like there's no coming back or you're on a never-ending descent. These phases transition into each other no doubt, but there are times in our lives when these phases are significant. And here's a secret : We can more or less control these phases!
It all starts with a simple action. Either you did something good that caused you a feeling of elation or you did something bad enough to ruin your day. This was your initial action. The first domino in line. You carried this feeling forward to the next thing that you did. And it had a significant impact on that as well. The first domino has now fallen onto the second one. And these dominoes are now likely to keep falling in a chain unless your run out of dominoes or you create a barrier to stop this chain.
The result of your initial action was carried forward to influence your next action causing you to re-act to generate the same feeling.
Your action induces a reaction that helps you re-act. (Is this getting too confusing? haha )
This is how the action reaction / re-action effect works. Mark Manson calls this 'The Feedback Loop from Hell' and has a 9 page long explanation about it. (Here's the link to his book 'The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck' : https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28257707-the-subtle-art-of-not-giving-a-f-ck?from_search=true)
I'm not trying to say that we can forever be on a roller coaster that only goes up; it's not a novel we're living in. Nevertheless if we adopt a more internalised locus of control and a sunny outlook towards life, we can more or less create a consistent phase where we let our good actions impact our further acts. Its a habit that can be slowly incorporated in our lives, intentionally and steadily to let the domino effect occur in a desirable way.
As I said, it all starts with an intentional action. Once this domino effect starts you will notice a change in the way you look at your life and handle things. To-do lists convert to want-to-do lists. There's a growth in the quantity and quality of work that gets done. And even if this domino effect gets interrupted by circumstances (self or external), you manage to find the courage to work your way through it and get the domino effect running again. It is so satisfying to live your life this way. The feeling itself is the reward.
I want to conclude this post by sending some compassion and courage your way so that you can start to incorporate these little things in your life. They make it so much more meaningful. I hope that this post encourages you to set the dominoes in your life in place. Have a good day!
This post is carried forward from my earlier posts that talk about adopting an internal locus of control and the power of sunshine. If you want to read more about that, here are the links : https://saveourselves.home.blog/2019/01/20/the-power-of-sunshine/ https://saveourselves.home.blog/2019/01/06/getting-the-year-started/
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