Since I know many of you are going through the ringer about your love-life or life in general I’m going to share a technique/experiment with you. I call it “The dark room” but most of my friends I’ve shared it with have dubbed it “The corner table” or “That damn corner table“. Whatever you call it it’s an effective way to sort the wheat from the chaff in our lives and gain one of the most valuable things any of us can attain. And that’s “perspective”. The only requirement is a quiet spot to sit or lay down. Since many of you are up at 2 am anyway usually in your heads this should be no problem for you, and an ideal time too because having the room you’re sitting in dark is the ideal…
The first thing you need to do once you’re comfortable is create an imaginary room in your mind. Preferably a room you’ve never been in before. I usually picture a cabin in the mountains just as an example. Could even be a room you’ve seen on TV or something. BUT NOT a room in your home or one you’re in often. It must be as unique as possible.
Then imagine yourself sitting in a chair in the center of that room. The now imagined room can be lit in fact it’s ideal if it is.
Then begin to fill that room ONLY with things that bring you joy. Notice I said JOY, not love. It could be anything, a dog, a cow, a vase, something from childhood you no longer own, or an old friend from way back, it doesn’t matter. For me it’s usually my guitars and record collection and things of that nature, but I also put Goose Pond in there which was where we used camp when I was a kid etc… You get the idea, just dig deep and find everything you can to fill it with of everything in your life that’s ever brought you joy. It can even be a person who has passed away that you miss. It doesn’t matter as long as it makes you happy.
Once that’s complete sit in it for a bit. Just sit there in all that nostalgic joy, feel it, let it flow through you. I usually suggest at least 5 minutes, but hey sometimes I just do this experiment and stop here at this point and just stay in the joy room.. LOL .. But I digress… Feel the joy of everything in there, really soak it in. If you have to have a favorite song playing on your headphones as you do this experiment. Music can really help bring out the joy, it works with our energy and the water in our body, it’s very powerful. For me it’s always The Beatles “Something”, That song is my go to for fond memories. Whatever you do to get there make that room a wonderful place and you’re just sitting at the center of it soaking it all in. There’s nothing in there that upsets you or pisses you off.
THEN, right at the peak of you feeling all of this joy and nostalgic happiness start letting in the things you excluded from your immediate life only. Maybe it’s a spouse or a friend or a pile of bills who knows. The point is start letting in the excluded items people or things one at a time (and that’s very important). One at a time. And feel how they make you feel, feel what they do to the joy you were feeling. What does that one thing you’ve let in do to the joy in the room? If it doesn’t have an effect let it stay and roam around the room or sit on a table or whatever. IF it ruins the joy in any way send it to the back corner table behind you for a timeout. Do this with each previously excluded thing you let in. See if it has an affect on the energy and either corner table it or keep it.
At the end of the experiment if you did this properly you’ve sorted some things. You’ve cleared you mind of 8 of swords overthinking and in a way created a file cabinet in your mind. In one drawer joy. In the other shit! At this point you at least know what needs to be dealt with. You know what specifically is making you unhappy and you also more importantly know what makes you happy. You gained perspective because you finally had happiness to compare the unhappiness to. This is powerful because we don’t often have this, and so the unhappiness rules the roost shall we say…
What often happens when we’re unhappy or rebuilding our life after an upset of any kind is the negative energy takes over and creates everything from pain to confusion to depression to self-doubt and everything in between. Negative energy feeds itself, it doesn’t need anything from you to grow. Positive energy needs to be fed like a pet. That said, negative energy in affect is more powerful than positive although technically it’s not. It just seems that way if we lack perspective. Sorting things is the trickiest part for any therapist in fact. What most find is the person coming to them has jumbled everything up in their mind and the negative has become so strong from feeding on itself that it actually begins to eat the positive energy too.. This is a danger point that often can lead to drastic measures like suicide for example. Or at the very least binge drinking or pill popping.
This sorting experiment is very powerful. So powerful in fact I’ve given to friends for over a decade now and 4 of them have gotten divorced because of it, and one of them actually changed her whole life because of it and literally packed up her whole life and moved because one of her happy moments in the Joy room portion of the experiment was her parent’s lake house. And when she brought her then current home into the room during the let the shit in one by one phase it as she put it “instantly destroyed the joy“. Same basic story for the spouse/divorce ones as well. When they brought the spouse in he ruined all of it. With one saying “he would have hated everything in there“.
If done honestly and if you sit in the joy room once it’s built long enough this is a very powerful experiment. I recommend sitting in the joy portion of the experiment as long as you can. Really soak it in. And like I said you can also just go back to it anytime and make it almost a vision board of sorts in your mind. When we’re sad or stressed we feel no joy. Joy must be felt. It’s the counter-balance for the unhappy stuff. Either way remember when you do begin to bring the other excluded things and people etc. into the room to see the effect it has on the joy make sure you bring them in one at a time. And give yourself a chance to FEEL each thing you let in. If it kills that joy or makes you sad or stressed or anxious in any way send it to the fucking corner table and forget about it. Recenter and get back to the joy. Anything at the table you simply pretend it’s not there once it’s at the table.
At the end of the experiment make a list of everything and everyone sitting at that corner table FIRST. Then SECONDLY make a list of everything and everyone you brought into the room that brought you joy. Keep those lists.. The written word is very powerful. The brain processes the written word differently than it does thoughts or the spoken word. Writing things down to sort them out after feeling them is a powerful way for your brain to keep things straight and it also aids in preventing the negative from continuing to feed on the positive.
I hope this helps a few of you out. I’ll be honest with you, my read on those of you I know from Twitter etc. is pretty much that you’re THE SHIT!! Whatever ends up at that corner table…. is in fact just SHIT!!
–Cheers
