Pattern #2 – Know 1-up from 1-down
Being 1-up or 1-down
Having tracked my own morale for many years, I’ve found that a simple way to summarize my overal mental state has been to determine whether or not I feel 1-up or 1 down.
1-up is a positive state, where you are 1 step ahead, in a sense. You can handle the present moments needs, and you are ready for the next moment. You have a reserve of positive sentiment, and have the energy to be kind, compassionate and helpful to the people around you.
1-down is the opposite, a negative step. 1 step behind the curve. You are trying to catch up, slightly or severely overloaded, and unprepared for the current or next moments. You have a deficit of positive sentiment, and are hungry for energy. In order to get out of this state, you need to recieve energy from some source, and in the meantime you can’t afford to give your own energy out. This results in defensive emotions: anger, impatience, sadness, fear.
It’s from a state of 1-up or 1-down that we can then drill down a bit further into the more multidimensional characteristics of mood. But in a sense, beyond being 1-up or 1-down, the rest of the details aren’t quite as important.
What kind of beacon are you?
We all have our internal states relatively closed off from the outside world, barely even accessible to our own conscious minds most of the time. And yet, we are all beacons sending off a signal of some sort. Openness, closedness, compasssion, selfishness, love, hatred, strength, weakness. The science of beacons is as simple as reading body language, facial expressions, posture, tone of voice, etc.
We’re all highly sensitive to the energy that others give off. And yet, this sensitivity is on a subconscious level most of the time. We don’t know that we’re reading body language and realize that our usually chipper friend is having an off-day, and yet, if we think about it for a second, we can pretty much zero in on anyone’s energy pretty quickly.
A lot of our energy is tied up in our personalities. We often equate energy with the person themselves, so much so that we don’t even question that some people are beacons of strength and compassion and others are beacons of negativity and insecurity. We just say that that’s who they are. And yet, some days, the people who always have a strong beacon might be a weak beacon. And we don’t doubt that they’re still themselves, we just sense that something is wrong. Or, in the case that an insecure beacon one day starts being a compassionate beacon, we question them on what has changed. What caused the beacon to shift?
What changes you?
What flips you from 1-up to 1-down? And vice versa. Which state feels more like your natural state? And what is keeping you there? These are very important personal questions to answer, all the more so because we will feel highly attached to our “natural” state, even if it is a negative natural state.
Most likely, you will spend some time 1-up and 1-down in any given day. And finding the triggers that flip you one way or another will be very enlightening. Drinking coffee may flip you to 1-up in the morning. Or it may be a good breakfast. Or it might be a donut. In any case, the effectiveness of the initial flip often becomes an attachment. Resulting crashes or withdrawals are not always interpreted as being caused by the donut. It may just be a sign that we need another thing to trigger us back up. Poor understanding of what changes you, and the lifespan of those changes could result in being highly attached to triggers that have very short lifespans or that leave you off feeling worse than you had before. Strong understanding of what changes you will lead to the creation and maintenance of healthy triggers, and eventually a balanced sense of self that rarely dips into 1-down and therefore rarely needs drastic measures to be made.
How can you measure this?
Few of us have the level of self-awareness required to notice our emotional triggers and 1-up to 1-down transitions at the moment that they are occuring. But watching for the most obvious triggers and slowly working your way to less obvious ones is a simple and good habit to make.
Start by checking in every few minutes and asking yourself whether you’re 1-up or 1-down. If you check in and realize that you’ve flipped since the last check-in, think back on what caused the flip. And then think about what emotional chain was set off, in what order of emotions. Becoming aware of these triggers will be a reward in itself that becomes the foundation for learning how to dance around triggers and stay 1-up as often as possible.
March 3rd, 2009 at 8:02 am
Interesting post, thank you. I’ve been thinking of my internal mental state as a “dosha disk”. The disk has 3 points corresponding to air, earth, and fire. (Agitation and inability to concentrate indicate (too much) air. Anger and aggression indicates (too much) fire. Heaviness and lethargy indicates (too much) earth.)
My mental state at any moment is a ball somewhere on the disk. I have a preferred locus that can be visualized as a depression in the disk – my ball will tend to settle there all things being equal. This location represents one’s “dosha”.
Anything you consume will push your ball in some direction on the disk. Music may push toward air, as does any computer usage. Exercise pushes towards fire, as does hot and spicy food. Meditation and yoga strongly push toward earth and groundedness and coolness.
I’ve just started playing around with this metaphor, and wonder how far to extend it. For example, one could say that the mass of your ball can determine how much effort you must expend to move it – and how stable it is once it finds a spot.
With this metaphor it is possible to take concrete action according to your own personality traits. You simply imagine the disk, locate the point on the disk which is your preferred spot, locate your current location, and then do the things that push toward your preferred spot (and avoid the things that push away from it).
March 9th, 2009 at 3:24 am
How self-aware are you? Can you tell 1-up from 1-down? Find out what those are here: http://bit.ly/BFh1S
March 9th, 2009 at 3:33 am
RT @mattcutts: How self-aware are you? Can you tell 1-up from 1-down? Find out what those are here: http://bit.ly/BFh1S
March 9th, 2009 at 3:35 am
RT @mattcutts: How self-aware are you? Can you tell 1-up from 1-down? Find out what those are here: http://bit.ly/BFh1S
March 9th, 2009 at 3:39 am
RT @mattcutts: How self-aware are you? Can you tell 1-up from 1-down? Find out what those are here: http://bit.ly/BFh1S
March 9th, 2009 at 3:39 am
RT @mattcutts: How self-aware are you? Can you tell 1-up from 1-down? Find out what those are here: http://bit.ly/BFh1S
March 9th, 2009 at 3:56 am
RT @mattcuttsHow self-aware are you? Can you tell 1-up from 1-down? Find out what those are here: http://bit.ly/BFh1S
March 9th, 2009 at 3:56 am
RT @mattcutts: How self-aware are you? Can you tell 1-up from 1-down? Find out what those are here: http://bit.ly/BFh1S
March 9th, 2009 at 4:22 am
How self-aware are you? Can you tell 1-up from 1-down? Find out what those are here: http://bit.ly/BFh1S RT @mattcutts:
March 9th, 2009 at 4:39 am
RT @mattcutts: How self-aware are you? Can you tell 1-up from 1-down? Find out what those are here: http://bit.ly/BFh1S
March 9th, 2009 at 10:23 am
RT @mattcutts: How self-aware are you? Can you tell 1-up from 1-down? http://bit.ly/BFh1S
March 9th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
[...] Gaining self-knowledge in a binary fashion When I was in high-school English class (hey Mr Gooding!), we wrote what seemed like a thousand essays on Emma Woodhouse and her rocky path to self-knowledge, gently guided by the indefatigable Mr Knightley. As the over-analytic but rather naive Emma progresses through the novel, she gradually begins to understand her own feelings as well as better empathizing with those of others – ending of course in marriage. Unfortunately, Austen fails to provide a set of practical tools for understanding oneself in the absence of a 19th century social scene and an appropriate mentor. Luckily, such tools to exist and can occasionally quite helpful, particularly on family occasions or in other stressful situations. I stumbled upon this one today – the 1-up, 1-down method for consciously assessing your mood, on the Enjoymentland blog: [...]
March 10th, 2009 at 6:21 am
I like this concept of feeling 1-up or 1-down. http://bit.ly/BFh1S (via @mattcuts)
March 11th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
One step up or down on energy: http://tinyurl.com/bamezn