I sit here on a quiet fall morning, on the first day back after Thanksgiving contemplating the highs and lows that we all experience. 

In this case, I’m not thinking about the dramatic highs and lows – the ones we feel with the big successes or the profound losses–rather, those quite mundane daily ups and downs. 

The ones that have you say… What happened? Why am I in such a crappy mood? Or, I’ll take it but where did all this abundant joy and energy come from? 

You can be flying high one day, then wondering what happened the next. 

As a high-performer, you absolutely always get the work done no matter what even if you’re “in a bad mood”… but wouldn’t it be nice to understand how to get off this roller coaster? 

Although I’m still a work in progress (and I wouldn’t have it any other way), here’s how I step off the emotional roller coaster. 

First, a framework within which to understand the action you must take… 

We have an individual set-point. This is the mood, state, or level of well-being where you come back to over and over again. 

You go up a bit, then come back to your set point.

You go down a bit lower, then come up to your set point.

This set-point is your emotional norm. 

Even if this norm isn’t how you’d like to feel, you keep coming back to it.

Your norm is the known, conditioned, habituated Self. 

It’s the way of being that you’ve conditioned yourself to recognize as you.

She has the same complaints… same frustrations… same habits of thought… same perspectives… same reactions and actions… and the same conversations in her head. 

Here’s a good example…

I woke up in a GREAT mood. Then I went to get tea instead of coffee, a change I consciously decided to make yesterday…

And on my way to the kettle, I recognized a conversation in my head that was mopey and complaining. Not enough time… don’t want to do it… it’s going to take too long… and so on.

These are familiar thoughts of the old, Conditioned Self. 

But here’s the thing to know… These thoughts weren’t really related to the “tea rather than coffee” decision. Not at all.

It’s that my Conditioned Self felt I was too far above my set point so it engaged in an internal conversation of conditioned thinking about the most convenient topic at hand to bring me back to “myself.”   

This moment, when you realize that you’ve been hijacked by your Conditioned Self, is your moment of TRUTH and you have a DECISION to make…

Change or stay complicit with your Conditioned Self.

And it’s so seductively easy to keep thinking those habitual thoughts and taking those habitual actions because they feel right. You’re so used to thinking them that they’ve become your emotional comfort zone. 

And yet if you want off the roller coaster, you must intentionally change your thinking. 

Which is what I did this morning. I replaced those familiar thoughts with thinking as I truly wanted to be and am: Grateful. Happy. In love with life.

The result?

A delicious cup of tea AND… a steady stream of feeling in the flow, in love with life, one with the Universe.  

This is the process I’ve been using for years to continually uplevel my personal set point and yet I’m astounded how every time I uplevel, there are new places that my Conditioned Self rears up. (Really? Making tea is going to set you off? Lol!)

I’m also astounded by how easy it is to stay complicit and go along with the Conditioned Self.

It’s surprising how much discipline it requires to consistently recognize the habitual patterns that bring you down to your set-point. 

Yet when you do, you free yourself from that emotional roller coaster and start living a truly exquisite life.