#1876 Opposite Action

In our last several +1s, we’ve been exploring wisdom from Marsha Linehan’s memoir Building a Life Worth Living while learning more about her Dialectical Behavior Training.

Today we’re going to wrap up our tour through her work.

We’re actually going to talk about the thing Peter Attia talked about in Outlive that got me to get the book.

Let’s get straight to work.

Marsha tells us: “I called this process ‘opposite action,’ an emotion regulation skill for dealing with fear. (Opposite action is a change skill.) In opposite action, you force yourself to do the thing you don’t want to do.

Saying to yourself, ‘People do like me’ or ‘I’m not fat’ doesn’t really change how you feel. You have to act. I had a client whose problems mostly involved hating her own body. Telling her that her body was just fine didn’t help. I had to get her to act differently, to act as if she had a beautiful body. When she did, she carried herself in public with assumed poise and confidence and she felt beautiful. It worked. It is like that mantra ‘Fake it until you make it.’ It is also the equivalent of Aristotle’s notion that acting virtuous will make you virtuous.”

She continues: “Repeat opposite action as often as you can, over and over, every chance you get. Some of the time, opposite action works immediately. But most of the time you have to practice a lot before the emotion you are trying to control (fear, for example) abates.”

And: “I developed a line that encapsulates this worldview: You can’t think yourself into new ways of acting; you can only act yourself into new ways of thinking.”

“Opposite action.”

As I said, THIS was the idea that Peter Attia talked about in Outlive that got me to get the book.

For him, the context was getting himself to spend time with his family when he KNEW that was the right thing to do but he didn’t *feel* like doing it. He would have rather worked.

But...

He practiced taking the “opposite action” and it significantly changed his life.

I’m having fun practicing this pretty much ALL DAY, EVERY DAY—with the SMALLEST little things.

I don’t feel like doing the dishes.

PERFECT.

I dominate them.

I don’t feel like oscillating with a restorative micro-workout Trail walk?

PERFECT.

Go hit the Trail.

It’s remarkably awesome just how often that whiney little voice wants to take over.

Be mindful. NOTICE it.

Then have some Heroic fun doing the opposite of whatever it tells you to do.

All day.

Every day.

Especially…

TODAY.