The Urge to Improve Is Real

Ok Ones, when’s the last time you felt the need to improve something? Be honest. Was it an hour ago? 15 minutes ago? 5 minutes ago? 

If you’re anything like me, it wasn’t very long ago. In fact, you could look in any direction right this second and find a way to improve on something you see.

I want to let you in on another part of the mechanics here. When your brain goes on the hunt for how to make it better, the belief there is that the thing (whatever your attention is on) should be better than it is. Oftentimes, that’s super useful to us. 

I am not here to tell you when you want to follow that urge and when you don’t.

I know an amazing lady who has her own cleaning company. When she notices that an area could be better, in this case, cleaner, it’s useful to her. She does magnificent work because of it, she takes great pride in the work and has a high level of satisfaction at the end of the day. That feeling she’s feeling and that we’re all feeling as Ones when we think something should be better than it is is desire.

There’s a spectrum for the feeling of desire and sometimes it goes all the way to urge. 

As humans we tend to have a default of 3 settings of what we do when we feel an emotion, any emotion that is undesired. Urge being one of them but you can substitute other undesired emotions here such as anger, frustration, jealousy, annoyance, neglected, resentful and the settings would be the same. We either react to it, resist it or avoid it.

If you’re in a situation you are happy to answer the urge because it simply suits you to do so, awesome, do it.

If you’re in a situation you are not wanting to answer the urge then the good news is that you can try a fourth option: processing the emotion.

First, answer these 5 questions to help you decide when you want to even use this fourth option:

1. Where in my life have I felt this urge or urgency?
2. Where in my life do I want to continue to answer the urge?
3. Where in my life do I want to practice not answering the urge?
4. Which area am I willing to start with? Pick just one to start
5. What am I willing to try and experiment with in terms of technique with this particular area?

You can use embodiment to help you process the urge you’re feeling that you’ve decided you wanted to allow instead of reacting, resisting or avoiding.

Want a step-by-step? Look for the transcript on this page OR

Listen to full episode HERE

Resources:

Work with me and/or to register for the Feb 17 2022 Workshop: dominiquevandal.com/links

Transcript

Welcome every One, you are listening to The Enneagram One Project Podcast, episode 6 - The Urge to Improve Is Real

Ok Ones, when’s the last time you felt the need to improve something? Be honest. Was it an hour ago? 15 minutes ago? 5 minutes ago? 

If you’re anything like me, it wasn’t very long ago. In fact, you could look in any direction right this second and find a way to improve on something you see.

For instance, I’ll be taking a walk and when I get home I can think of how amazing our home is and how much I love it AND I will also see all the improvements I think need to be done such as removing a couple of trees that aren’t doing so well, our sign with our house number is looking paler than it used to so I should get that redone, the compost bin is somewhat close to the front door for easy access but it doesn’t look very good, we should move that. I’m going to stop here but honestly I could go on. Especially in the summer time, I can notice all the weeds in between the pavement of the driveway. I see it all and the moment I see it, my brain says “ok, how could this be better?”

Now are the trees a safety issue, not at all, are they hurting anyone, nope, are they really ugly to look at, no, not yet, can anyone do anything about it right this moment, in the middle of winter right now, well not unless it’s an emergency because the snow has already accumulated and the ground is frozen. This is how my One brain works even if I can’t do anything about it, and often times if I really think about it, I don’t actually WANT to do anything about it now. But my brain, like yours, has a habit of looking for what to improve.

In itself, not a problem. I will repeat it over and over until the cows come home! That your brain has this shortcut programmed in there is not an issue.

I want to let you in on another part of the mechanics here. When your brain goes on the hunt for how to make it better, the belief there is that the thing (whatever your attention is on) should be better than it is. Oftentimes, that’s super useful to us. 

I know an amazing lady who has her own cleaning company. When she notices that an area could be better, in this case, cleaner, it’s useful to her. She does magnificent work because of it, she takes great pride in the work and has a high level of satisfaction at the end of the day. That feeling she’s feeling and that we’re all feeling as Ones when we think something should be better than it is is desire.

There’s a spectrum for the feeling of desire and sometimes it goes all the way to urge. Think of urge as desire with urgency. For me, urge feels like a pull in the middle of my chest, as if I have a cord there and someone’s pulling it. There’s also an excitement there because of the anticipation of how I’ll feel after I do the thing I’m being pulled to do. Sometimes there’s even a “must do NOW” added to that pull. 

The truth about urge is that it feels like a promise of something. That can be a good thing and it can be a not so good thing. It depends on what goals and intentions you have for yourself.

As Ones who are on a self discovery journey, it’s likely you’ve decided you wanted to not always give in to the urge to improve, it can be downright exhausting when it’s coming from a place we don’t understand and think we can’t quite control. For instance, it may be that in your work, you want to maintain the status quo of feeling that urge and answering it but in other areas, like your relationships, maybe you want to change your behavior some, maybe you don’t always want to tell others how they should do it or could do it even when it’s coming from love on your part. I’m not here to say you should. But this matters so much. 

You get to decide. Even if your brain is always showing you what to improve, you decide when you want to use that urge and when you don’t. That means that when you have the urge in relation to something you want the urge for, then that is a desired emotion but when it’s for something you don’t want the urge for, then that is an undesired emotion.

3 default settings for undesired emotions

As humans we tend to have a default of 3 settings of what we do when we feel an emotion, any emotion that is undesired. Urge being one of them but you can substitute other undesired emotions here such as anger, frustration, jealousy, annoyance, neglected, resentful and the settings would be the same. We either react to it, resist it or avoid it.

Let’s go back to the emotion of today’s podcast; urgency in a situation where you don’t want to focus on improvement. Example you are sitting in the passenger seat and the driver is someone you’re very close to. You notice the speed limit is 50 km/hr and that they are driving 40 km/hr. It’s not an actual safety issue except that I was brought up with a set of rules about how one should drive. If you’re from where I’m from it might be something like drive the speed limit, up to 10 km/hr more otherwise you’ll anger everyone behind you and more than that and you might get stopped by the police. So when you notice they are driving 10 km/hr less than the speed limit your brain’s habit of improvement says “we need to improve this situation” which creates that feeling of urgency. Does that sound familiar to any of you?

In this situation where you have already decided you don’t want to interfere and want to let them drive however they want to. The moment the urge is felt, you are likely to react, resist or avoid the urge. 

You would be reacting to urgency if you went ahead and answered that urge by saying all of the ways they should be driving. The other option I mentioned is to resist urgency and that would look like gritting your teeth so that no words actually come out of your mouth. And lastly, avoiding urgency which in our example would be picking up your phone and scrolling mindlessly in an effort to distract yourself. Again, none of these are inherently wrong. But remember, you had decided you didn’t want to be the person who gives into the urgency to improve other people’s driving. 

When you react, you are outwardly giving into the urge and the effect here could be a strained relationship. When you are resisting and gritting your teeth, the effect here could be that it bursts out anyway with even more force. When you avoid the urgency, the effect is that you train yourself to run away from undesired emotions. All of these will also create an erosion with your relationship with yourself. There’s a part of you that you’re not accepting of when this is how you manage emotions, therefore eroding your relationship with yourself.

Embodiment piece

For you, I offer a fourth option; that is to acknowledge that the urge is there and allow your body to process it. Let me explain what that means.

Because the urge is a feeling, it can be processed by the body. If you remember, I mentioned in episode 4, Enneagram Type Ones and Stress, That there isn’t an emotion the body doesn’t know what to do with. Urgency is an emotion so the body knows.

The next time you notice unwanted urgency, start by calming your nervous system with any of the four bodies, that is the physical body, the emotional body, the mental body and the energetic/spiritual body. You can use these in any order you want but I am purposefully saying them in a particular order because in my experience, this in an order that works well for me.

Physical body: personally, I start with the external sense. I use my external senses to remind me that I am safe. Starting with looking around, noting that there are no dangers, then comforting myself using touch by touching a soft fabric nearby or sound by singing or humming. I am basically bringing my attention back to the present moment, the moment in which yes I am experiencing an undesired emotion but that I am simultaneously really quite ok. Then I follow with merging my awareness with that of the emotional body.

Emotional body: now that I know I am safe, even with the emotion, I follow it or find its expression within my body. That is the internal felt sense of that urge. Where is that sensation in my body and what is it. Here I remain in my body and use as little language as possible, I really want to stay attuned to the internal sensation of that emotion. By now I usually feel a release or dissipation of the emotion. I can often stop here. Sometimes, that’s not enough so I’ll move on to enlisting the mental body.

Mental body: I have a few thoughts at the ready for times like these. The key is that I want have chosen beliefs that I don’t need convincing about. When I am activated, the state of being in the hold of the emotion, I don’t have the resources to convince myself of the validity of a new thought in the moment. I personally find that the thought “of course I am having an urge right now, it’s simply out of habit” is soothing and brings me back to center. Take a second here, and consider for yourself, what would you like to think in those moments?

Energetic body: if you remember, I said there are 4 bodies. The last is the energetic/spiritual body. I don’t necessarily use it last but I can’t say that it’s my go-to yet and it’s so very different for everyone. It might be prayer, it might be chakras, or a devotional practice you might have.

Personally, I find that putting on music and letting my body move as the emotion and move through the emotion is a collaboration of all four bodies. 

It’s up to you now!

Let’s take a second to recap here. The brain of a One is programmed with the core fixation on how to improve what we take note of. Remember, this can be the house, our relationships, ourselves - anything. 

With improvement being the main habitual shortcut of the brain, the brain goes there without you asking it to. When it does, it creates the urge or urgency you feel in your body. 

You totally get to decide how you want to behave when you notice this urge and it can be different in all aspects of your life. When you intentionally want to react to it, do it. When you don’t want to manage the urge with the 3 main settings reacting, resisting and avoiding but you can process the emotion. And you can use embodiment to do just that.

Here are you 5 questions to ponder going forward.

1. Where in my life have I felt this urge or urgency?
2. Where in my life do I want to continue to answer the urge?
3. Where in my life do I want to practice not answering the urge?
4. Which area am I willing to start with? Pick just one to start
5. What am I willing to try and experiment with in terms of technique with this particular area?

If you want help exploring this topic deeper there are 2 options for you.

I can definitely help you map out these areas in your life, and support you on your journey in managing your urges. You’ll find the information to work with me over at https://www.dominiquevandal.com/links and select the work with me - Private Enneagram One Coaching tab.

The second option is to register for my upcoming workshop where we’ll dive deeper into this very topic. It’s happening Thursday, February 17th 2022 at 2 pm ET. If you can’t make it, make sure to register anyway so you can receive the replay and workbook. You’ll find the link to register over at https://www.dominiquevandal.com/links and select the Feb 17th workshop tab.

Until next time, love to each and every One!