The Tool Box!  Grief is a crazy thing… It’s amazing how your entire perspective can shift even about your anxiety or just normal day-to-day activities.

Recently someone told me to consider looking at people and their choices differently. I was challenged to separate the person from their choices. Are we really defined by our choices or do our choices define us? Can we be a good person and still make bad choices? Is it possible to separate ourselves from our choices? Can you see goodness in someone who makes bad choices? I know I’m not the only one, but I have a bad habit of judging someone’s character and heart based on their choices (both good and bad). I judge my own character based on my anxiety and my choices. How do you have self compassion for someone else and not yourself? How can we stop defining ourselves and others by their choices?

While stepping back to think about my father and his choices, I realized I had made the choice to judge him by his choices. When you separate the person from the choices, it definitely shifts your perspective. I started thinking about the things that were positive vs negative. One of my greatest memories is the tool box my father gave me when I went away to college. As a kid, I would help him put little things together around the house, until I ended up being the one who was doing it alone. It was actually quite empowering to feel like I could build things or hang pictures or fix things.  He wasn’t very handy (but don’t tell him that). I loved helping him and then taking it over. When I left for college, my father gave me a little black tool box with all of my favorite tools. He even labeled it “Robin’s Tool Box” in pink letters. I loved that box and kept it for many years until the box broke and I had to upgrade. That tool box went to college with me for 4 years, moved to DC with me and got married with me.  By shifting to a positive memory and not some of my father’s bad choices, I was able to change my perspective.

But – I made a choice last night to eat some foods that my body doesn’t like. My head loves the yummy fattening food, but the rest of me does not. I made a choice to eat something that I knew would bother me, yet did it anyway. Does that make me a bad person for making a bad choice for myself? I lost all self compassion and had to look at myself in the mirror.  I thought about my toolbox. I had to use my tools (literally and figuratively). As I’ve gone on my messy journey to help my anxiety, I have been learning different coping tools for my anxiety tool box. Just as you go to your tool box for a hammer or screw driver, you can also go to your tool box for non tangible tools for anxiety. We pick different tools for different projects and situations. When my stomach was killing me in the middle of the night, I thought of my tool box, after all it was called “Robin’s Tool Box,” so I should use my tools. We should all use our tools to help our life and our emotions. Do we get mad when the picture won’t hang on the wall right, maybe, but we keep trying to find the right tool to help finish the project. The same philosophy applies to our emotions, we just need to build a tool box of tools to help with our messy journey.

Here are a few tools from my tool box:

• Drink hot tea (decaf)
• Focus on breathing – slow and steady
• Prayer
• Find positive distractions – Reading, drawing, writing
• Walking barefoot on the ground outside – Grounding
• Watching the Real Housewives or Days of our Lives
• Hugging my kids
• Practicing gratitude
• Tape measure and level (LOL) I had to add some real tools

Granted it’s all easier said then done, but realizing that I had a my own tool box became very comforting. And you can build your own tool box too. Just image a little black tool box with pink letters and your name on it! Carry that box around as you go through your messy journey and know that you’ve got this.

“<insert name>’s Tool Box”