The room went cold.

Everyone froze.

It was as though the air was sucked out of the room.

When processing our lived experience, it’s frequently helpful to look at and explore opportunities presented by language that articulates the dynamics of our existence.

I hot with so hot with anger it took all I had not to explode. Eventually I cooled down.

Do these statements sound familiar?

When people are hot, it can be helpful to ask how hot are you? Are you wet wood that’s smoldering, or more like a bonfire? Are you the core of a nuclear reactor hot, or more like the heart of the sun hot?

If you’re hot, how long does it take to cool down?

How do you do it?

Are you pulsing, throbbing, crackling, raging or exploding with heat? How does the heat move? How do you move when you heat up? This can be used as a clue to know when you’re heating up without being aware that you’re heating up.

We can use physical, dynamic behavioral information as way of knowing how we show up. When we know how we show up in the world, we can make maps of “what happens before.”

What happens before you explode?

What happens before you burn up inside?

What happens before you do that thing you do that you hate about yourself?

Typically therapists like to talk about external triggers as t’he thing that happens before.’

This is garbage. Instead of seeing how we go off the rails, we place that control outside of ourselves. We hit the trigger. It’s our fault for hitting it and the trigger’s fault for existing. It’s a plea: Change for me world! We’re either tasked with having someone or something remove the trigger or we’re encouraged to avoid triggering things all together. Soooo boring.

In doing this, we remove responsibility for our experience. Responsibility gets placed outside of ourselves to the other, to the trigger. Tripping over triggers is what victims do. Remarkable fools take responsibility for the movement of energy in their bodies once triggers are tripped.

Once triggered and hot, how do you cool down / how do you sooth yourself?

Triggers, things that make us upset are part of life. Expecting the world not to trigger us is a delusion held by ordinary, every day, fools. Remarkable Fools know how to move with and integrate the energy of their triggers. Remarkable Fools can take information that emerges from triggers to find new ways to dance and play with the realities of their lives.

Remarkable Fools know that the story in their heads is just a story, not the truth. If we want to grow, we need to interrupt our stories. Interrupting stories promotes learning.

When we are looking to change, we’re looking to learn. When we tell a story, we know the ending already. We lived the experience we’re attempting to describe. Even though the person we’re telling a story to doesn’t know the ending, we do. Storytelling is more about teaching than learning.

Interrupting stories to explore the dynamics of the experience can help us process differently. We can explore and re-frame our experiences with new, descriptive, temperature related data. How long does the change take? What temperature are you? What changed with you to allow this change in temperature?

What does this mean for you?

If you are a leader, a teacher or therapist, listen to language around temperature. Interrupt stories and probe more. This is great data to be mined and a wonderful way to help people have a new relationship with themselves and the world.