A Clean Beauty Bust and Going from “Why is this Happening to Me?” to “How is this Happening FOR Me?”

I am not someone who is super sensitive when it comes to my physical body. Unlike most of my friends or others I know, I don’t have any food allergies or ever-present issues with gluten or dairy; I rarely experience any side effects when taking a medication; I took one of those mail-away finger prick blood tests to see if I have dietary sensitivities and the results came back that I was one of like, 2% of the population who doesn’t. So it never occurred to me that I would have an allergic reaction to, of all things, a clean beauty product. But there I was, over a week ago, staring in the mirror at a reflection that looked less like me and more like Hitch: one puffy eye swollen shut, the same eye which I’d tried a new clean eye make up on the night before and thought, “Looks great”. A week and a half, 2 trips to urgent care, and a handful of meds later and my eye is still not back to 100% normal. The fact that I was even making an effort to use clean beauty projects is admittedly laughable, as I drink a Diet Coke daily and am no stranger to Botox….honestly, Gwyneth Paltrow I am not. So the clean beauty movement, for all its good, is probably not where I should be putting my time and money anyways. But here we are - puffy-eyed and down $50.

In addition to the One Eyed Willy look I have going on, I also have spent most of April buried under a pile of tissues and cold medicine, as our whole house has been inducted into the “Your Kid Is In Daycare Now So You Will Henceforth Be Gross Forever” club. It’s been a great month.

And with that, we’re at the main topic of this post, which is figuring out how to go from the completely unhelpful thought, “Why is this happening to me?” when things seem to go sideways, to the much more useful (though harder to reach) thought of, “How is this happening FOR me?”

This is not the part where I tell you to just “think better thoughts”, I promise. But this is the part where I tell you that one of the biggest misconceptions about life coaching is that coaches will tell you to just “think more positively”. The reality is, a good coach knows that just thinking happy thoughts is not enough to change shit, unless you actually believe those happy thoughts. Coaching, thought work, mindset work, or anything under the umbrella of “personal development” is not just about thinking better thoughts - it’s about changing your thoughts so that you feel differently, and then start taking different actions, and ultimately getting the different (better!) results that you’re seeking. In other words, there’s a big difference between a coach telling you, “Practice being grateful that you didn’t try that toxic non-toxic eye make up on BOTH eyes!” and one telling you, “Yeah, that pirate-eye and a month of a runny nose is all not great, but there’s probably something about the last few uncomfortable weeks that has been somewhat helpful for you….let’s figure out what that is.”

So in the last few days, with my eye still annoyingly large and my throat still annoyingly sore, I decided to shake off the all-around April annoyance and turn my coaching inward to find a way to get into a better headspace (even while my head was still stuffy and puffy). I asked myself the obvious coachy question, “Yes, this is all uncomfortable and a nuisance. But what else could be true here?” And the answer that my brain responded with, was the very expected, “I don’t know”.

However unuseful, “I don’t know” is, it’s also incredibly common. Our brains like to do what we like to call, “indulge in confusion”. When faced with a question to answer, it’s much easier for our brains to grab for “I don’t know” than it is to make the mental effort of coming up with an answer to a problem. Our brains are designed to be as efficient as possible; saving every ounce of extra effort or energy in order to only use it when things are totally dire is what our brains are wired to do. And extra thinking effort is effort; so when we ask a question like, “What else could be true?” our brains would rather say “I don’t know” than actually have to spend the effort thinking of an answer.

The way I overcome this myself, and how I work with clients to do the same, is to:

(1) expect your brain to serve up “I don’t know” after giving you maaaaybe 1 or 2 ideas or answers to a question

(2) recognize that “I don’t know” is not a fact, it’s just your brain’s way of saying, “Hey I don’t want to put any effort in here”

(3) talking back to your brain by saying, “Yeah I know you don’t know, but we’re going to come up with some more answers anyways”.

(4) and finally, sit quietly, keep asking the question, and let your brain go to work to find the answers (which it will, because that’s what it’s designed to do, after it’s little “I dont know!” tantrum is over).

In this case, I ended up finding a handful of ways that my Hitchy eye and non-stop cold were actually working for me, once I went through those steps myself. These included:

1) This whole episode got me to finally find a new G.P. I was notified in January that my former primary care doc was no longer taking my insurance, and rather than find a new doctor I dragged my feet on doing so….until this month when suddenly I needed one, stat. So I stopped procrastinating and found one who is great….and next time this happens I will have a doctor to go to at the ready.

2) It got me to sign up for my next marathon. Truthfully I’d been thinking about committing to a fall marathon for a while but hadn’t yet thrown down the credit card to do so - or thrown on my running shoes is over a year. On April 15th, when I was usually at Patriots Day (if you’re not in New England, just know it’s a thing) celebrations with my family, I was at home, sick, and on the couch watching the Boston Marathon coverage on TV. With each passing mile my jealousy grew, until I couldn’t sit with it anymore and I had to act….and since I was too sick to actually run, I grabbed my laptop, did some race research, and committed to running the Philadelphia Marathon in November….

3) …which leads to the next way this Spring of Sickness is working for me: because I’ve been sick and uncomfortable with my eye, running right away was not really in the cards. And that’s actually a good thing. I’ve gone running only a handful of times since my last race, in October 2022. As an all-or-nothing person (as evidenced by my response to feeling jealous of runners on a spring day being to sign up for a freaking marathon) it would be entirely like me to go from not running in over a year right into marathon training mode…and entirely likely I’d end up injured before I’d barely gotten my new sneakers dirty. Being sick has forced me to return to running slowly - literally, by walking - and doing so will no doubt help me in the long run(s)…..

4) This era of Feeling Crappy has also made me slow down a bit and be extra grateful to and for my husband, who also has been sick on and off for a few weeks as we pass this dumb cold back and forth…Unlike me, he is actually not a monster grouch when he’s sick, and how he steps up to take over when I’m down for the count is something I have always appreciated, but am not the best at showing it when life gets back to normal. But this month he has been empathic to me when I’ve been sick and incredibly helpful when I’ve been operating at less than 100%. And as I am not as quick to be those things in return, admittedly, this has been a good chance for me to try to practice being more so. We’re all a work on progress…

I would never say just shaking things off or thinking better thoughts are ways to overcome feeling crappy when crappy things happen. Everyone’s annoyances, or legit pain, is a 10 to them; dismissing how someone else feels (or how you feel) has never made a feeling go away. But I would, and do, say that thinking “Why is this happening?” is just not a very helpful line of thinking and definitely won’t get you out of your own way and on to a better place. “How is this happening for me?” just might though - as long as you give your brain a chance to answer the question (and your eye a chance to heal!).