The last few days I haven’t been my old self. I’ve been quiet at work, seemingly disinterested around the home, and feeling tired a good deal of the time as well. I really couldn’t put a finger on it until this morning–but I knew something wasn’t quite right.

Well, this morning I got some news I had been waiting for, and had been worrying about as well. It was just news–neither good nor bad–but it was information I needed to have in order to be able to do something important next week. As soon as I saw the email that had the news in it, it was like the dam burst and all was well again. BUT, it wasn’t until that moment that I actually connected the lack of information with the uneasiness and dysfunction I’d been experiencing all week!

That’s the strange thing about the mind. Something can be going on in the background, kind of like a program running in the background of your computer, and something that is messing up you powers of concentration, your sense of joy, and even how you feel physically. As you can see, I’m not immune to those strange experiences but I do have some tips on how to avoid it happening and affecting your transformation efforts long-term.

First of all, there is more to it than just your normal conscious thoughts. The human being is much more than just a physical body. There is also a mind, soul and spirit. People have different ideas, but I like to think of the soul as the residence of the mind and spirit, and as a kind of a mingling place or a stilling basin for what goes on in the body, and the mind and the spirit. (A stilling basin is a kind of concrete pond at the end of the spillway of a dam and its purpose is to slow the energy of the water and avoid unnecessary erosion below the dam.)

So, for all to be “well with my soul” as the old hymn describes, there needs to be a conscious understanding that there is definitely an interconnection between the body and the mind and spirit. And then there has to be conscious action to do the things necessary to slow down the things that are going on.

People in recovery do this when they go through the checklist called H.A.L.T. It stands for hungry, angry, lonely and tired, and it is a way of trying to figure out what is causing a cascade of emotions in you, so that you can take the steps to correct it. The corrective steps of course for those problems are eating, forgiveness, social interaction, and rest. If I had been smart, I would have sat down and said to myself: “Why are you afraid?” I say that because I know that fear is the one mindset that messes me with more than any other. And I know that fear is so powerful that I almost always choose to avoid it initially by just pretending that everything is o.k. The telltale sign, though, is when I grow quiet, and I just failed to recognize it. Had I realized that it was fear, then I would have done something about and taken proactive measures instead of just waiting for the news to come along.

For you, it may not be a checklist you need. It may be that you need to phone a friend, or do some journaling, or pray for insight. Often, I find the answer to my distress when I do something I’ve done for years–put Milly the wonder dog on a leash and go for a long walk outside. That might work for you too, and if you don’t have a dog, you’ll do just fine anyway!

One thing is for sure. Doing a transformation challenge without a clear understanding of and control of your mind makes it twice as hard and not much fun!