Create your own team
After my long article on your relationship with yourself, I realised that there’s still so much more to say and share, and so here comes another article on how to further develop the most important relationship in your life.
The notion of team comes originally from sports and we’ve all heard of the famous “team spirit” as well. A group of people working together towards a common goal. They are unstoppable, are there for each other and know that they can trust their fellow team members blindly. What an amazing energy, right?
Imagine you could capture this feeling without having actual people around you. No, I’m not talking about a special experience with certain substances, I’m talking about creating YOUR team.
In psychology, there’s also the notion of “subpersonalities”. They refer, though, to personalities that we already carry within ourselves. Again, not in an ill-kind way, but in a “voices in our head” way. The voices that have been cultivated by our upbringing and social conditioning (and many other influences).
So I want you to create a team of supporting (and maybe fictional) characters. Maybe one of your subpersonalities will be a part of your team as well, because some of them could be actually good for you, but let’s start at the beginning.
1. Who do you need right now?
Depending on where you are right now in your life, you will have different needs in terms of your team members. Very often your team members have very different character traits from yours and complement you.
One of my team members was at one point for example Phoebe from Friends or Frankie from Frankie & Grace. They are both very different from myself and especially when I’m being hard on myself or I feel very stressed, I could “activate” them and remember that there are other perspectives out there as well, and they make me smile, too. Another team member of mine has been Buddha for quite a while. Not necessarily for religious support, but for calming me and for supporting me in my self-love journey.
As you can see, your team members can be fictional characters, TV show characters or even religious leaders. :) Feel free to think big and think of at least 3-5 potential team members for yourself.
2. Make them come alive
Picture your team in front of you. How does it feel to be with them? Can you already feel their energy? And what about actually picturing them? Maybe you can print pictures of them and make a “team vision board” out of it, or you create your own screen background to always be reminded that you are not alone and that your team got your back?
It’s also important to think about how you can best connect with each of them when you need them. As we all know, it’s not an easy task to create new habits and lay the ground for new connections in our brain (this is of course a very simplified expression).
Nevertheless, it is not impossible and “anchoring” can help. Anchoring is when you associate an external trigger with an internal response. If you are familiar with NLP (Neuro-linguistic programming), then you might have heard of that term already.
So what does this mean concretely? You listen to a song and you are immediately reminded of a specific person. This is an example of what (unconscious) anchoring is. The good news is that you can create those anchors for each of your team members and pull them to you when you need them.
Anchors can be smells (e.g. a perfume or a candle), sounds (e.g. music), touch (e.g. pressing certain parts of your hand) or images (e.g. your phone background or your very own “team” photo album).
3. Play
Let me reassure you that this is not the “sports play” I’m referring to, but the figurative sense of it. 😉 Pick one of the anchor options above and play around with it. It’s important to test it and see if it works, or if you need to adjust your team, or try out another anchor that works better for you. It’s important that you choose an anchor that is easily accessible. If you always listen to music, then a playlist would be a great way to see if you find a song representing each of your team members.
I’m of course very curious and would love to hear from you who your teammates are and what anchors you picked for them. Once you try it out, please let me know!
Let the games begin! 🎉