Finding Your Happy Place
Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Jennica Janssen and I have my Master’s of Science in Clinical Psychology and am a practicing Marriage and Family Therapist. I work with teenagers who have issues with substance abuse and I also council criminal offenders who have a mental illness and are working towards rehabilitation. So you may be asking yourself, “What qualifications does this person have to be writing a blog about performance psychology?”
As a pre-med Biopsychology major at UCLA, I was also a collegiate athlete. After finishing my competitive sports career, I have been completing marathons and triathlons, as well as coaching youth teams. I work as a middle and high school basketball coach as well as train a soccer team and teach martial arts. You could say that I spend the majority of my time (and my master’s thesis) trying to develop a guaranteed method to help motivate people in a way that will ensure that they have a positive experience as well as achieve their goals.
This brings me back to today’s question: How do you push past your breaking point? All of us have been there. The point when you hit a wall in your workout and you just want to quit. Or even if you are not an athlete, that mid-afternoon lull at work where it feels as if you cannot physically keep your brain functioning for the rest of the day. Or even the most common example I hear with people who work with children, “No matter how much you love the kids, there is always that point where you feel as if you want to kill them.” For all of these times, and the many more I neglected to mention, what is the best way to overcome these “end of the world” dilemmas without dying of frustration or stress? The answer is really quite simple: take a mental time out and use the opportunity to go to your happy place.
This cliche is a common phrase that has been used for several decades. It’s prolonged usage in society’s vocabulary must mean that is has been historically effective. The majority of the time when the breaking point is reached, the mind is begging for a mental time out. Everyone’s happy place is different but everyone has one. The one location in the world that they have visited, lived, or wish to go some day, where, when visualized, gives a feeling of instant and overwhelming serenity. Mine is relatively easy: a sunset over the ocean at a beach on the big island of Hawaii. When I get in my zone, I can even feel the humid, ocean air on my skin and smell the salty, hibiscus flower breeze.
Even typing the words now helps me feel calmer and more at peace. If you don’t believe me, I encourage you to do some reading on visualization imagery. This technique is used in yoga, meditation, and psychology to help relieve anxiety and stress. The best part about this tool is that it is free and easily accessible for you. Think of the one place, object, or person that consistently makes you feel happy and relaxed; this is going to be your happy place. If you aren’t much of a imaginative person, keep a tangible picture or object with you. Much like any other acquired skill, this one takes practice. I encourage you to practice in a low-stress, low-stakes situation. Then, when the time comes to use your happy place escape in an emergency, it will be there and ready to be used. Best of all, visualizing your favorite worldly location will give you the easiest and cheapest vacation of your life. Happy travels!
