Suck list?
You know the one – the list of all the things that suck in your life.
Sometimes I have clients walk in and all they have to offer is the sucky, negative parts of life.
All they can talk about is the unfortunate.
The bad, the uncertain, the cruddy, unpleasant pieces of life.
And, as life would have it, it happened with three different people in the same week. Again.
It does that sometimes.
So I ask them to focus on that. Sometimes in session, sometimes for homework.
The assignment is simple.
I asked them to get out a piece of paper and start writing.
Write all the things that suck.
Write all the things.
The unpleasant parts that you see proof of everywhere you look.
For best results, take ten, twenty minutes and just write until you can’t write any more.
Exhaust the list. Literally.
You write all the things down that are sucky right now in your life.
Yes, while there are exceptions – for most of us, this is not hard to do. We don’t usually have a hard time writing that list.
Because – there are ALL these things, right? All. The. Time.
We have no problem finding and seeing the crappy parts of all of life.
And, mind you, this was before all of this stuff with Coronavirus showed up and shattered so many more walls. Added layer upon layer of more crappy, scary, heartbreaking, upsetting, grief-producing and unsettling pieces to the whole thing.
You are still looking at the title and wondering how this is any good for anyone.
Just to be looking at the crappy parts of life – the sad, the upsetting, the frustrating, the disheartening.
But I never said that’s where it all ends.
The reason that the suck list rocks is that it doesn’t end there.
It doesn’t end there because you can’t have a suck list without its counterpart.
If you are going to write down all the things that are sucky right now in your life (or everyone else’s life), we don’t end there.
We have to do the next thing.
Which means, when you get done with list one, and – for the record – no matter how many things you think you will come up with, you will run out of things to say that are cruddy eventually – and when you do, you have to do the next thing.
You have to finish the assignment.
So you’ll do just that.
You will, on the other half of your paper, write down, guess what? — All the things that do not suck.
All the things that, despite everything, are still going well.
All the people who are still around that bring mounds of joy into your life.
All the events that you have just experienced that are just silly, penny-sized yet happy and abundant things.
And if you truly take the time to exhaust that list too, you might be surprised how much comes up.
You can’t just write one and not the other.
[If you want to see this in action, check it out here. When I ask my clients to do something, I like to play along. See for yourself.]
How long is your – Here are all the things that don’t suck right now – list?
Did you truly take the time to sit there, exhausting that answer as well, until you were speechless at the end, having nothing more to say?
That’s where I’d like you to end.
There are always circumstances that you and I cannot control. Looking at the history of humankind, there always have been, and there always will be those things.
BUT I want you to look at the second list – I want you to look at, and concentrate on – the suck-free list.
Look at that list and bask in it.
Read it over and over every morning.
Or – for extra credit even- Read the one from the day before and write a new one every morning.
Or keep writing addendums to the original list.
Either way, read it over and over every morning until you can’t help but smile, feeling like you just won a million bucks.
If you can land there, you’ll have a forever reminder of why the suck list rocks.
