Take a deep breath. Breathe in and breathe out.
​Do this three times, it'll help you out.

Step 1

​This comes from the 3 second breathing space in mindfulness. The idea behind this is to remove the reactivity from a situation. How many times have you inadvertently reacted to a situation and had that immediate dread… Well, by simply taking 3 deep breaths, your pre-frontal cortex, or the part of your brain associated with better decision-making, is given time to hijack the limelight from your pesky lizard brain!

Take a step back, to look at things clearly.
​Now, turn your mind to what the body is feeling.

Step 2

​If you take yourself out of the situation, step back, de-centre, basically get some perspective on the situation you’re in, you immediately change how you would have reacted. Looking at something without the immediate feelings, both mental and physical, changes things dramatically. Hence why Max is pictured with binoculars: because they add a degree of separation from the situation you’re in.A very powerful trick in Neuro-Lingusitic Programming, which is touched on a little bit throughout the books, is the idea of stepping back and looking at yourself in a movie, but this time from the audience. That immediately allows you to separate what is happening, from the bodily sensations
This step has two parts; however, when done frequently, it doesn’t feel that way. This step is all about separation: of the situation from the feeling. This step encourages you to bring attention to the feelings, as every emotion has a physical sensation. These sensations are all indicators to the underlying emotion and are a very important part of the emotional process. Separating these two aspects of the situation you’re in allows you to break things down and be less reactive.

What do you see? Can you give it a name?
I think, what we have this time, is Shame.

Step 3

Now Max does help out a little bit in this step. But it’s important to name the feeling. Naming something takes the power from it, as the feeling is no longer something that is happening to you; it’s just that old feeling again. You can then acknowledge the feeling, from a place of non-judgment.

This is all part of building a comprehensive emotional vocabulary with relevant feeling appendices,  as the more you can engage with an emotion and name it, the easier it is to acknowledge its presence in the future. 

Sit with it a moment. What makes you feel this?
Sometimes, there are more obvious reasons that feelings exist.

Step 4

​Understanding what made you feel something is very important. Now, sometimes we feel things for no real external reason; it may be be hormonal or tiredness related. In the instances where there is a cause, we can then do something about it. If it’s a feeling we like, we know to do it again. If it’s a feeling that we don’t like, we know not to do it again. Simple really, even though as adults it still requires some practice.

This is also important in situations where something has been done to us, as we then have the opportunity to respectfully and compassionately address those who have made us feel bad.

Picture your feelings. Where in the body do they occur.
Try to soften around it, so it won't feel so severe.

Step 5

​Right, now that we have done all the information gathering on this particular feeling, we can now do something about how we feel. Creating mental pictures of how we feel enables us to change them. In the books we learn of the importance of the pictures created in our minds. The emotions in the books are all cute characters as, when altering the movies we make around the feelings, we can put the characters in them. For example, if we feel Shame and we don’t want to feel it anymore, we can picture it packing a bag, waving goodbye and leaving. 

This step also asks us to acknowledge where in the body we are feeling this; this is important, as it also asks us to soften around it. This is not fanciful.  We talk about something “eating away at us”; this is the uncomfortable truth in that emotions, if resisted, can make us sick, physically.  “Softening around” an unpleasant experience is very important; this gets spoken about a lot in mindfulness and self compassion. “Lean into”, “turn toward”,  are two of the expressions used,  but, basically, if you can relax your body around the bodily feeling, it won’t feel so bad. It also eases the way when it comes to accepting what it is that you feel.

Now, let's accept ...... and welcome it here.
Accepting feelings makes them easier to bear.

Be kind to yourself, for feeling this way.
Now, choose how to move forward with this day.

Step 6

​This step has two parts.  It probably could have been condensed, but, on the other hand, you should never skimp on self compassion or kindness. This step is pretty self explanatory. Accepting that you feel something goes an awful long way to feeling better. If you are resistant to feelings and try to push them down, they create tension. Also, acknowledging you feel something paves the way for self compassion, because if you don’t acknowledge there's anything going on, there's no reason to be nice to yourself about it!

Being kind to yourself is one of the foundations of what Max tries to achieve.  Self compassion has so many benefits that have been spoken about, that it's important to round off any 6 steps with a little bit of self kindness. Then, of course, you choose how to move forward, decide what you want to do. That could consist of doing another exercise, mindfully taking your mind to something else or wallowing for some time more. It's all up to you.