Phonetastrophy: A Self-Talk Odyssey

Why does technology cause us so much angst?  This is my story.  I’m calling it “phonetastrophy”.  My wife and I were speaking on emotional intelligence at CU Boulder for a gathering of primarily international students. My phone had a big crack in the screen and a friend said he knew someone who was great at phone repair. So the nice fix-it guy replaced the battery and the screen and I walked out with what appeared to be a new phone for $150.  I was elated!  The phone was about 5 years old so I’m thinking, this thing will last several more years!  Wrong!

A few weeks later after speaking on Emotional Intelligence (EQ) in France, we were back home preparing to speak at a conference in Birmingham. I discovered that my phone was rebooting/restarting itself at random times for no apparent “wrong-clicking” on my part.  (I mention this because this story is about my really bad EQ.)  I wanted to throw the phone across the room.   Then I did what I always do with digital problems. I called my computer engineer son, Ben. He said the only thing to try as a last resort was a factory restore which is similar to reformatting your hard drive.  I went back to google, did a search for how to erase and restore your phone.  I followed the steps, clicked on restore phone and then clicked on create backup file.  It worked!  My phone was erased. Then we used the backup to put it all back on and “restore”.

BUT, the next day in the airport the problem returned — restarting itself in a continuous nonstop loop. Maybe I should just drop it in a trash can at the airport.  The phone couldn’t be unfixable. I had just invested $150 in good faith to have it “restored.”  In between meetings I went to the phone store and I was told, “Sorry, this is not fixable.  You need a new phone.”  Surprise!  I’m in a phone store and they are saying I need to spend over $600 for a new phone.  So, the really nice young service lady asked, “Do you have a backup for this phone?  I proudly replied, “Yes, I do.”  (I made it sound like I always kept a backup for my phone even though this was the first time I had done it in my 20 years of cell phones).  She said, “Well, you can ‘save’ $50 by turning in your old phone, but you have to sign a waiver that we can delete everything on it.”  I asked how it worked and she explained that when I get home to my computer I would just plug it in and miraculously the backup would “restore” all of the data and apps. I went home, plugged in the computer, put in my password for the backup, clicked and up popped an error message: “This backup file is corrupted and incompatible with your phone.”  Seriously?  My backup file does everything BUT backup my phone?  I’m thinking, this cannot be true because if it is on the cloud, the data is there and retrievable.  Next part of the story.

The next morning, I get in line at the phone store.  The tech lady came out and I explained what happened and we connected my new phone to the computer and pulled up the “backup”. She saw the error message and said, “I’m sorry this file can’t be used for a backup.  It is corrupted.” Really?  The backup does not back-up?  So, all of my “Notes” are lost?”  She said if I didn’t have them set to back up to the iCloud they were lost.  Ouch!

What might we learn from this saga of triumph and disaster? What was going on inside of me?  Emotional intelligence is about managing our emotions intelligently so we are not controlled by our feelings but take control of our feelings. This helps us to become more emotionally healthy and relate well to others.  I was not doing this well at all.  That day when I came home and plugged in my new expensive phone and found out there was no backup in the backup file, I wanted to take it back and throw it at someone working in the store.  Because of my anger, frustration, disappointment and utter disbelief in yet another digital disaster, my negative self-talk was overpowering every rational thought!  It was the amygdala downshift or shut down where the emotions of the amygdala keep us from using our cerebral cortex, the thinking part of the brain, and as a result we become victims of our emotions.  For example, that same day after I plugged in and got the error message,  we were going to meet with a couple who had been through months of medical challenges, still recovering, and the idea was to be a comfort to them, and all I could think about was myself!

What was in my negative self-talk?

  • You are stupid!
  • You are a digital moron
  • You just wasted $150 with your stupid decision to fix the old phone
  • You just spent a lot of money on yourself
  • You are self-focused … not a very kind friend to someone in need
  • This costly phone is never, ever going to work the way it could if I had a backup that actually “backed-up.”
  • You are not a man. You are a wimp.  And a digital wimp at that!

This list could go on even longer but I will spare you.

In the book, The EQ Edge, pp.36-45, Stephen Stein and Howard Book they provide a tool, ABCDE, to help you learn how to identify your emotions (e.g. Anger) and locate the trigger or activating event (phonetastrophy) and then explore your wrong beliefs.  Let’s talk about wrong beliefs.  If you look at the self-talk list above, you will notice several wrong views and several are about my identity.  For example, “you are a digital moron”.  Am I?  Well, somewhat, but actually, through the process I did a lot digitally that I used to not be able to do.  I broke new ground, did troubleshooting by doing a search to find out how to fix the rebooting loop on my phone and I followed the steps. “You just spent a lot of money on yourself” … true but I use the phone to connect with those I love, so there is some value in having a phone that works. What were my correct beliefs? Yes, it was frustrating and painful. Wrong belief: “this phone will never work right.”  It will work. The thing is I just lost data in “Notes” that are indeed gone. The key is to debate and discard wrong beliefs and you can now reset your emotions as you eliminate those lies you are embracing that paralyzed you emotionally.

Self-talk has two parts – emotion and messages.  Emotions produce messages.  Messages produce emotions.  My identity messages, “you are stupid”, produced emotions and my emotions, fear that all is lost and fear of people talking about what a stupid decision I made, all contribute to my emotional state. Self-talk consists of the tapes we play in our mind which built on wrong beliefs can be negative and destructive. For example, when our self-talk is “all-bad” about a person or a situation, it can derail us into resentment and bitterness. This leaves us angry and possibly toxic toward others.  Or self-talk can be life-giving and positive shaped by mature character and healthy interpretation of life and circumstances and our self-image.  In the book, Happiness is a Choice, Frank Minirth & Paul Meier, write that one of the key steps to overcome depression is changing from negative to positive self-talk.

Take a look at the self-talk that you have had today.  What was positive? What was negative?  What negative self-talk and negative emotions do you need to take through the ABCDE method mentioned above?  Try it!  It works!

Copyright © 2017 Baron Rush