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We’ve been exploring the Vicious Flower exercise, which helps you become aware of the habitual negative ways in which you respond to specific situations. Click here for the first episode in the series, and if you missed the second episode, which provided in-depth examples and coaching, click here. Today, I’m going to show you how to use your flower to change your reaction patterns.

The Vicious Flower, in and of itself, is helpful, because it allows you to become mindful of the ways in which you typically react. Noticing your reactions is a huge first step in changing them. Once you’re aware of them, it will be easier to become mindful of them in the moment they arise. Often, that’s all you need to begin reacting in different ways.

But, if your reactive patterns are habitual and strongly ingrained, you might need a little more help to change them. You might need to plan an alternate reaction. That’s where the Virtuous Flower comes in. 

This tool begins with creation of a Vicious Flower, so if you haven’t created one yet, go back to the previous episodes and do that before moving on.

Now, you’re going to create a new flower, with petals that represent the helpful, healthy responses you aim to put in place. Work through your Vicious Flower one petal at a time. For each petal, identify one or more positive, helpful coping strategies you can use to replace the unhelpful petal. For each new strategy, draw a petal on your Virtuous Flower. As before, you can give each petal a concise label, or you can add a lot of detailed instruction. The level of detail is entirely up to you. 

You don’t necessarily have to have the same number of petals on your Virtuous Flower as on your Vicious Flower. You may decide that you only need three new healthy coping strategies to replace five old, unhelpful ones. Or, maybe you’ll choose six new strategies to replace four old ones. Aim for a robust collection of healthy strategies that you think will be helpful. There is a bit of a trial and error process involved. It will take time to teach yourself new habits, and as you practice them, you’ll see whether you need to add more.

Last week, I explained how I created a Vicious Flower to represent one of my bad habits: Eating When Bored. Let me show you how I transformed this into a Virtuous FLower. 

I started by changing up the name of the central circle. It was called Eating When Bored. Now it’s simply called I’m Bored - because the goal is to stop eating when I’m bored. The new name just represents the situation I need to react to in a more positive way.

Petal one is called Ennui. It represents the feeling that arises when I’m bored. It’s a sense of being dissatisfied with whatever I’m doing in the moment, yet an inability to motivate myself to do something else. I don’t know whether you’ve ever experienced this feeling, but to me it’s very odd. On the one hand, I can clearly notice that I need to act, yet on the other hand, I feel completely unable to take action. So, I decided to replace this response with action. But, I know that the feeling of ennui will get in my way, so I found a way to make taking action as easy as possible.

First, I selected two alternate actions to choose from. Both are things I can do quickly with very little effort. I thought that was important, because, in a moment where I feel like a huge sack of potatoes, I knew I wouldn’t be able to do anything that took a lot of effort.