You need drama in your life. You need it because if you do not have it, you’ll go off and unconsciously create it in the worst possible ways. Finding problems that do not exist, manifesting illness, causing rows and arguments. If you do not create your drama in your life that motivates, inspires and drives you then life will slap you on the backside by creating a drama for you. Wonderful life, thanks so much for that!

A while back I started to ask my clients if they enjoyed their job. The reason why I began asking this question is because there seemed to be a pattern between job-happiness and life-happiness. What I mean is the depressed people rarely liked their job. It makes sense as you can’t expect to spend 40+ hours of your awakened week doing something you dislike and still expect to be feeling good!
(Those that were unhappy but comfortable with their job were usually in a relationship that they didn’t like.)

Recently I’ve noticed a new pattern I’ve called “lack of drama.” Lack of drama happens when people have essentially, pretty comfortable lives. Work is ok, the relationship they are in is good, family is good and they are relatively financially comfortable. They might have got  a little complacent at making new goals or doing exciting things in their lives but they really don’t have much to moan about.

The problem is there is no drama in their lives. Nothing juicing them up or worrying them. There is a lack of drama. For some of us with drama filled lives we think of the prospect and think “Oh how idilic!” But the truth is even if the comfortable live feels very appealing, it isn’t sustainable.

We humans, need a bit of drama, a bit of “Sha-zam!” and “Ka-pow!” going on for us otherwise bad things can start to happen.

When you deliberately create a drama for yourself, it doesn’t make the old (possible negative) dramas disappear. What does happen is that the new dramas either:

1) Put the negative dramas into a smaller perspective
When a new fulfilling drama is big enough and you are totally passionate about it, the old drama may still be there but just appear less important. As such it appears smaller and more manageable.

Or

2) Divert your attention such that the negative dramas get forgotten about and fade into the background.
When you’re so focused on the drama you want to have the thing that had been causing you stress and discomfort cannot “fit” into your mind at the same time. As such, it becomes like your nokia after buying an iPhone 4s. Its still tucked away in a draw somewhere but you rarely bother with it anymore.

Some people have a higher drama threshold than others. For me, 50+ emails is a drama to deal with so my drama threshold is relatively low right now. For others the drama need is met by going to watch an action movie. Other people need to BE the action man in the action movie. Some people only get their need for drama met when they jump out of a plane or physically beat up others. It’s different for different people but essentially it’s all about meeting the human need for uncertainty.

So if right now having read this, you evaluate your life and notice that it’s riddled with problems, consider creating a new drama for yourself. For example jumping out of an aeroplane (with a parachute obviously or that would be far to big a drama). If you set it as a goal or a challenge for yourself and make it something you need to spend time and energy working towards (e.g. getting yourself physically fit, collecting money for charity, doing some publicity about it) so that you have the opportunity to distract yourself form the negative drama.

Then take the time to notice how the percentage of your time spent on your negative drama is reducing and gradually disappearing.

By Gemma Bailey
www.childtherapisthertfordshire.nlp4kids.org

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