Tim Arrigo teaches the Box Technique, a three-part method to separate facts from feelings. Draw a box with situation, emotions, and perception, then practice catching patterned thoughts so external events stop controlling how you feel.
So I'd like to share with you a technique that's going to allow you to stop putting the power of how you feel in the hands of people, places, and situations or circumstances in your life. This technique right here will completely revolutionize the way that you handle adversity, or just anything that happens in your life that makes you feel a certain type of way. So this technique again is called the Box Technique. I've been using this in my experience in clinical counseling for a very long time. And it has literally revolutionized the way that people do life. So number 1, what I want you to do is I want you to draw a box, okay? And I want you to divide that box into 3 parts, okay? And it should look just like this, okay? And on the top left, you're going to have the situation, okay? And that's where you're going to write the situation that happened, just the objective facts about what happened. You're not going to write, right, my spouse is an asshole. You're not going to write any of that. You're going to write just what happened, right? The facts objectively, no opinions, just you're going to state the facts. Then what you're going to do is you're going to use some vocabulary here and you're going to write the emotions that you felt. Okay? And you're going to use the categories of fear. You're going to use the categories of hurt, the categories of shame, the categories of— right, any emotions that fall under those emotions, because 9 times out of 10, obviously, you're not practicing this tool when you're feeling happy. You're practicing this tool when you're feeling specific negative emotions that you're desiring to change. So list the emotions in the emotion box. And then what I want you to do is I want you to use an I statement, okay, that identifies your perception about the event. So I am worthless, I'm not in control, I can't express my emotions, whatever that is. I want you to put that I statement there in in reference to the event, right? So let's say that I come home late from work. My wife yells at me. That's the situation. It makes me feel angry, makes me feel hurt, makes me feel afraid. It makes me feel ashamed and it makes me feel worthless. Okay. And then the— okay, the perception is that I'm not good enough, that I'm not in control, that I can't show my emotions, that I should have done something. Okay. Whatever those perceptions are. And as you write those, what I want you to do is I want you to ask yourself, right, how many times have you thought that way and felt that way about yourself right now? How many times have you thought that way and felt that way about yourself? Okay, the next step is to identify, right, that if you thought that way and felt that way about yourself, okay, prior to that event happening, then you can recognize how those thoughts and feelings are more of just a pattern. They're more of a program in your life happening unconsciously. So what I want you to do next is kind of separate those thoughts and emotions from the experience that happened and recognize how you kind of immediately went to those thoughts and feelings because they're a pattern in your life. Then what I want you to do is recognize how you didn't really choose how to think and feel in that moment. It was kind of just triggered, right, unconsciously by a lot of the thoughts and feelings that are kind of running in your everyday-to-day, everyday life in interactions with your wife. Then I want to ask you, right, what are those thoughts and feelings really connected to? Meaning, how did they get there? Why do you believe those things, right? Thoughts are the language of the mind, emotions are the language of the body. You combine the two, you get a belief system. A belief system is nothing more than a feeling of absolute certainty that forces or governs your behaviors, right? So you have these thoughts and feelings that are happening in your life without your permission or without your consent. Now what I want you to do is Realize how the situation didn't make you feel the way you did. Your perception did, your thoughts about that situation. So what I want you to start to do is just practice this exercise and start to recognize how your thoughts are creating the emotions and not the situation. It'll allow you to stop giving away your power to the external, and you can start to work to creating healthier perceptions. As you start to recognize how the more that you fire these perceptions, right, the more that you're going to wire them, the more they're going to become ingrained in you. So the practice here is to step away from these perceptions and start to question what you're thinking. Initially, right, the perception, you might have come home late and you might, I might have asked you, you know, what did you think about that situation? And you might have said, right, my, you know, well, she needs to change or she needs to do this or this shouldn't be happening. Instead, make the perception about yourself. Start it with I. I am or I feel this, right? Or I believe this. And what you'll recognize is you'll start to pick up on a lot of the thoughts and feelings you have about yourself that you suppress. And then you can start to do the work to catch, check, and change those thoughts to more healthier perspectives. Let me know how this works for you and let me know, uh, in the comments, right? The kind of results that you guys are getting with this.
