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Training wheels - if we take them off our bike, we can ride on our own like the big kids!
A vegetable you don't like - if we take it out of the sandwich at a restaurant, we can enjoy the sandwich more and keep the rest of the tasty ingredients.
A doll with a voice - if we separate the voice from the doll, we get, on the one hand, a doll we can keep playing with, and on the other hand, a component with a voice recording we can use separately. You don't necessarily need the voice to play with the doll, right?!
Running in winter wearing a coat?!
On the one hand, the coat helps us keep our body heat so we don't get cold outside.
On the other hand, if we need to run, the physical action of running warms us up, and the coat might actually get in the way of the running itself.
We have a small conflict here, don't we?!
Two things warming us up at the same time, and one of them getting in the way of what we're doing.
If we take off the coat, take out the part that's in our way, we can keep running, and we'll still be warm, but without the thing that was getting in the way of doing it easily.
The way to do it is to think about what to take out so the goal is still reached, but without the unnecessary / bothersome parts.
If we take out the parts that get in our way, we can (maybe) do the action in a simpler way, an easier way, a more comfortable way, with fewer parts.
For example: let's think about our clothes closet.
How can we tidy it easily?
We can start by sorting our clothes
by season (summer / winter / fall / spring),
by how much we use them (what we use more, what we use less),
by how worn they are (what's new and what's older),
by what we want to keep (our size, newer) and what we can pass on (too small, worn)
This way, we can also take out items that don't fit us anymore,
tidy the closet easily, and keep only what we really need.
When we think about which parts are unnecessary / not needed / maybe even in the way,
we take the difficult points out of the problem, and we can overcome it easily and quickly,
not every part is always needed, and if we notice that, we can think about things a little differently.
The same is true when we feel emotionally weighed down and can't think of ways to calm down.
If we take ourselves out of the place where we feel weighed down for a moment, stop everything we're doing, and breathe deeply using box breathing, we can let out the tension and stress we feel and balance out the stressful feeling and the anxiety we feel.
How to breathe using box breathing:
Focus on your breathing,
breathe in through your nose like you're smelling a flower, for 4 seconds (count slowly to 4 in your head),
hold the air (keep it in your body, don't breathe in or out) for 4 seconds (count slowly to 4 in your head),
breathe out through your mouth like you're blowing out birthday candles, for 4 seconds (count slowly to 4 in your head),
repeat this a few times
until you feel relief.
The moment we breathe deeply, we can take ourselves out of the situation and disconnect, so we can think about how to move forward now and what to do next.