Discovering Novel Solutions – 12 Essential Insights for Emotional Sobriety

Sentence Completion Exercise

Here are a few sentence completions that will help increase your awareness of your ability to cope. Take each sentence stem below and write it at the top of a piece of paper. Next, repeat it silently (or aloud) to yourself, and then complete the sentence stem with the first thought that comes to mind. Do six to ten completions for each.

You can see the ‘fill in the blank’ sentences below and access/print a worksheet setup to facilitate the process.

I become rigid when addressing a problem when I ____.

To stay more flexible when I am confronting a problem, I need to remind myself that ____.

Shifting between my right hemisphere and my left hemisphere when I confront a problem means ____.

Hanging loose means ____.

Seeing the big picture means ____.

I stop myself from being more flexible because ____.

If I could laugh at myself more rather than taking everything so seriously, I would ____.

The hard thing about letting go of control is ____.

If I had more faith in my ability to cope, I would feel ____.

In order to achieve emotional sobriety, we have to surrender our special status. What does that mean? It means we have to surrender the idea that we can be perfect. In the next chapter, we address ways of breaking the bonds of perfectionism, a critical issue if we are going to achieve emotional sobriety.