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Learning your resilience ABCs

“Coming from a family of perfectionists, I get very upset if I make a mistake at work and tend to dwell on it & berate myself long after everyone else has forgotten it! Would you have any advice about how to keep things in perspective please?”

I received this question from a reader recently, and recognized this as a very common problem for quite a few of us. In particular we tend to get stuck in a loop of blaming ourselves and forget to look for other reasons why something might have happened.

There is an excellent model described in the book “The Resilience Factor” (Reivich & Shatté, 2003): the ABCDE model. The model helps us figure out what is triggering our repetitive & negative thoughts, shows us how to interrupt those unhelpful thought patterns, and how to plan a more useful and positive way forward.

Sound useful? Then grab a pen & paper and answer the following questions as you go through them.

A – Adversity: what kinds of situations trigger the ruminating? What is going through your head in those moments? What worst case scenario are you imagining? What pictures do you see in your mind’s eye? Possibly something extreme like “I made this mistake and now I am going to get fired, lose my job, my house and end up sleeping under a bridge” …

B – Beliefs: What thoughts and words are going through your mind? How do you feel? Angry? Embarrassed? Guilty? Sad/Depressed? Anxious? Reivich & Shatté (2002) found that each one of these is linked to a specific trigger:

  • Anger – Violation of your rights
  • Guilt – Violation of another’s rights
  • Embarrassment – Negative comparison to others
  • Sadness, depression – real-world loss, loss of self-worth
  • Anxiety – Fear of future threat

I find identifying the emotion linked to the belief extremely useful – because then you have a better idea of where to start and what you can do to change the situation.

C – Consequences: What do you do as a result? Do the negative thoughts distract you from other things you should be doing? Do they make you want to hide away? Do they make you avoid those situations in future?

Is your reaction in proportion to the event? If it is not in proportion, what is the underlying theme (these are called “iceberg” beliefs)? Sometimes they can be quite complex … like “I have to be perfect to be likeable/loveable” …

D –  Dispute: This is where the really hard work starts, as you’ll need to replace those automatic negative thoughts will more useful ones! You’ll need to channel your “inner lawyer” who can help you dispute those unrealistic beliefs. Here are some starting questions – take look at your notes from parts A&B and see how you can address those thoughts, for example…

  • “a more accurate way of seeing this is …”
  • “that’s not true because…”
  • “a more likely outcome is… and I can do… to deal with it”

 

E – Energize: What would be a good & positive next step that you can take when a similar situation arises in future?

Two suggestions from my side:

1) Self-compassion!! Don’t be so hard on yourself – what would you say to a good friend in the same situation? Say the same to yourself.

2) Mindfulness – By paying attention to our bodies’ reactions, we can actually reduce our self-destructive thoughts by taking our attention off them and framing the issue more widely.

What other ideas might you have for changing your limiting beliefs in a future situation?

In a nutshell, understanding where those unhelpful thoughts are coming from, and challenging ourselves to put them into perspective helps us identify better ways for dealing with them in the future. In the words of Chris Hardwick… “You don’t have to believe everything you think”!

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No Risk, No Fun?

I recently attended the German Association for Positive Psychology Research’s (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Positiv-Psychologische Forschung: http://dgppf.de) Conference at Trier University. It was a fantastic event with much food for thought. Over the next few days I will try to share some of the insights from the latest German PP research. So let’s start at the beginning…

The introductory keynote speech delivered by Professor Dr. Michaela Brohm-Badry of Trier University addressed the topic of “Risk, Happiness and Excitement”.

Professor Brohm-Badry explained how our ability to motivate ourselves is linked to our perception of the “excitement” of a task. Research exploring which games or sports events we find exciting shows that the outcome of a game must be unpredictable for it to be experienced as engaging. The risk of potential failure is the ingredient that makes it interesting. If we can easily beat our opponent, we think the game is boring; if it is too difficult, we also disengage. This also seems to be true for our inner motivation to complete various tasks. In a way, we compete against ourselves – and if the challenge is too simple or too complex, we lose interest.

We can only experience personal growth by putting ourselves outside of our comfort zone (also known as the “zone of stagnation”, I loved the visual imagery), and allowing ourselves to experience situations in which we might fail. We should be brave in pushing our boundaries, whilst not choosing tasks that generate fear since these will most likely not lead to growth.

In fact, there is a “growth zone” somewhere in the middle between boredom and fear – in which we are open-minded and will be motivated to try our new things. And try new things we should: only if we are required to test out new ideas and behaviours or approach problems from a new angle will we acquire new skills that contribute to our personal growth. And even if we make mistakes, and fail, we will learn more than others who never try anything new.

And in any case, failure is simply a matter of perception. As Thomas A. Edison famously said – “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

 

A detailed explanation of these ideas can be found the following article by Prof. Brohm-Bradry in German magazine Wirtschaftswoche: http://www.wiwo.de/erfolg/coach/glueck/wie-mut-uns-stimuliert-mach-was-womit-du-scheitern-kannst/19741370-all.html

 

 

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Cultivating Positive Emotions: Six Easy Practices to Try

Over the past few years, many researchers have found new and scientifically proven ways to increase positive emotions and wellbeing. From Martin Seligman to Barb Fredrickson, Jon Kabat-Zinn to Amy Cuddy: all have discovered and shared a variety of practices increase the level of wellbeing and positivity in your life. The six techniques described below all require a certain amount of practice, but have all been shown to have a positive impact on our emotions. Depending on your preferences, you might find some techniques suit you more than others. See which one resonates most with you, and give it a try!

  1. “Three blessings exercise”. This classic gratitude exercise recommended by Seligman (2011) in his book “Flourish”. The idea is a simple journaling exercise. Every day, at the end of the day, write about 3 things – large or small – that went well, and why they went well. We can all benefit from reflecting on what went well each day, and this technique has even been shown to improve symptoms of depression over a timeframe of a few months.
  1. Mindfulness: Experiencing and savouring the moment is a powerful way of connecting with our inner selves in a positive way. While its origins can be found in ancient Buddhism, it has found its way into modern life thanks to various advocates such as Job Kabat-Zinn. For example, Berkeley University’s “Greater Good”  website has an excellent overview over its advantages and techniques such as mindful breathing and the body-scan.
  1. Loving-Kindness Meditation: In Love 2.0, Barbara Fredrickson describes how increasing micro-moments of love in your life – including compassion towards yourself – can increase your health, vitality and wellbeing. You can find simple guided meditations on Fredrickson’s website.
  1. Resilience: How we interpret the world around us has an influence on our subjective wellbeing. Developing skills to deal with adversity helps us become more resilient and positive. Reivich and Shatté (2002) describe a sequence of steps you can take to examine negative events, including identifying the type of emotion experienced, any thinking traps preventing us from seeing the bigger picture, putting our negative thoughts into perspective and taking positive action.
  1. Create positive experiences. It has been shown that experiences, and especially sharing positive experiences with others have a much more lasting impact on our emotions. In a similar vein, helping others can generate positive emotions as well – whether it is helping out a colleague, friend or neighbor at short notice, or volunteering regularly.
  1. Posture & presence. When you are in immediate need of positive emotions, paying attention to your body language and adjusting it accordingly can be beneficial. Amy Cuddy’s new book “Presence” (2016) and her 2012 Ted talk, “Your body language shapes who you are” explains how our posture affects our emotions, and she shares “power poses” to quickly change your frame of mind and build confidence.

What other practices are you familiar with? I would love to add to the list – let me know in the comments section below!

Have a great day!

References:

Cuddy, Amy (2016): Presence. London: Orion Books

Fredrickson, B.L. (2013): Love 2.0. New York: Hudson Street Press

Reivich, K. and Shatté, A. (2002) The Resilience Factor: 7 essential skills for overcoming life’s inevitable obstacles. New York: Three Rivers Press

Seligmann, M. (2011): Flourish. New York: Free Press.

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Overcoming the destructive power of “BUT…”

I was recently working with a client, let’s just call him Mark, who had sought me out in order to adjust to a new work situation that was impacting his work-life balance. During our sessions, we would define the coaching goal and start working on potential solutions. Mark was really dedicated to the process, spent a lot of time reflecting on his needs and generating ideas for solutions.

However something interesting happened every single time any idea or suggestion came up, regardless of how big or small the idea was. Mark immediately followed up with “but…” and then proceeded to list all the reasons why the idea would not work. In fact, this happened so often, that he picked up on it himself and it became a bit of a running joke.

Mark appeared committed to change, however just by using this little word, he was preventing himself from moving forward and actually implementing the changes we were working on. He undermined practically every idea, big or small by focussing on the “but”. Mark was essentially drawing his own attention away from the good idea to *possibly* negative outcomes. So of course he was then less convinced about following the course of action that a moment before had seemed obvious and simple.

Now Mark is far from the only client to do this, he just happens to be a recent example. Many of us have “glass-half-empty” views of the world and a tendency to dwell on the feared negative results instead of putting our energy into the positives. We are naturally risk-averse, so if our thinking style emphasizes the risks, then we can suffer from paralysis.

So what can you do to get over “but” and make changes to your life, even if you don’t really enjoy the process of change?

Set meaningful goals

Be sure that you identify a meaningful goal. Working with Mark, for example, the coaching topic evolved from “increase work-life balance”, to “get better organized” to the underlying topic “connecting with my children”. This was a profound topic for Mark and generated very different solutions than the more vague work-life balance and organizational questions. The goal and its potential positive outcomes were much more meaningful, so it was worth making the extra effort to overcome some of the fear factor and try new things out. And – wellbeing research in the field of positive psychology has identified meaning & purpose as an essential element to be able to flourish as a person, an added bonus!

Enjoy the experiment

Often the belief that the change will be an all-or-nothing experience has us quaking in our boots. It is much harder to motivate ourselves to make permanent changes than reversible ones. So a simple solution to overcome this fear is to view making a change to your usual routine and habits as an experiment and a learning experience. If the experiment works, great, then do more of it. If it doesn’t, chalk it up to learning experience and try something else. When Thomas Edison was working on his famous invention, he did not actually have one magical “lightbulb” moment, he invented many lightbulbs that did not work until he found the solution that enabled him to develop one that did. “I have not failed 10,000 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 10,000 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”

Remember the tortoise and the hare?

Go slow to go fast. I love the idea of “babysteps” and this is one scenario where they really can work. Taking small, slow, safe steps will help you overcome the fear of change. Choose an action that is simple to complete, celebrate your success and take another small step. And then another.

Reframe with positive words

Focusing on the negatives makes the negatives come true. You get what you focus on, so if you focus on what might go wrong, you will spend less time thinking about what will go right, and how to achieve it. Also, positive emotions generate creativity and an open mind. Remind yourself of the purpose of the changes, and replace blockers like “but” with positive words like “try”, “learn” and “experiment”. Move from “never” to “one day”. Give it a try – you might be surprised how this changes your frame of mind and motivates you to get started.

Use your strengths

Figure out what you are good at, and what resources you have available to you and draw on them to help you through a change situation. Use your skills to generate new ideas, build a support network, get organized, or whatever else you need to do. Thinking of times where they have already come in handy in the past can help reduce the fear factor. And if you don’t know what your strengths are yet, these excellent questionnaires can help: the VIA Survey (free) or Tom Rath’s classic StrengthsFinder 2.0 (as a book or via Gallup Strengths Center).

Don’t give three little letters the power to stop your journey in its tracks. Thank “but” for trying to keep you out of harm’s way, however remind yourself that you are in control here, you call the shots, and above all that you have a meaningful goal that it is worth taking action for.

So what is the one small step you will take today to set you on your path towards your goals?