Do you want some help with bouncing back when things go pear shaped in your life? The good news is that we can learn resilience and recover when things go wrong in our lives.Evidence has found that people who are more optimistic have a better chance of bouncing back. Importantly, part of being optimistic is how we explain things we experience to ourselves.
Don’t despair if you are not someone who sees the glass half full!That was me a few years ago. It’s so easy to slip into a negative spiral. If I can teach optimism to myself, anyone can learn!Science shows we can learn optimism by training our thoughts to influence our behaviour and by practising mindfulness- living in the present (Joyce et al., 2018). People who want to train their brains to learn optimism do 3 things.-They don’t blame themselves every time something goes wrong.-They see setbacks as temporary and not affecting them for the rest of their lives. -They realise setbacks affect one part of their lives but not all parts of their lives.
I made this table to show the difference between optimistic and pessimistic explanatory styles when bad things happen.
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- If you want to go more deeply into explaining bad events, read on. Otherwise, scroll down to Hugh Cuylenburg's 3 tips.
- How we react to bad events can be broken down using the SPARK acronym Stress; the problematic event, Perception; how we interpret the event, Affect; how we feel about it, Response; what we do or how we react, and Knowledge; the result of our actions.
- Professor Ilona Boniwell explains this on her website https://www.positran.eu/resilience-or-Resilience/ Events that happen are just factual events. However, the ways we explain those events to ourselves influence- our feelings, the actions we take and the results we get. So if we change our interpretation to a more positive one, better things follow. This is not to say, we ignore negative events, but it is possible to reframe our thinking to lessen the blow and to give past events some perspective in our lives. Here's How: 1. Think about a recent bad event in your life. (I find it helpful to write this down.)
- What went wrong? What thoughts are you having about it?
- 2. Ok, now, go through each thought and try to change each one in a more positive way. This means, less personal, more temporary and less consuming of all aspects of your life.
- Okay. How do you feel now? You should feel better than before and this will influence your actions, the result you get and how you feel after it.
- Try these 3 basic tips from The Resilience Project’s Hugh Cuylenburg
The 3 Tips
1. Gratitude-3 good things. (Change the positives & negatives balance).2. Empathy- thinking & feeling about what others are going through. (Boost connection & perspective).3. Mindfulness- being in the present moment.(Stop... Focus on now...Calm...)
To pratise mindfulness, I like to do the simple 5-4-3-2-1 method. It brings me back to my body and what I am experiencing at that moment. The result is that it calms me down and stops my mind racing around in the future.
I ask myself, what are;
5 things I can see, 4 things I can physically feel,
3 things I can hear, 2 things I can smell, and
1 thing I can taste or an emotion I can name.
You can do this anytime any place, but I often do it in nature because I always feel better outdoors , physically and mentally .
Let’s practise 3 Good things …today!
Grab a piece of paper and write down 3 things that went well for you earlier in the day. It's important to write them down and reflect on why they went well.
1 thing that went well & why it was good...The 2nd thing & why....3rd thing.....
Try for 1 week at the end of every day and you might like it so much that you make it a habit. When I stick to this for a few days in a row, I find that I notice more positive things, more often, throughout each day.
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