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GOOD DAYS or BAD DAYS

Guest post by: Jeff Gill

Article Overview: Whether we have a good day or bad day is often more about how we think about things rather than about what is actually happening.

GOOD DAYS or BAD DAYS

Whether we have a good day or bad day is often more about how we think about things rather than about what is actually happening. The meaning we choose to make of one event can set us up for the rest of the day in either a positive or negative frame of mind. We do have a choice, and as you read on this is important information that many of the people who I coach have already found to be extremely valuable and have used with excellent results. Please feel free to pass this on to others. People can sign up now for the monthly tips and quarterly Coaching Tips and Topics by going to www.betterbalance.co.uk

As you go on now to read this tip it will probably take you two minutes and your time well spent will be worthwhile. So here is your tip about optimism … We are what our thoughts make us! There is now overwhelming evidence that shows that optimism is healthier than pessimism. (Kobassa, Bandura and Seligman et al) Not only is a positive outlook healthier it also helps you to be more successful, have greater resilience to stress, be better able to cope under pressure, be more inspiring to others and generally a more pleasant person to be around!

Optimism and pessimism can be considered as chains of thought that relate to the future and structure our thinking about what we predict may happen in response to some event in our lives. When I am discussing optimism and pessimism with people the question of realism often arises. It is interesting that pessimists when challenged about their negativity often reply by saying they are simply being realistic. Likewise the optimist when challenged about being overly positive also says they are just being realistic! So who is right? Well the fact is that we cannot predict the future anyway so neither is right - as yet! However our thoughts about the future can become self-fulfilling prophesies. So on balance if you think the worst not only is this draining your energy but you are kind of programming yourself to make the worst more likely to happen, think more positively about future outcomes then you are making them more likely to become reality.

So how can you consistently maintain optimistic and positive thoughts (have more good days!) particularly when under pressure or when things are more difficult? The answer lies partly in understanding the structures behind your thinking and knowing how to adjust these to hold more of the kind of thoughts that you want – the ones that empower you to succeed and are good for your health! In coaching I often use the idea of thought chains to help people explore their thinking and discover their own ways of adjusting their less useful patterns of thought. Thought chains work in the following way and I am going to illustrate this with an experience from a coaching client who is happy to share this.

It begins with a real event, to this event our minds can then make up future possible scenarios that are linked together like a chain. These chains of imagined future possibilities can follow a more optimistic direction or a more pessimistic direction depending on our general de-fault way of thinking and also depending on just how we are feeling at the time. (and by the way the more we practice a particular way of thinking the better we get at it!)

Here is the real experience to illustrate. Fred (pseudonym) arrives to deliver a presentation to a management meeting, he is first there and has plenty of time to set up his PowerPoint presentation equipment. He tested everything at home the night before so he knows it works however this morning once everything is set up he gives it a quick run to check and to his horror it doesn’t work ( I am sure you can relate to similar experiences in your own life, in fact I have had an identical experience!)

Fred feels his stomach churning and heart pounding, he quickly tries all the things he knows but to no avail and there is no one else to help. He realises that he will have to go ahead with his presentation without his prepared PowerPoint although he did have the foresight to have some key points on a flip chart and everything copied onto handouts. As he sits there pondering the rest of the morning his thoughts begin to wander and unfortunately on this occasion they take a pessimistic direction. This is exactly what happened that day for Fred. In response to the equipment failure (real event, sh..t happens!) Fred now links together in his mind a series of imagined pessimistic possibilities – hence a thought chain. Here are Fred’s thoughts from that morning which as you will see go from bad to worse – it was easy for Fred to see this in hindsight, but our thoughts ‘in the moment’ are often less rational than we think:

1. Equipment fails – real event because it did happen
2. The management team looking very bored from the outset – imagined
3. Fred pictures his MD tapping his fingers on the table in annoyance - imagined
4. Sees himself drying up and lost for words – imagined
5. Nobody contributes or asks questions – imagined
6. The meeting finishes early, nobody thanks him or says goodbye – imagined
7. The MD asks to seem him later and questions his competence – imagined
8. He is bypassed for promotion, then his job is on the line, then he is out of work, has no money, loses his house, becomes unemployable and so on …..

Apart from the initial very real equipment failure all the rest of the events are imagined, Fred has done a great job of setting himself up to fail, he feels anxious, negative and his body language is a window to his thoughts.

So what could Fred have done and how could you use this information to either assist yourself or others. The first step is to recognise what your brain is doing, be aware of your thought chains and how they are working either for you or against you. The aim once aware is to create another possible thought chain, a more optimistic one, to run in parallel with the pessimistic one and ultimately for this new chain to become the more dominant pathway. Begin to do this by questioning the meaning you are making of events and challenging the links (loosening the connections) in the following way:

In this example the equipment failure (real) has been linked to managers being bored (imagined).

1. Ask yourself “How does this lead to that, is that the only possible outcome, will that always be the case?” Consider other angles, for example one could say that many people now find PowerPoint as boring as the older OHP’s and therefore not having PowerPoint could be a positive advantage!

2. Ask yourself “So what could be another possibility?” One possible alternative could be that with a less formal presentation managers may ask more questions without feeling they are interrupting.

3. Continue to challenge other links further on in the chain, for example “How does messing up one presentation mean that I will lose my job?” “ This could mean that I get a ticking off but may also mean I could use the opportunity of meeting with the MD to talk about my recent success in improving so and so”.

4. As you begin to loosen the links and create other possible outcomes (remember none of this is real anyway so you may as well make up something useful) you can start to build an alternative chain of possibilities that is more optimistic and positive. At least now there is some better balance to the thought structures. To develop this further you can now start asking questions like “What would I like this to mean that would be more useful and would support me?” This is often called reframing. Some time ago the very same thing happened to me I turned it into a great opportunity to explore some different ways of presenting and expanding my flexibility.

The above example is about giving a presentation and is simply there to illustrate how thought chains work. It could apply to anything and you can easily adapt this to fit any kind of event that is relevant for you or for others. I recently heard a great example of powerful reframing on a TV documentary. A man with a promising career had been hit by a car and was now unable to work and in some ways disabled. He reframed the meaning of this experience for himself by saying that before in his job he had been working long hours and spent little time with his family but now he could spend lots of quality time with his family. He could find the positive in the negative. If you have any examples or similar stories you want to share then please feel free to email me at info@betterbalance.co.uk

For those of you wondering what actually happened to the remainder of Fred’s morning here is the rest of the story. Not surprisingly with that kind of thought chain running Fred struggled from the start, however a colleague recognising what was going on very quickly came to his rescue by saying that they really liked the first point Fred had made and began some constructive debate to take the spotlight off Fred for a while. Fred’s morning didn’t turn out perfectly but on balance was not so bad and nothing resembling the chain of disasters in Fred’s pessimistic thought chain. Strangely I have often noticed this to be the case!


Best wishes and choose to have more good days!


Jeff Gill ICF Credentialed Coach

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