It's important to get a handle on mood swings or energy shifts if you want to maintain your work life balance and be successful in business. According to psychologist and researcher Martin Seligman, some folks appear to be hardwired to respond optimistically and hopefully to work life balance upset and life's ups and downs. Others are wired for opposite responses. Fortunately, you do not have to settle for the wiring you were born with. With practice you can improve your resilience and your hopefulness by acquiring solid positive thinking skills.
I like to think of the process of building hopefulness, resilience and positive thinking skills as an analogue to building physical fitness: it takes attention, concentration, commitment, and repetition. If you approach a workout program with those qualities, you can almost always improve your fitness.
The first hurdle to get over is the belief that you already need to be different in order to succeed. You don't. You are the way you are and you can start from here, overwhelmed, worried, anxious, whatever. Don't fall into your story about how you feel, but take a stand for what you intend to accomplish to restore your work life balance and where you plan to go. You do not need to feel better before you try these practices -- do them now. Another caveat: Do not interpret your progress in the short term -- measuring increase in strength and endurance after a single workout would be silly.
Seligman points out that people with an optimistic approach to life habitually accept positive thoughts and dispute negative thoughts. Those of us who are wired to be more pessimistic tend to dispute the positive and accept the negative. Optimists tend to assume that their life balance will be restored, good events will happen again and that bad events are an exception; pessimists assume the reverse. I am oversimplifying his rigorously considered arguments, and I encourage you to read the book if the science of this is important to you.
Here's a practice he recommends for shifting from hopelessness to hopefulness. I successfully use it with my clients to help them restore their work life balance. He calls it ABCDE for:
Adversity -- Beliefs -- Consequences -- Disputation -- Energization.
A - Adversity
Start by spelling out the nature of the situation. Notice that you can experience hopelessness in response to ostensibly positive situations as well as to negative ones. For example, getting a new client or being accepted into a final round of interviews can upset your balance and send you into a whirlwind of anxiety and fear that produces just as much hopelessness and overwhelm as not getting the job or not making the cut.
B -- Beliefs
This is your opportunity to spell out the thoughts and beliefs that are fueling the negative response.
C -- Consequences
Look at the consequences of your beliefs -- what happened as a result? How do you behave? What happened then?
D -- Disputation
Actively dispute the beliefs that break your life balance and send you into the downward spiral. This is where you practice arguing with yourself in a productive way.
E -- Energization
When you have been effective in disputing the problem beliefs, you feel an influx of energy, a sense of renewed hope, or at least of peacefulness.
I like to think of the process of building hopefulness, resilience and positive thinking skills as an analogue to building physical fitness: it takes attention, concentration, commitment, and repetition. If you approach a workout program with those qualities, you can almost always improve your fitness.
The first hurdle to get over is the belief that you already need to be different in order to succeed. You don't. You are the way you are and you can start from here, overwhelmed, worried, anxious, whatever. Don't fall into your story about how you feel, but take a stand for what you intend to accomplish to restore your work life balance and where you plan to go. You do not need to feel better before you try these practices -- do them now. Another caveat: Do not interpret your progress in the short term -- measuring increase in strength and endurance after a single workout would be silly.
Seligman points out that people with an optimistic approach to life habitually accept positive thoughts and dispute negative thoughts. Those of us who are wired to be more pessimistic tend to dispute the positive and accept the negative. Optimists tend to assume that their life balance will be restored, good events will happen again and that bad events are an exception; pessimists assume the reverse. I am oversimplifying his rigorously considered arguments, and I encourage you to read the book if the science of this is important to you.
Here's a practice he recommends for shifting from hopelessness to hopefulness. I successfully use it with my clients to help them restore their work life balance. He calls it ABCDE for:
Adversity -- Beliefs -- Consequences -- Disputation -- Energization.
A - Adversity
Start by spelling out the nature of the situation. Notice that you can experience hopelessness in response to ostensibly positive situations as well as to negative ones. For example, getting a new client or being accepted into a final round of interviews can upset your balance and send you into a whirlwind of anxiety and fear that produces just as much hopelessness and overwhelm as not getting the job or not making the cut.
B -- Beliefs
This is your opportunity to spell out the thoughts and beliefs that are fueling the negative response.
C -- Consequences
Look at the consequences of your beliefs -- what happened as a result? How do you behave? What happened then?
D -- Disputation
Actively dispute the beliefs that break your life balance and send you into the downward spiral. This is where you practice arguing with yourself in a productive way.
E -- Energization
When you have been effective in disputing the problem beliefs, you feel an influx of energy, a sense of renewed hope, or at least of peacefulness.
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