Animation: An event
Every day is full of events. Some of them won’t be what we want them to be. What can we do about that?
We can change the way we interpret them. That’s where our power lies. Research has found that this interpretation can have a huge impact on our ability to face them, how the stress affects our physical health, and our overall well-being.
Our default reaction to stressful events is to see them as a threat. But we can choose to instead see the event as an opportunity to grow.
Here are a few ways to try it for yourself:
A lot of our interpretation has to do about how demanding we believe the event is and how confident we feel about the resources we have to meet those demands.
Demands are things like: how unfamiliar the stressor is, how hard it looks, and how threatening it feels to our selves or lives.
Resources are your knowledge, capabilities, relationships, and experiences.
Focus on what you have that helps you to address the stressor. Ask yourself:
Have you overcome something like this before?
What strengths do you have that you can use?
What have you learned about facing stressors in the past?
Who can support and help you in this moment?
You can also remind yourself that this is something that you haven’t mastered — yet.
Every single new experience is hard at the beginning. Think back to the last time you started something new, like a new job or school. You are learning everything for the first time. You don’t know who to ask for help. You aren’t sure what ‘good’ looks like. New things are cognitively and emotionally exhausting. But over time, as we all know, new things do get easier. Use the magic word — “yet” — and remind yourself that you just haven’t mastered this, yet, but you will, just as you have done before in other hard, challenging situations.
Not every event can be reinterpreted, of course. But by shifting towards a new way of seeing our everyday stressors, we can bring more peace and happiness to our lives.
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