Source: adamkaz/Getty Images Signature
As we settle into 2022, many face uncertainty, including ongoing COVID concerns and the need to rethink how we work and live. As a result, our collective mental health continues to suffer.
Understanding how directly your thoughts can affect how you feel will help you shift from unhealthy, negative emotions to a more flexible mindset. The benefit of changing? You’ll develop coping skills that can sustain you through tough times, whether it’s divisions over COVID, riffs in your family, or challenges at work.
Are you being realistic or rigid?
For example, insisting that something should happen a certain way or that someone should behave a certain way could lead to feeling anxioushurt and angry: unhealthy negative emotions that can lead to self-defeating behaviors such as avoidance or delay. That way of thinking is a reflection of being rigid and fixed.
Knowing that life doesn’t always give you what you expect or that people don’t always behave the way you want will help you manage healthy negative emotions like disappointment, worry, and sadness. anger. (Yes, anger can be healthy and helpful. As Audre Lorde tells us, it’s full of information.)
instead of thinking something they should happens, try thinking, “It would be great if I did well in my presentation…but it wouldn’t be the end of the world if I didn’t.” Or, “I want my parent or friend apologize for an insensitive comment, but I recognize that it may not. This allows you to come to a place of acceptance, while still speaking: acceptance does not mean that you sacrifice your values or become a doormat.
REBT can drive a sea change in perspective
This technique is part of Rational Emotiva Behavioral Therapy (REBT) – a framework rooted in philosophy and focused on perspective. REBT assumes that you are a goal-oriented individual and supports you in achieving your goals. objectives. It leads you to check in with yourself, challenge negative thoughts, and consider other ways of looking at situations. It’s not about what happened to you, it’s about how perceive what matters, and changing your perception can change how you feel.
Life is full of uncertainty and events related to the pandemic are particularly challenging. Managing your expectations and changing your perspective will help you navigate uncertainty and be flexible, adaptable, and elastic In difficult times
Songs to help you navigate change
Sometimes a little music (and movement) can make you feel so much better. Try creating a playlist of your favorite inspirational songs that focus on being flexible, changing your perspective, adapting to change, and even creating change. Turn up the volume whenever you feel salty or stuck. Here are some to get you started:
- “Change is Coming” by Sam Cooke
- “Optimistic” by Sounds of the Blackness
- “Change” by Faith Evans
- Janelle Monae’s Tightrope
- “Fighter” by Christina Aguilera
- “Love the person you’re with” by Isley Brothers
- “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” by The Rolling Stones
