How to Have a Good Day: Harness the Power of Behavioral Science to Transform Your Working Life pdfdrive com

LABEL IT
A powerful way of quickly reducing our levels of worry, anger, or frustration is
to do what behavioral scientists call 
affect labeling
. Years of research suggests
that if we can name the negative emotion we’re experiencing and describe
succinctly what’s causing that feeling, we can reduce its hold on us.
1
One study by UCLA researchers had four groups of arachnophobes confront a
live tarantula and get as close to touching it as they could.
2
 The first group were
asked to articulate, or “label,” their feelings about the ordeal, by saying things
like “I’m anxious and frightened by the ugly, terrifying spider.” (A response that
certainly seems reasonable to most of us.) Another group used fighting words:
“That little spider can’t hurt me. I’m not afraid of it.” A third group distracted
themselves by talking about something completely different, while a control
group said nothing at all. The results were striking: even a week later, the
“labeling” group exhibited noticeably less fear than the other groups when they
had to confront a spider again. Their palms were less damp and they managed to
get closer to the spider.
That reduction in negative emotion is mirrored by what’s going on in our
brains when we use the labeling technique. Researchers have found that while
activity in our survival circuits rises when we spot possible trouble, it calms
down when we label what’s going on.
3
 That makes it easier for us to engage the
sophisticated reasoning skills of our brain’s deliberate system, so that we can see
the bigger picture and—if necessary—find a way forward. It’s almost as if
acknowledging that there’s a problem allows our brain to stop sounding the
alarm: the cognitive equivalent of saying, “Yes, I heard you—so now what?”
Bartek used labeling to great effect in the midst of his Olympics crisis. “When
I felt panic creeping up on me, I wrote down how I felt and what I was worrying
about. In fact, I kept a diary of my concerns each day. As soon as I put my
feelings on paper, it seemed to help massively.” He points out, though, that
labeling can seem at odds with the professional advice we often receive from
colleagues. As Bartek says, “We’re often told to ‘just get on with it’ or ‘suck it

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up.’
” There’s lots to be said for that kind of can-do optimism. But if it comes at
the cost of bottling up your concerns, research suggests it tends to make things
worse, rather than better. Suppressing negative emotions has been found to
backfire, 
increasing
both physiological and neurological markers of stress.
4
So
as Bartek says, “If you jump straight into solution mode before recognizing how
you’re feeling, you probably won’t be doing your best thinking about what to do
next.”
Doug, the online retail CEO whom we met in