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

REAPPRAISE THE SITUATION
Throughout the book, I’ve talked about how our conscious perception of the
world is always incomplete, because the brain’s automatic system filters out
apparently “irrelevant” information before we’re even aware it exists. That’s
why it’s good to set intentions 
before
each big thing we do, since they serve to
tell our brain what’s important enough to merit our conscious attention. But if
our day still turns out to be unpleasant, the good news is that we can also edit our
interpretation of reality after the fact, using a technique that scientists call
reappraisal
.
Reappraisal involves exploring alternative explanations for what we’ve
observed, acknowledging that it’s possible we may not have the full picture. It
sounds simple, but research by many psychologists and neuroscientists has
shown it to be one of the most powerful things you can do to improve your
emotional resilience. Not only does using the technique reduce the intensity of
your brain’s defensive response when things don’t go your way, but research has
found that the benefits stay with you. Reappraise a rough experience at work,

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and you’ll find it easier to roll with the punches the next time a similar thing
happens.
1
In fact, people who learn to use reappraisal have been found to have
better long-term emotional stability, interpersonal skills, and psychological well-
being.
2
Reappraisal has even been linked to improvements in working memory
and reasoning skills, probably because flipping between different perspectives
helps us to develop our mental agility.
3
So how do you do it? In experiments, volunteers are often simply taught to
attach alternative stories to a negative picture. For example, they consider the
possibility that a photo of women crying outside a church represents a wedding
rather than a funeral, with the subjects shedding happy tears rather than sad
ones.
4
In real life, we usually need a bit more help than that. If a situation has already
generated a negative reaction in us, it’s highly unlikely that we’re seeing it
objectively, since negative emotion has a tendency to blur important details in
our memory (as I said in 
Chapter 14
). So from experience, I suggest these three
steps to fully benefit from the power of reappraisal when you’re upset or angry
about a situation: