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

Talk to yourself.
Instead of saying to yourself: “
I’m
worried about this
afternoon’s meeting because…,” try “
You’re
nervous about this afternoon’s
meeting because…”
Travel forward in time.
Ask yourself: “What will I think about this a month
from now, or a year from now?” Simple, but it’s a favorite of mine precisely
because of that.
Wear someone else’s shoes.
Think about what someone else would say if
they were describing the situation from a neutral perspective, for example
that of a stranger passing by.
Inhabit your “best self.”
Think about the person you are when you’re at
your wisest, and ask what that “best self” would say about the situation. It’s a
twist on the “someone else” approach, but it allows you to tap into your own
experience of handling stressful situations.
Advise a friend.
Gain some distance by asking yourself, “If I were giving
advice on exactly this situation to a friend of mine, what would I say?”
That’s not an exhaustive list, but they’re techniques I’ve seen work. It helps to
experiment until you find a distancing technique that’s easy to tap into when
needed. For example, Chloë, the operations director of a fashion business, has
developed a go-to distancing question to use at times of crisis. She asks: “What
would my ‘best self’ say about this when looking back on this in a week’s
time?” At a stroke, this question effectively combines at least two of the
distancing techniques above—shifting the time frame and inhabiting the wisest
version of herself.

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Meanwhile, Doug, the retail CEO, likes to draw on a number of different
distancing approaches. “I often ask myself, ‘Honestly, in a year’s time, how big
a deal is this going to be?’ Or I imagine that I’m observing the situation from the
outside, looking in.” In all cases, he says, “I think about what the voice of reason
would be from a different perspective. And once I’ve tapped into that voice of
reason, it’s much easier to ask sensible questions like ‘What’s the worst that’s
going to happen?’ or ‘Is it 
really
this person’s fault?’ when I’m annoyed with
someone.”
And Bartek? “A trick I use to get some distance is a twist on the ‘see through
the eyes of a child’ idea from Buddhism. Going further, I ask the question ‘What
would a starving child think about this?’ It’s dramatic, but it works for me.
When I was worrying during the Olympics about whether my avocados were
going to go soft because we weren’t selling enough soup, asking that question
reminded me that the world wasn’t going to end. It helped put things in
proportion and lowered my anxiety, so I could think more clearly about what I
needed to do next.”