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

Step back.
Decide on a small personal routine that helps you stop and take a
deep breath. If that sounds a little like the “mindful pause” idea in 
Chapter 6
,
on overcoming overload, you’re right. What worked for you when you’re
feeling overloaded might also work for you in the middle of a tense
conversation; Anthony uses what he calls his “triangular breathing” technique
for both situations (breathing in for three, out for three, pausing for three).
Since my early warning sign is a frozen face, my “step back” usually involves
me smiling broadly. For a client of mine, it involves holding her pen between

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both hands and examining it while she rolls it between her fingers a couple of
times.
Reset.
Ask yourself a question, to reengage your brain’s deliberate system
and encourage some of the curiosity and exploration that’s characteristic of
discovery mode. Again, it helps to have a go-to question that you can
remember at times of stress. Here are some I like:
• “What was/is my real intention for this conversation?”
• “What’s really going on here? What’s triggering this tension in me, in
them?”
• “When I look back on this, what will I feel good about having done?”
When Peter (the IT consultant we met in the last chapter) thought back over
his most tense conversations, some clear habitual triggers emerged. “One
definite hot button for me is a situation where I don’t feel I’m getting my point
across. I’ve taken the time to explain something well, and the other person still
doesn’t accept what I’m saying. That annoys me without fail.” Situations like
this challenged Peter’s desire to feel valued, and they were usually accompanied,
he says, by a feeling of “wanting to fix something and not being able to do it.
Feeling like I have to be a sledgehammer.” What early warning signals would
enable Peter to spot that he was about to behave like a sledgehammer? “There’s
something about my shoulders tensing up. My voice gets louder, too.” There
were also certain phrases that told him that he was about to lose his balance. “I
hear myself think, ‘I know I’m right!’ followed by ‘Why don’t you get it?’
”
With this self-awareness, Peter became much better at predicting when he
would go into hammer mode. And as soon as he noticed his tension levels rising,
he used a specific phrase to help him step back. “It’s something a very laid-back
friend of mine says at stressful times: ‘Easy does it.’ I say that to myself and it
reminds me of him, and reminds me to relax.” For the next step, reengaging his
deliberate system, Peter finds that “asking myself ‘What really matters?’ is a
good reset question for me. It stops me trying to pound the person with my point
of view, by reminding me that’s not actually my aim. A better relationship is the
aim.”