It’s easy to feel stuck or overwhelmed by the demands of modern life. It’s not a constructive state of mind. It can lead to stress and anxiety.
Daniel Friedland MD is a high-performance leadership trainer. In this video he shares tips on how to shift your mindset so you can accomplish what seems overwhelming. The key is to turn stress into challenge. This shift in viewpoint leads to a different energy toward what needs to be accomplished, resulting in a greater sense of control and a more productive outcome.
It applies to demands in any setting, for people at all stages and in any role in life. When the shift is made, it’s like a weight being lifted—you feel lighter, with a sense of breathing space. Then you can tackle the challenge with enthusiasm rather than dread.
His two key tips
- Reframe the demands as challenges. Reframing is the psychological strategy of viewing and experiencing events, ideas, concepts and emotions to find more positive alternatives. It allows us to see the same situation in a different way by finding an alternative possible explanation, interpretation, or perception of an experience.
- Collect your resources to meet these challenges. These resources could include the empathy of someone who cares about you, coaching or information from someone with more experience, or looking up information or reading a reference book. It might also be your inner resources such as calming your anxiety through meditation or EFT tapping so you can think more clearly. Use this step-by-step process for cognitive restructuring from MindTools.