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How do you change your mindset so you can take life’s difficulties and disappointments in your stride, and even make them work for you?

How do you change your mindset so you can take life’s difficulties in your stride?

It’s easy for someone who doesn’t understand your problems to suggest you change your thinking, like that’s all that’s required and, hey presto! In the blink of an eye, all your problems disappear.

If only it were that easy. There is, however, evidence that if you can train your brain to respond better to adverse circumstances, you can recover from setbacks more readily and learn how to soldier on with grace and humour. How is this achieved?

Clinical psychologist Dr Lillian Nejad says there are various theories of mindsets in different contexts such as learning, facing anxiety-provoking situations, or looking towards the future, but there isn’t one ideal we should be striving towards. “It’s not about having one mindset and needing to change to another, it’s about acknowledging that all of these mindsets are within us and that we can learn to make conscious choices about how we would like to approach the various situations and circumstances that we are facing in our lives.”

Two common mindsets you might have heard of are the fixed and growth types. A fixed mindset means you believe we were born with a certain level of intelligence and talent and there’s nothing we can do to change this. It’s a convenient way to think if you’re not keen on selfdevelopment because it can absolve you of blame or putting in any effort, according to clinical psychologist Dr Kirsten Keown.

“A lot of people with a fixed mindset look to lay the blame somewhere when things go off course, and sometimes they want to rail at life for dealing them an unfair hand,” she says. “Sometimes, they turn that anger inwards.” By contrast, those fostering a growth mindset continuously strive to do and be better, and have little interest in placing blame when things go wrong. They’re not defeated or disheartened by a failed first attempt and are prepared to persist in working to continue to improve their skills and knowledge. This view of life comes with lifelong benefits, Keown explains. “People with a growth mindset end up doing better scholastically because they’re prepared to keep trying at things. They don’t get so disheartened and then that goes on to improve your outcomes later on in life because you are more likely to see any setbacks as just a learning experience. So you’ll pick yourself up and dust yourself off much quicker.”

In any case, if the mindset you’ve been in lately has not been serving you well, it might be time to switch tracks.

RETRAINING YOUR BRAIN

Our attitudes are shaped both by what’s happened to us in the past and our genetic make-up. Some individuals will have a harder time reining in their brain when their emotions gallop away simply because that’s the way it was wired since birth, says Nejad. “Recent studies have shown that about 30 per cent of people have more emotionally reactive brains, meaning they may respond more intensely to situations and be more sensitive to their environment. Further research is needed, but we can infer that there will certainly be an impact on mindset based on these brain differences.”

Equally, your past experiences and environment play a part. Unfortunate life events such as disasters, prolonged stress, and deaths of close friends and family can have a negative effect on a person’s outlook. On the bright side, positive role models, education and acquiring new skills can set an individual on a much rosier path. “These factors influence how we think about ourselves, about others and about the world, affect whether we develop healthy attitudes and behaviours, and impact the way we think about and approach challenges in our lives,” says Nejad.

Happily, there are things we can do to alter the course of our brain activity. Neuroplasticity is the ability of our brains to rewire its connections and adjust its reactions over the years, proving we are always capable of change.

“Change is possible, even at a brain level,” Nejad says. “No matter how entrenched a behaviour or how strong a neural pathway has become, we have the power to weaken current pathways and to generate new ones.”

Not everything’s peachy all the time, but it might not be quite as bad as our brain sometimes leads us to believe. Nejad recommends identifying thoughts that seem unhelpful and potentially inaccurate, and questioning whether they reflect reality or simply our fears of the worst-case scenario.

“Understand that all your thoughts are not facts,” she says. “We have thousands of thoughts every day, all kinds of thoughts – some helpful, some unhelpful, some silly, some serious, some based on fact and others based in fantasy. And it is perfectly normal for some of your thoughts to be strange or seem crazy or even destructive.”

You can then work on modifying these kinds of thoughts whenever they pop into your head. It’s not about transforming your brain into producing non-stop lollipops and rainbows, however.

“The idea is not to replace a ‘negative’ thought with a ‘positive’ one,” says Nejad. “It is to replace an unhelpful or unrealistic thought with a thought that represents the facts and is an expression of what is real and true. Not an interpretation or a judgement or an exaggeration – but a reflection of reality as it is right now.” A good way to do this is to gather some phrases or affirmations that resonate with you to help you deal with an unhelpful thought when it crops up.

“Remember, your new thoughts do not need to be ‘positive’, they just need to be more realistic like: ‘I am capable’, ‘I can get through this’, ‘I do not have to believe all my thoughts’, ‘This is difficult but doable’ or ‘This too shall pass’,” Nejad says.

“Sometimes a famous quote or a song lyric can serve as a replacement thought. Dolly Parton’s quote comes to mind during hard times. She said, ‘If you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.’”

Psychologists who specialise in cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) can help if you’d like some assistance with this process of redirecting rogue thoughts to a more productive state of mind.

REACHING OUT

What if you’re going through a particularly rough time – a relationship breakdown, job loss or drastic changes to your living situation? When people are looking to friends and family for support in this type of situation, sometimes they’re seeking a place to vent rather than advice or wellmeaning encouragement, which can be perceived as judgemental and dismissive. “It can be incredibly invalidating, when someone is going through something very hard, to say to them, ‘Oh well, just change your mindset,’” says Keown.

This kind of response can feel patronising and demeaning, like they’re assuming you’re in this situation because you’ve made the wrong choices or aren’t clever enough to see the obvious solutions in front of you. For now, Keown suggests steering clear of people who are likely to react in this way to you sharing your problems. It is important, however, to seek help in times such as these – from friends and family, or community organisations.

Reaching out can be scary and draining, and everyone has their limit, especially when they’re already in a fragile emotional state. Put yourself out there as often as you can, whether it’s to make new friends, apply for a job vacancy or in search of other new ways to improve your life, but be gentle with yourself when it all becomes too much. Keown recommends building in time to show yourself compassion and self-care in between bouts of pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. Give yourself rewards such as going for a walk, having a cup of tea or enjoying a bath. She likens this need to reset your system to an elite sprinter who can’t keep running all day, but needs to build in recovery time between practice sessions. She warns not to get down on yourself if you don’t ‘win every race’.

“It is a numbers game to a certain extent,” says Keown. “If you’re one of those people who has had a lot of setbacks, you can end up with a story in your head that nothing ever works out for you or ‘I’m not good enough’, and it’s other people who have those kinds of opportunities come through for them.” It’s true that others may have had more opportunities land in their lap, but the more you seek out help and opportunities and embrace those that do come your way, the more likely it is that some of them will pan out. Besides, times when you stumble can be a good way to strengthen your capacity to deal with disappointment constructively so that next time you can pick yourself up more quickly.

“If you don’t fail, you learn to believe in yourself, and if you do fail, you learn you can cope and you have the opportunity to practise resilience. It’s a win-win!” says Nejad.

Listing the tasks ahead of you, prioritising the most important and then putting together a plan of attacking your to-do list will help you feel less overwhelmed and more in control of your future, even in the bleakest of times. You’ll then be able to visualise, with the help of others, a pathway forwards. It may not be the perfect path or even the best one, but you can always adjust course as you go along, says Keown, and sometimes the best way to evaluate your plan is when you’ve already set it in motion.

Expect kinks in the road and know that you’ve survived times before when not everything unfolded according to plan. Sometimes these roadblocks can detour you into a better direction. “Be prepared to set out on a pathway where you’re not 100 per cent sure of what you need to do or what the outcomes will be, but you’ve got to keep moving and trust yourself that by moving forward you’ll figure things out along the way,” Keown says.

CREATING CALM

It sounds trite, but even in the direst of times there are things we can feel grateful for. Turning our attention towards these can help us feel more positive about life. Nejad suggests writing down three things per day that have brought you a spark of happiness, trying to be specific and thinking of different things each day. You can also get into the habit of thanking people in a variety of ways using warmth and humour – stickers, Post-Its, phone calls, gifts and hugs among them. Remind yourself that you can’t change the past, but you can change the future.

“Any upheaval or crisis will come with anxiety, discomfort and pain, but it also has the potential to lead to clarity regarding our values, to spark innovation and progress, to promote greater compassion and kindness in our communities, to build resilience, and to give us a greater appreciation of what we have,” says Nejad.

“Take this time to reflect on how your challenging times have the potential to positively affect how you live your life moving forward.”