112 brilliant stress management
and give us more choices both behaviourally and emotionally.
When psychologists are talking of resilience, they mean pretty
much what common usage would lead us to expect: that we can
withstand and recover from harmful forces.
This chapter will highlight ve mental approaches to building
your resilience:
1 Focus. In any situation, we focus on one or a few aspects,
because our brains are not capable of giving complete attention
to everything. Our choice of which aspects can dictate how we
interpret and therefore respond to the situation.
2 Optimism. Perhaps the fundamental attitude that resilient
people have is the optimism that things will get better. We’ll
see why this is not just a blind faith in events, but a positive
strategy for coping.
3 Determination, flexibility and persistence. This may be three
things in one section, but they are intimately linked. Watch
a healthy toddler trying to figure out how to build a tower
from blocks, and then disrupt their play. They will show all
three of these.
4 Gratitude. Some of the most astonishing yet unsurprising
research shows the power of gratitude to help us to cope
with adversity and feel better. We’ll look at how to build
this into your daily routine.
5 Self-talk. Yes, I know you talk to yourself; we all do. But
what do you say when you are under stress? By making
changes here, you can get a huge boost in your outlook,
emotions and resilience.
Focus
A truism in life is that ‘you get what you look for’. It is certainly
true that our prejudices predispose us to see in people or events
Control your mental response to stress 113
the things that we expect, because they cause our brains to lter
out contrary evidence. So, what you focus on is vital.
If you expect a meeting or interview to go badly and to put you
under pressure, then you brain will spot every expression, every
choice of words and every action that could be interpreted as
hostile and bring it to your attention, drowning out all of the
neutral and positive comments or acts. If, on the other hand,
you have prepared well, are condent, and expect the meeting
to go well, then the rst smile you get will reinforce this and odd
choices of words will go unnoticed or be attributed to momen-
tary lapses.
In a very real sense, our brains create our own reality for us,
which may or may not correspond with what an objective
observer might describe.
Meaning
‘Take nothing on its looks; take everything on
evidence. There’s no better rule.’
The lawyer, Jaggers, in Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations
Jaggers’s injunction is an ideal. Yet, for most of the time we do
exactly the opposite and interpret things as they seem. External
events don’t have any ‘meaning’. They are what they are, and
any meaning comes from the interpretations that you or I attach
to them. How often have you heard yourself saying something
like:
‘When she says that, she doesn’t think I’m good enough for . . .’
‘When he does that, it means he thinks . . .’
‘Did you see what she just did? She’s a complete . . .’
‘He didn’t need to do that, he must want . . .’
‘When that happens, it happens because . . .’
114 brilliant stress management
All of these sorts of thoughts involve either reading someone’s
mind, ascribing meaning to an action or event, or assuming
a reason that may be completely false. When we get stressed,
objectivity and reason easily give way to this kind of thinking.
brilliant
activity
Recover your perspective
When you hear your inner voice making statements like these, SCOPE the
situation:
Stop Listen to the voice and stop it.
Clarify What exactly are you thinking? What interpretation are you
putting on the events around you?
Options What alternative interpretations are available to you?
Compare each one with the real evidence. Don’t be afraid
to acknowledge (and this is often the case) that you really
do not have enough evidence to know what the underlying
truth is.
Proceed Act not on your first instinct, but on your best considered
instinct.
Evaluate Constantly reassess new information and test it against possible
interpretations. As the evidence changes, then change your
interpretation accordingly.
Choose to accept or choose to reject
One of the clearest examples of our tendency to put our focus
in the wrong place is when somebody’s chance remark (or
even a spiteful comment) makes us feel bad for the rest of
the day.
Control your mental response to stress 115
‘No one can make you feel inferior without your
consent.’
Eleanor Roosevelt
brilliant
exercise
Imagine you are holding a big, ripe, juicy, gorgeous orange. Hold out
your hand and picture the orange in your hand. Feel its weight, see the
shine and texture of its skin, smell the sharp sweetness. Now imagine
that, in your other hand, you are taking a sharp knife. Bring it up to
the orange, and just let it touch the skin. As it does so, imagine that
tiny spray of zest and smell the sharp, intensely orange aroma of it.
Now imagine cutting carefully into the flesh. The juices start to run,
and they smell really sweet. When they touch your hand, they feel cold
and sticky, and you know that this is going to be a lovely, juicy, sweet
orange. Imagine you have cut it carefully right in half. Put the knife
down safely and bring your orange up to your mouth. Imagine you
are just about to take a bite and suck on the gorgeous sweet juices.
The smell is intense now and you can feel the cool fresh juice running
down your arm. Get ready to put the orange to your lips and STOP.
Is your mouth watering?
The possibility that I can make you feel good or bad, just by
what I say, is a myth. But it is true that you can make yourself
feel good or bad by how you choose to deal with what I say. The
importance of making a conscious choice was best captured two
and a half thousand years ago, by Buddha’s problem of the gift.
Buddha asked: ‘If I offer you a gift and you refuse to accept it, who
owns the gift?’
Lead the mind: lead the body
116 brilliant stress management
There is no orange. Yet most people who immerse themselves
in the paragraph in the box above will experience their mouth
water, as if there were. Your brain is the most powerful tool you
have – and it controls your whole being. If your brain can do that
with a fantasy orange, just think of all that it can do to control
your response to stress if you let it.
So, focus on the good things that
happen, rather than on the bad
things. Focus on your points of
control and your successes, and
attach no more signicance to events
than they really deserve. What you focus on will inuence your
whole response to stressful events.
One of my Aikido teachers used to say: ‘Lead the mind: lead the
body.’ In martial arts, if you can direct your opponent’s attention,
you can easily control their body.
For example, the fundamental source of our stress-inducing
ght-or-ight response is fear. In our modern context, one of the
commonest forms of fear, whether we acknowledge it or not, is
fear of failure. However, if we focus on all our advantages, the
benets of success, the resources we have and how we can plan
and manage our success, we nd our condence grows and our
fear diminishes – your stress response along with it.
Here is an exercise that harnesses your brain’s ability to change
how you feel, which we saw at the start of this section with the
orange.
focus on your points
of control and your
successes
brilliant
exercise
This exercise will help you to reduce the impact of stressors and
regain a sense of calm control. This is an exercise to come back to
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