Flip the Script

Quick Win

It happens to all of us. Traffic snarls, we don’t get the job, contractors go AWOL at the worst times. After a small or large mishap, practice seeing the bright side and take productive action.

Try This Today

1. Feel your feelings. It’s important to experience and express your emotions, whether frustration, sadness or fear. Let it out with a good cry or a phone call to a friend. (Primal screams have their place, too!)
2. Find the silver lining. Instead of getting stuck in negative feelings, practice “positive reframing,” focusing on the upsides of a stressful situation. Delayed at the airport? Use the time to call an old friend — or blaze ahead in the book you’re reading.
3. Take productive action. Feeling helpless about a friend’s medical diagnosis? Go positive and organize meal deliveries to support her and her family.

Why

Seeing the upsides of a difficult situation can help to ease stress and improve well-being. The use of positive reframing among 52 breast cancer patients and their spouses (ages 24–94) was linked to lower levels of stress, as reported in 2019 in the Journal of Psychosocial Oncology. And among 149 students, seeing the bright side in everyday disappointments and failures led to greater satisfaction than many other coping strategies, including denial, self-blame and venting, according to a study published in 2011 in Anxiety, Stress, & Coping.