Cool as ice

Photo by Laura Malbogat, Twillingate, Nfld - 2014

It's a great moment when you lift yourself out of a bad mood…Release a negative thought… Find a way out of a difficult situation… Stop feeling stuck in a rut… Stop longing for things to be different… Or finally feel cool as ice when confronting a long-term problem.

• How do you turn around a less than desirable state of mind and heart?
• What strategies do you use to shift or change your mindset?
• What circumstances or situations cause you to sink into a bad mood? Or feel stuck?
  

If you are anything like my clients, you want to view tough times as opportunities to figure things out. To make choices. To be self-reflective about making changes. To think about where you feel challenged or unchallenged. 

Sometimes we just need to be in these uncomfortable places before we can move on, recalibrate, become motivated, or define a new vision for our personal or professional life.

At other times we just need to skedaddle and hightail it out of those frustrating and repetitive traps we humans are so good at creating for ourselves.

For starters, consider these ideas:

• "Stop it" (as therapist Bob Newhart says to a client in a fabulously funny video – below).
• Accept the good and the "bad" – the darker tones are part of life.
• Ask a friend for his or her input or feedback about "your difficulty" to gain new insights.
• Experiment with how you look at things – play around with the focus of your internal lens (from wide angle to telephoto). 
• Understand that things are not always as they appear on the surface; much goes on outside our awareness (just as there is more iceberg under water than above)!

Skedaddle on,
Coach Minda

Anyone have a story to tell about how you pulled yourself out of a negative state of mind?

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