Forcing a smile or laugh can be an instant circuit-breaker for me. I first heard about it in the context of the facial feedback hypothesis, but I’m pretty that didn’t survive the replication crisis, so go figure.
A related mental contortion: Minor misfortunes often make for amusing stories in the fullness of time, so you might as well skip ahead to finding it funny right now.
For me the time-sensitivity part was a big deal that I ran into early in my childhood. Basically, that when something makes you feel bad you think “what will I think about this in a day/week/year”. Usually the answer is something along the lines of not even remembering, or looking back on it as a funny or interesting story. It did much to improve my wellbeing and give me a sense of perspective about my problems.
My biggest problem with this way of thinking, more generally the “outthink your negative emotions” is that you can end up putting off some bad social signals. A few years after this as a kid I remember getting a detention in class and afterwards the teacher asking me why I didn’t seem put off at all. I naively responded saying that the punishment wasn’t a big deal since I wouldn’t care about it in a week anyway. Suffice to say, that wasn’t the response they wanted to hear, and to some degree with good reason. Not feeling bad about stuff means you have to be extra careful that you don’t turn your risk/mistake-aversion down too much.
Forcing a smile or laugh can be an instant circuit-breaker for me. I first heard about it in the context of the facial feedback hypothesis, but I’m pretty that didn’t survive the replication crisis, so go figure.
A related mental contortion: Minor misfortunes often make for amusing stories in the fullness of time, so you might as well skip ahead to finding it funny right now.
For me the time-sensitivity part was a big deal that I ran into early in my childhood. Basically, that when something makes you feel bad you think “what will I think about this in a day/week/year”. Usually the answer is something along the lines of not even remembering, or looking back on it as a funny or interesting story. It did much to improve my wellbeing and give me a sense of perspective about my problems.
My biggest problem with this way of thinking, more generally the “outthink your negative emotions” is that you can end up putting off some bad social signals. A few years after this as a kid I remember getting a detention in class and afterwards the teacher asking me why I didn’t seem put off at all. I naively responded saying that the punishment wasn’t a big deal since I wouldn’t care about it in a week anyway. Suffice to say, that wasn’t the response they wanted to hear, and to some degree with good reason. Not feeling bad about stuff means you have to be extra careful that you don’t turn your risk/mistake-aversion down too much.