Stress Reduction Tip - Re-frame to Stay Sane

So I was asked to go to a meeting and explain to a team of 30 administrators my new role as an elected staff Governing Board member; I had been elected twice by the staff and this was my third year in office. My intention was to encourage those 30 people to give me more competition the next time elections came up and to explain to them how a 'lowly administrator' could have a big impact on an organisation that was the largest of its kind in Europe.

The Chair of the meeting introduced me and half-way through my first sentence interrupted me and closed me down with a remark along the lines of 'We don't want to hear your vote-for-me-stuff here'.  I explained I wasn't there to get votes - I wanted to explain and encourage others to go for the role.

I start again and the Chair cut me off with another interruption again.  And again.  I conceded and shut up.  But I didn't get annoyed - I changed my reason for being at the meeting.

Instead of thinking 'I came here to do something and the Chair is undermining me' I chose to think 'I came here to meet these lovely people who I've not met before and it's great' instead.  The choice was deliberate.   If you have the choice of thinking one way and being miserable and thinking another way and being happy which are you going to choose?

The external 'truth' doesn't matter so much if the truth is you're more concerned with being internally happy than you are with being externally 'right'.

As a result I got positive emotional benefit out of the meeting - I decided retrospectively I had gone there to learn instead of to teach (incidentally out of those 30 people only two other people, apart from me, actually contributed to the meeting - the Chair and an HR officer who was there to talk about a pay dispute).

As a follow up to the meeting a couple of people told me they found me really approachable and wanted to hear more about the role I'd gone there to talk about.

When you're in a situation you don't have control over and find yourself getting frustrated try and see if you can mentally re-frame it by changing your reason for being in that situation.  It doesn't really matter what motivates other people - by not re-framing you increase the risk of becoming defensive and falling under the spell of 'victim think'.

Have you done any re-framing lately?  Please comment below.

- Carl