Build a more robust and expansive identity by anchoring it to why you do things, rather than just what you do, as your fundamental ‘why’ remains stable even if your ‘what’ is taken away, guiding your next steps.
Ask yourself what truly lights you up—whether it’s helping people, learning, or improving—and use this core ‘why’ as your North Star to anchor your identity, providing purpose and clarity, especially during times of change.
Arm yourself with skills, questions, thought experiments, and tools before major life changes occur, as this preparation can help you deal with future adversity and minimize anxiety about hypothetical future events.
When facing daunting changes, remember that you will become a different person on the other side, as the pressure of change unlocks new perspectives, values, and abilities, leading to a better version of yourself.
Treat your beliefs as hypotheses to be tested by actively seeking contradictory data, staying curious and humble, and constantly questioning assumptions, without tying beliefs to your self-identity to avoid feeling threatened when challenging them.
Perform a taxonomy of your beliefs about yourself and the world, similar to a personality audit, to identify and understand your belief systems, which are deeply entangled with your well-being and how you interpret new information.
Ask yourself what evidence would theoretically persuade you to change your mind, as this exercise presupposes a willingness to adapt beliefs based on evidence and reveals the inherent flexibility in your thinking.
Don’t opportunistically choose beliefs, but actively revisit unfounded beliefs that are making you unhappy, as facts, data, and evidence matter, and challenging these can significantly improve your well-being.
Interrogate your dreams to discern if they are intrinsically generated or externally imposed by societal or cultural norms, as challenging externally generated dreams can prevent anchoring your self-worth to irrelevant goals.
When a dream is cut short or a future imagined for yourself is taken away, ask yourself what was driving your interest in it and why it was a dream, as this can help you identify underlying values that can be pursued in other ways.
Dedicate five to ten minutes to jot down every identity that brings you value, meaning, or purpose and is not threatened by current changes, which helps diminish denial and makes you feel less acutely the loss of change.
Engage in gratitude exercises, such as listing things you’re grateful for, to zoom out on your life, gain perspective, and recognize the richness and multifaceted aspects of your identity beyond a single focus.
Actively seek out awe-inspiring experiences, such as nature, art, music, or moral beauty (others’ kindness), as awe diminishes self-focus, prompts revision of assumptions, and helps you internalize being part of a larger whole, reducing individual anxieties.
Don’t feel guilty about using distraction (e.g., watching TV, hobbies) as a productive and helpful tool after a negative event, especially if direct confrontation of emotions isn’t your preferred or most effective approach, as research supports its long-term benefits for some individuals.
If you or others exhibit short-term denial during a harrowing change, allow it without guilt, as it can be a healthy psychological immune response, letting in only as much as the mind can handle and providing necessary processing time.
When ruminating, take a step back and identify specific negative emotions (e.g., frustration, despair), as labeling them reduces their intensity by fostering psychological distance and shifting your perception from being the emotion to having it.
Practice mental time travel by asking how you’ll feel about a current preoccupation in five hours, five days, or five years, to remind yourself that the situation is transient and will likely hold less significance over time, breaking you out of mental prisons.
Use mental time travel to look back at human history for examples of overcoming existential crises or to mine your personal history for instances of unexpected resilience and courage, contextualizing present challenges and drawing strength.
To gain psychological distance from a tense event, replay it in your mind from the perspective of a third-party observer (a ‘fly on the wall’), which helps poke holes in your self-narrative and achieve a more balanced perspective for accountability and constructive solutions.
When self-critical, imagine you are counseling a friend who made the same mistake; this fosters self-compassion, leading to a more productive response than self-recrimination.
To gain psychological distance, talk to yourself in the third person (e.g., ‘Maya, you need to get a grip’ instead of ‘I need to get a grip’), as this is an effective technique to distance yourself from emotions and contextualize problems as common.
Interpret situations differently to alter their emotional impact; for example, reframe a panic attack not as a sign of being broken, but as an evolutionary survival mechanism, which can free you from shame and enable productive steps forward.
Combat feelings of exceptionalism in your suffering by finding community with others who have faced similar experiences, as this can provide a powerful antidote to mental spirals and offer new perspectives.
Engage in a thought experiment: imagine being born in a different time, place, culture, or family, and consider if you’d hold the same beliefs, which highlights the contingent nature of your current worldview.
When circumstances change, actively conjure up new ‘possible selves’ using evidence-based techniques to crack open your imagination beyond prior experiences and societal stereotypes, recognizing the full landscape of what is actually available to you.