I want to share with you three of my favorite techniques that I’ve taught my clients for turning a negative experience into a positive.

Just recently, my organisation ran a significant Resilience Program. We’ve taken over 350 leaders through this program. So I wanted to share with you some teaching highlights.

Resilience is about understanding how you can bounce back from a challenging situation. What tends to happen in the workplace is, the challenging situation is mostly imagined in our heads. In other words, we need to learn how to master our thinking. It’s kinda like learning mind kung fu. For example, has your boss ever come up to you and said, “Hey, we need to have a chat.” All of a sudden, you might find yourself thinking: Oh my gosh, what’s this about? Am I going to get fired? Much of the time we go down a negative route and stress ourselves out.

Here are three techniques that will enable you to turn a negative situation into a positive:

1. The Flip — It seems simple but it’s very powerful. Whenever you enter a situation which you create a negative meaning about it’s usually because we are asking questions like What if I get fired? What if I get made redundant? What if something bad happens? The Flip is, simply asking yourself the opposite question. You say, “What if it doesn’t happen? What if it’s a totally different thing?” You just flip the ‘What if’ question. The Flip enables your brain to change meaning. It’s really powerful.

2. Appreciate — When you’re in a space of fear or worry, think about something you’re appreciative for. It might be the fact that you’re alive today, or that you’ve got a great relationship, or you’ve got a job, a roof over your head or you’ve got your family in your life. This works well because your brain cannot process fear and appreciation at the same time. When you’re in fear and you think about something you’re appreciative for, the brain switches functions.

3. Ask a good quality question — For example, rather than asking “Why does this always happen to me” or “Why is this so painful for me” — ask a question like “What’s great about this?” This can be challenging, but asking yourself a good quality question can make a huge difference. I love this last one: “What’s the good in the bad?”

These are the three techniques that will help you turn the negative into the positive.

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I’ll speak to you soon.