Do you mentally prepare yourself for upcoming stressful moments, such as important meetings or target-setting discussions with your boss? If not, you belong certainly to the majority of employees, because with all the professional hectic and in view of tightly scheduled daily routines, there is often no room for the “mental gym”. Nevertheless, it can be extremely helpful to acquire appropriate routines to act more relaxed and confidently in such situations.
At this point, I would like to introduce you to a tool for a resource-oriented look into the near future – the so called “resource telescope”.
Background: The probability that you will actually perceive pleasant moments is significantly higher if you imagine in advance which pleasant moments might be waiting for you. This cognitive preparation is called “priming.” The term comes from NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) and can be translated as “preparing”.
A general desire to master the situation described above, or even to make it pleasant, is not enough, because in stressful phases our cognitive capacity is limited. The basic prerequisite for a successful implementation of priming is to visualize the upcoming situation as concretely as possible in advance in order to bring it to mind shortly before it happens.
An example of priming with regard to an upcoming meeting with colleagues could be to imagine picking up your best colleague on the way to the meeting and placing yourself next to her in the meeting. Then taking a relaxed sitting position, paying attention to deep breathing in and out, and actively participating in the conversation in a solution-oriented way.
I recommend that afterwards you reflect such moments for yourself in writing, even if this initially looks like an extra effort. By doing so, you will get a more intense processing of your experiences and a more sustainable effect of the exercise towards increased positive perception and a more relaxed daily work routine. Also here the saying applies, “practicing makes the master” 😉
Source: „Coaching mit Ressourcenaktivierung“ (Dr. Miriam Deubner-Böhme, Dr. Uta Deppe-Schmitz, Hogrefe Verlag, 2018)