QuickTip: Who Inspires You Most?
A Change in Story
Here's a quick, three-minute tip where we break down a mental health or personal development topic in 180 seconds to help you shift or reframe your perspective. Today’s topic explores an easy, fun way to identify some of your values by looking at the people who inspire you. As a quick refresher, values are essentially an internal guidance system that help us to decide what to move toward or away from based on what we find important or meaningful. Because they’re more internal, and not right on the surface, values can sometimes take a little bit of work to figure out or to get clear...
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QuickTip: What’s the Difference Between Values and Goals (And Why Does It Matter)?
A Change in Story
Here's a quick, three-minute tip where we break down a mental health or personal development topic in 180 seconds to help you shift or reframe your perspective. Today’s topic explores the difference between values and goals and why it can be helpful to take both into account as you're working toward things you want to achieve. Goals, for one, provide a destination, like the end point on a map, which is typically something we want to achieve or experience. Values, on the other hand, are more of an internal guidance system, kind of like a compass, telling us what to move toward or...
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QuickTip: What To Do With the 'What Ifs'
A Change in Story
Here's a quick, three-minute tip where we break down a mental health or personal development topic in 180 seconds to help you shift or reframe your perspective. Today’s topic explores what-if thinking and one way to help manage the "what ifs," especially when we’re worried about the future. "What-if" thinking can creep in when things feel unknown or unpredictable, and our minds might start to overreact or go into protection mode by trying to figure out what’s going to happen and even try and anticipate worst-case scenarios. Anticipating the future, or at least trying to, can also...
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What If the 'Right Path' Isn’t Right for You?
A Change in Story
Today’s episode features an interview with Prasant Nukalapati, founder of What Comes Next Ed Consulting, which supports young people launching into adulthood. This is the second time Prasant has joined the podcast to talk about life after high school and some of the different paths that are available, and in this episode he shares his own personal journey of taking a nontraditional path through college. You’ll hear how an unplanned year off became a turning point, helping Prasant shift from following others' expectations to pursuing what felt personally meaningful to him. He explains how...
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QuickTip: Naming the Brain
A Change in Story
Here's a quick, three-minute tip where we break down a mental health or personal development topic in 180 seconds to help you shift or reframe your perspective. Today’s topic explores the idea of naming your brain and why this can be a helpful strategy for reducing stress and even improving self-confidence. If you’ve never heard of this strategy before, naming the brain is a technique that can be used to help distance yourself from unhelpful or negative thoughts. These are the thoughts that tell us that we’re not good enough, that we should be better at xyz, that everyone thinks...
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QuickTip: How Self-Compassion Can Help to Motivate
A Change in Story
Here's a quick, three-minute tip where we break down a mental health or personal development topic in 180 seconds to help you shift or reframe your perspective. Today’s topic explores self-compassion and how we can use it to motivate ourselves, in spite of the misperception that if we’re too nice or lenient with ourselves, then we’ll never achieve anything. That type of thinking actually motivates through fear, which can be a pretty powerful motivator, but it’s not always the most effective. In fact, self-criticism can often get in the way of our goals because it can contribute...
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QuickTip: 3 Ways (That Are Not Meditation) to Practice Mindfulness
A Change in Story
Here's a quick, three-minute tip where we break down a mental health or personal development topic in 180 seconds to help you shift or reframe your perspective. Today’s topic explores three different ways to practice mindfulness that don’t involve sitting down to meditate. While mindfulness often gets equated with meditation, the two are actually distinct. In a nutshell, mindfulness is the ability to focus our attention and awareness on the present moment and notice what’s happening inside (so any thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations that might be coming up) as...
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QuickTip: How Nature Can Boost Your Creativity
A Change in Story
Here's a quick, three-minute tip where we break down a mental health or personal development topic in 180 seconds to help you shift or reframe your perspective. Today’s topic explores some of the different ways that spending time in nature can help expand creativity and problem-solving abilities. For years there’s been more and more research suggesting that spending as little as 10 to 15 minutes outside can have positive effects on overall health. That also includes positive effects on how we think, including on our ability to think creatively and to problem solve. Some of the...
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QuickTip: Should You? Or Could You?
A Change in Story
Here's a quick, three-minute tip where we break down a mental health or personal development topic in 180 seconds to help you shift or reframe your perspective. Today’s topic explores the word "should" and how using "should statements" can lead to things like anxiety, feeling down about ourselves and even feeling less motivated. The use of should statements is pretty common and most of us tell ourselves that we “should” be doing one thing or another at some point, and these types of statements can have a pretty big impact on self-esteem and self-confidence. Not only can...
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QuickTip: What’s the Difference Between Self-Care and Coping?
A Change in Story
Here's a quick, three-minute tip where we break down a mental health or personal development topic in 180 seconds to help you shift or reframe your perspective. Today’s topic looks at the difference between self-care and coping and how both are beneficial but play different roles in helping to maintain wellbeing. First off, self-care tends to be more proactive while coping is more reactive. Meaning self-care is typically more planned and routine, whereas coping skills are typically used in the moment to help manage stressors or intense emotions. So self-care is more than...
info_outlineHere's a quick, three-minute tip where we break down a mental health or personal development topic in 180 seconds to help you shift or reframe your perspective.
Today’s topic explores what-if thinking and one way to help manage the "what ifs," especially when we’re worried about the future.
"What-if" thinking can creep in when things feel unknown or unpredictable, and our minds might start to overreact or go into protection mode by trying to figure out what’s going to happen and even try and anticipate worst-case scenarios.
Anticipating the future, or at least trying to, can also sometimes give us a sense of control in times when we may feel like we don’t have that much control.
But if we’re overly concerned with all of the potential negative outcomes, we can experience an increase in things like stress, anxiety, self-doubt and even indecision.
One way to disengage from these types of thoughts is to try and come up with a possible solution to whatever you’re worried about by using the phrase "If … then."
So if you’re having the thought what if I fail the exam, can you come up with a plan of action that you could take?
Coming up with a plan doesn’t mean you’re going to fail or even have to act on the plan, but focusing more on a solution is going to:
- help you feel more at ease because it provides a sense of agency;
- make a decision, which should help you to feel less stuck; and
- help you to ground because your focus is now more on what you can do about the situation or on tangible action steps you can take rather than on all the potential or hypothetical worst-case scenarios that may or may not even happen.
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*Disclaimer: The information contained in this episode is for the sole purpose of being informative and is not considered complete. It should not replace consultation with a qualified professional.