How I used psychology to come back from the worst year of my life

Work, illness, divorce: life is riddled with stressors out of your control. But research is revealing new ways to cope with these challenges and find hope instead of despair Twitter / X icon Linkedin Reddit Email Giulio Bonasera For me, the past year has been what might euphemistically be described as “challenging”. Not long after leaving a steady job for the freedom and financial insecurity of freelance life, it was made clear to me that my 25-year relationship with my wife would be ending in divorce, with all the upheaval that involves. My dad, meanwhile, has Alzheimer’s, so I’ve been travelling up and down the country to help my mum with his care. To be clear, I’m aware many people face far worse. I’m oversharing on this occasion to explain why, having become aware of research showing that our mindsets have a huge influence on how we navigate life’s twists and turns, I decided I needed to shift my own. The question was how. What could I do, in practical terms, to shift my perspective on divorce from “catastrophe” – something that left me feeling deeply sad and anxious about the future – to “opportunity for growth”? And how could I address the sense that the situation was ageing me prematurely, affecting my health now and potentially my longevity? In search of answers, I turned to the psychologists at the forefront of mindset research. I wasn’t expecting miracles. At 44, I figured my mindsets would be deeply ingrained. And yet I was pleased to discover not only that researchers are investigating concrete mindset-shift strategies, but also that – for me, at least – one in particular proved remarkably effective. “It’s not magic,” says Alia Crum, a psychologist at Stanford University in California. “We know it works and we’re working to get a more sophisticated understanding of why, when and how.” At first glance, the term “mindset” sounds vague. For psychologists, however, it has a precise definition: a set of beliefs and expectations about how some aspect of the world works and what that means for us. “The way we think about it is as a belief about yourself or your environment that shapes your interpretations and actions,” says David Yeager, a psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin. “It’s your own intuitive, usually unspoken, theory about how things work – a theory that shapes what you look for, how you make sense of things and how you act.” What’s more, there is extensive evidence that mindsets affect many aspects of our lives. The classic example is that people with a growth mindset – the belief that intelligence and abilities can improve with effort – are more likely to persevere after failure and more willing to take on novel challenges than people with a fixed mindset, who view abilities as innate and unchangeable. Similarly, people who view stress as enhancing, rather than detrimental, tend to perform better under pressure and display more adaptive physiological responses to stressful situations. It’s the same story for everything from diet and exercise to sleep. Your science-backed guide to the easy habits that will help you sleep well, stress less, eat smarter and age better. “The evidence is overwhelming,” says Ellen Langer at Harvard University, who pioneered work on ageing mindsets in the 1980s. Nor should it be surprising, she argues: our minds and bodies are intimately connected, so it makes sense that how we think about something will change how we feel and even respond physiologically. Crucially, experiments also show that mindsets aren t set in stone. “In general, mindsets can be completely changed,” says Yeager, who studies growth mindsets. “We see that in our data every year.” Even so, “the most compelling evidence is experiential”, Crum tells me, pointing out that the only way each of us can really know if mindset-change can help is to try it for ourselves. Which brings us back to my situation. When I share my plan, Crum has a question of her own: which mindset? “Generally, it’s important to isolate the mindset you want to change”, she says, because people have separate beliefs and expectations about each aspect of life, and the way to change them varies. “Being specific helps you to avoid the thing that people often get wrong about mindsets, which is that it is just broadly positive thinking,” says Crum. For me, the answer was obvious. I genuinely didn’t see the divorce coming and the fallout has been stressful. My tendency to ruminate has gone into overdrive, affecting my sleep and my focus, which affects my income, further compounding the anxiety. Clearly, my stress mindset was to be my first focus – and I was speaking to the right person, because Crum is a key figure here. Reframing how you think about stress can bolster your ability to handle life s challenges Her work centres on the idea that stress isn t what you think it is. The problem, says Crum, is that “our cultural assumption is that stress is negative”. That is largely down to what we hear about the

How I used psychology to come back from the worst year of my life

Key takeaways

More in science