How to Avoid Burnout, Reduce Stress, and Improve Your Wellbeing using Recognize>Reframe>Replace

“According to the newly released report, more than half (59%) of American workers are experiencing at least moderate levels of burnout, a notable increase over 2021 (52%) and on par with the levels reported in 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the 2022-2023 Aflac WorkForces Report.” (Aflac, 2022, para. 3)

Practicing mindfulness is an effective strategy for cultivating the habit of being more present in each moment, leading to increased focus, productivity, and overall life satisfaction. Each moment allows us to notice our current state, shift our attention, and rewire critical neural pathways. Practicing mindfulness is a pathway to reducing stress and burnout, as well as improving balance and overall well-being in the fast-paced world of the modern era.

The Problem: The Warp-Speed of Life in the Modern World

Smartphones, tablets, and Zoom meetings, among other digital technologies, pose challenges to people's well-being. In their book Start Here, Langshur and Klemp (2016) offer valuable insights into the challenges of contemporary life. Insights include:

The average adult:

·       Spends more than eleven hours a day exposed to electronic media

·       Check their phone more than 150 times a day

·       Stress has become a way of life. According to the American Psychological Association:

o   70% of Americans report they experience physical or nonphysical symptoms of stress.

o   80% of Americans say their stress level has increased or stayed the same over the last year

o   The American Institute of Stress estimates that more than half of all visits to primary care physicians are for stress-related complaints.

·       Impact of Employee Burnout-“Stanford researchers looked into how workplace stress affects health costs and mortality in the United States, and they found that it led to spending nearly $190 billion—roughly 8% of national healthcare outlays—and nearly 120,000 deaths each year.”

·       “7,500 full-time employees by Gallup found the top five reasons for burnout are:

·       Unfair treatment at work

·       Unmanageable workload

·       Lack of role clarity

·       Lack of communication and support from their manager

·       Unreasonable time pressure” (Moss, 2019, paras. 2-5)

·       Being in a continuous state of stress and hypervigilance is not the intended design for human beings. (Langshur & Klemp, Ph.D., 2016, pp. 8–9)

The Solution: Neuroplasticity, The Ability to Train (Rewire) our Minds to Respond vs. React

Learning to replace negative thinking with positive thinking, and thereby improving overall well-being, is crucial for reducing stress and preventing burnout.

Neuroscientists explain that our brains and thinking patterns have been shaped over time and continue to be constantly shaped, most of the time, unwittingly. As a result, when triggered, people tend to feel the same negative emotions (fear, anger, anxiety, irritation…) and then react in the same ineffective ways, like shutting down, raising their voices, and showing offense with facial expressions and body language and showing up in ways inconsistent with how they want to be seen by others with less than effective behaviors.

Why? Neuroscientists explain that negative thinking patterns and associated ineffective reactions result from deeply established neuropathways. We’ve become wired to react counterproductively to triggers and negative emotions.

Langspur and Klemp (2016) summarize how they help leaders wittingly learn how to learn beautifully by saying: “We can choose to let ordinary habits of the mind fly the plane, so stress and tension take us to our usual destination. Or we can redirect our attention to train our minds to experience a more optimal state of well-being” (p. 33).

Now for the great news. Neuroplasticity or brain plasticity. The brain's ability to modify its connections or rewire itself through contemplative practices, such as mindfulness. Neuroscientist Richard J. Davidson, founder of the Center for Healthy Minds, is one of the world’s leading experts on the impact of contemplative practices, such as mindfulness meditation, on the brain. Training our brains can create neural pathways for well-being, especially when faced with adversity (Danet, 2018, p. 3). In other words, training our brains to respond (rather than react) by choosing practical thinking and behaviors optimizes well-being, reduces stress, and prevents burnout. Understanding the brain's neuroplasticity and how we can retrain and rewire our brains to respond rather than react, let's explore the Recognize, Reframe, and Replace mindfulness strategy.

How to Retrain and Rewire the Mind?

The field of mindfulness is expanding, and numerous strategies for practicing mindfulness are presented in the literature. The goal of practicing mindfulness is to cultivate greater focus, increased productivity, and enhanced life satisfaction.

The strategy to be shared in this article is Recognize, Reframe, and Replace (RRR), also known as the 3 Rs. The following sections outline each phase of the Mindfulness 3 Rs Strategy. The 3 Rs process is one example of a mindfulness strategy that, when practiced, enables us to rewire our brains. The next section will explain each phase of the 3 Rs and use an example to illustrate how it works.

Have you ever been driving along on the highway, listening to your favorite tunes, and enjoying your day, when another driver suddenly cuts you off? Did you react or respond?

Recognize

Recognize: The first step is emotional self-awareness, knowing what’s there. When a trigger occurs, people can experience automatic reactions.

What Happens When We're Triggered

When triggered by an adverse situation, people can experience a physiological reaction and intense negative emotions and become trapped in a negative mindset, making them more prone to react with habitual counterproductive reactions.

People experience a physiological reaction. Their heart rate increases, blood is pumped into their muscles, adrenaline levels rise in the bloodstream, and their pupils dilate. Rational thinking in the brain, specifically in the neocortex, is shifted to the emotional or feeling brain, the limbic brain. If the reaction is intense enough, the shift can be to the reptilian brain, where people enter into fight, flight, or freeze mode.

People experience intense negative emotions. Emotions include rejection, betrayal, criticism, disapproval, helplessness, loss of control, unjust treatment, challenged beliefs, exclusion, ignorance, unwantedness, unneededness, unlovability, and discounting.

People become trapped in negative thinking, including:

·       Filtering: Focusing exclusively on the negative aspects of a situation and disregarding the positive ones.

·       Personalizing: Seeing yourself as the sole cause of adverse events.

·       Catastrophizing: Automatically anticipating the worst outcome.

·       Polarizing: Viewing circumstances as good or bad with no middle ground.

·       Keep these forms of negative thinking in mind as you go about your day. When you have a negative thought, consider how it fits into these categories.

Becoming more aware of negative thinking will help you reframe your thoughts more effectively. (Strategies for Reframing Negative Thoughts, 2022, paras. 13-15)

Recognizing is using the gap between the emotional trigger, the intense emotions, and the reactions to apply emotional self-awareness (knowing what’s there) to shift to step two, Reframing. Steven Covey, the author of 7-Habits of Highly Effective People, makes the point with the following quote: "Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our happiness" (https://quotefancy.com/).

To illustrate Recognize, I'll use myself as an example. For many years, whenever another driver cut me off, this situation served as a trigger, and I would automatically react. Expletive-deleted words would immediately come out of my mouth, accompanied by aggressive hand gestures. It's not a pretty sight, and it's not how I want to present myself in life. A number of years ago, when I discovered the 3 Rs, I learned to recognize and name, without judgment, the emotions I was feeling in the moment of being cut off. I felt the loss of control, unjust treatment, and being discounted. I was also experiencing the fight-or-flight reaction. Practicing the 3 Rs, I recognized the trigger, and before reacting, I set aside the negative emotions. I'll pick up this example in the Reframe section of the article.

Reframing

Reframing: “Learning to reframe your thoughts is a way of being your most loyal ally. Regarding the reframing step, there are attractive benefits. Identify negative automatic thoughts, label them, and come to your defense by creating a rational alternative. Reframing negative thoughts into positive thinking has numerous health benefits. According to the Mayo Clinic, positive thinking can:

·       Increase your lifespan.

·       Lower your risk of depression.

·       Improve your cardiovascular health.

·       Provide better coping skills during stressful times. (Strategies for Reframing Negative Thoughts, 2022, para. 12)

Reframing is a straightforward process that puts positive thinking into practice by reframing negative self-talk into positive thinking. The following are reframing examples.

·       I've never done it before. Reframe to: It's an opportunity to learn something new.

·       It's too complicated. Reframe to: I'll tackle it from a different angle.

·       I don't have the resources. Reframe to: Necessity is the mother of invention.

·       I'm too lazy to do this. Reframe to: I couldn't fit it into my schedule, but I can re-examine some priorities.

·       There's no way it will work. Reframe to: I can make it work.

·       It's too radical a change. Reframe to: Let's take a chance.

·       No one bothers to communicate with me. Reframe to: I'll see if I can open the communication channels. (Mayo Clinic Staff, pp. 3-4)

Reframe negative thinking and self-talk by finding the benefits of the challenging situations you face. Use such situations as a learning opportunity rather than a reason to question your self-worth and experience stress.

The article "Strategies for Reframing Negative Thoughts" provides an additional way to reframe emotionally charged, negative situations. You examine the evidence by analyzing it to gain insight into a situation.

Consider a possible scenario that you think negatively about. Now ask yourself these questions:

·       How likely is it that the adverse scenario will happen?

·       How often has the pessimistic scenario occurred in the past?

·       What is the worst possible outcome of the adverse scenario?

·       How likely is the worst possible outcome likely to happen? Can you handle it if it does?

·       Your answers to these questions can help you face challenges with more balanced thinking.

Like any skill, reframing negative thoughts takes practice. When you notice a negative thought, use these strategies to reframe it and cultivate a habit of positive thinking. (Strategies for Reframing Negative Thoughts, 2022, paras. 27-31)

Continuing with my illustration, having recognized my emotional reactions, I learned to take a deep breath and use the gap between stimulus and reaction to reframe my thoughts by thinking, "That person must be in an emergency." "They're in a big hurry." "Maybe they didn't realize they were cutting me off." Gratitude is also an effective way to reframe and shift one's thinking from negative to positive. When I choose gratitude, I recall a mental image of my youngest grandson. Whenever I do this, I find myself smiling. By using any of the examples I've provided for reframing, my mindset has shifted. Now, I can replace my old, habitual, counterproductive reactions with behaviors that align with how I want to present myself in life. Next, let's look at the third R, Replace.

Replace

Replace: By completing the Recognize and Reframe steps, people are now in a position to access their neocortex, the rational thinking part of the brain, and choose effective behaviors to manage emotionally charged, negative situations more successfully. The keyword is “choose.” Choosing to apply practical skills and behaviors, such as active listening, asking questions, problem-solving, conflict resolution, collaboration, recognition, and persuasion.

Retraining the brain using mindfulness strategies is an effective way to reduce stress and avoid burnout. It is also the doorway to building trusting relationships. Excessive negativity and related behaviors can foster resentment, damage relationships, and tarnish a person's reputation.

Conversely, practicing mindfulness and positive thinking builds trusting relationships and a positive image for those who can demonstrate emotional self-control, adaptability, a positive outlook, and empathy. Practice is required to retrain the brain and replace negative thinking with positive thinking and choices.

To complete my illustration, I'm pleased to report that my replacement behavior is to remain calm, continue driving responsibly, and take several deep breaths, an effective mindfulness strategy in its own right. Benefits I receive from practicing the 3 Rs include: 1) I avoid feeling stress; 2) I develop muscle memory. I've been able to retrain my brain, so whenever another driver cuts me off, I respond with patience and empathy.

Summary

Remember, using the Recognize, Reframe, and Replace mindfulness method, you can retrain your brain to shift from negative emotions and reactions to a positive mindset and choose constructive responses. Instead of letting your ordinary habits and reactions take you to the usual destination, choose mindfulness as a way to redirect your attention and retrain your mind to avoid burnout, reduce stress, and achieve a more optimal state of well-being. 

References

·       Aflac (2022). Employee burnout is on par with levels at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic; job performance is impacted. Retrieved January 13, 2023, from https://www.prnewswire.com/news- releases/employee-burnout-is-on-par-with-levels-at-the-height-of-the-covid-19-pandemic-job- performance-impacted- 301679546.html#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20newly%20released,2022%2D2023%20Afla c%20WorkForces%20Report

·       Langshur, E. & Klemp, N. (2016, December 12). How to notice, shift, and rewire Your Brain. Mindful.

·       Retrieved October 22, 2021, from https://www.mindful.org/notice-shift-rewire-brain/

·       Moss, J. (2019). Burnout is about your workplace, not your people. Retrieved January 13, 2023, from https://hbr.org/2019/12/burnout-is-about-your-workplace-not-your-people

·       Mayo Clinic Staff. Positive thinking: Stop negative self-talk to reduce stress. Retrieved April 6, 2023, from Positive thinking: Reduce stress by eliminating negative self-talk - Mayo Clinic.

·       Strategies for Reframing Negative Thoughts (2022). Retrieved April 6, 2023, from Strategies for Reframing Negative Thoughts | St. Bonaventure University Online (sbu.edu)