Coping With Stress: A Mindset Comparison
The mindset you use to cope with stress will either provide you with motivation or decrease your motivation. In her preeminent book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D. provides a simple definition of mindset.
The view you adopt for yourself [that] profoundly affects the way you lead your life.
So, if you adopt a mindset that decreases your motivation in stressful situations, then this will lead to a significant loss in time, productivity, and opportunity in your life. On the other hand, if you adopt a mindset that increases your motivation in stressful situations, this can be a critical first step for overcoming obstacles to progress.
Unquestionably, having the mindset that motivates you in stressful situations is a game changer. Therefore, choosing to be oblivious if your default mindset under stress is demotivating is an unforced error you must avoid. Instead, you must choose self-awareness.
To do this, start by being brutally honest with yourself. If you already adopt a mindset that provides you with motivation in stressful situations, bravo! If not, face this reality and accept that you must make a change to improve your life. There is no getting around the fact that coping with stress is part of the process of growing. Moreover, you are either growing or dying, either mentally or physically.
The Two Mindsets of Coping with Stress
Use the table below to do a self-awareness check of your default means for coping with stress.
| Coping with stress with a Mindset that Increases Motivation When I feel stress I… | Coping with Stress with a Mindset that Decreases Motivation When I feel stress I… |
| Adjust the process for reaching my goals to fit my new reality. | Give up on my goals. |
| Change my priorities for the future. | Lower my expectations for the future. |
| Take responsibility for my situation. | Blame others for my situation. |
| Learn from the situation and move on. | Ruminate on how or why I am in this situation. |
| Reframe the situation to compare myself to someone worse off than me. | Reframe the situation to compare myself to those who are better off than me. |
| Reframe the situation as being better than the past or an alternative present. | Reframe the situation to compare it to things that were better in the past or an impossible better present. |
| Focus on the potential positive outcomes and how to achieve them. | Focus only on the potential negative outcomes. |
| Focus on the benefits of being in the situation and how to optimize those benefits. | Focus only on the disadvantages of being in the situation. |
| Seek social support. | Isolate myself from support. |
This is by no means an exhaustive list. However, as a starting point for self-awareness I hope you can do a self-examination to conclude if your means of coping with stress is helping or hurting you in the long run.