Yesterday I participated in a half-day workshop at work for our women’s group: Camp Atta Girl! The company usually puts on full-day retreats for women to help tap into your power, find your voice, and recharge — it’s all about positive psychology, combined with movement and music. I was lucky enough to be able to bring a mini-camp into our office after I bid on the training during a silent auction at a conference a few months ago.
It was a lot of the stuff I already love and try to soak up in my life: paying attention to what gives you pleasure and what gives you meaning to find your purpose, using I Am statements to positively impact your subconscious, practicing active listening, and generally getting out of our comfort zone and dancing around the room as we moved through five different chakras throughout the morning. It’s all very up my alley and luckily the other women who participated got into it too and got a lot out of it.
One of the tidbits I’m taking away is Benefit Finding that I thought was worth resharing. This came up when we were talking about practicing gratitude and how Benefit Finding can be another, sometimes more resonating, way to do that.
The basic formula:
- Write down something that went wrong
- Write down all the good/benefits that resulted from that thing going wrong
A small example:
- The Wrong: Last night I realized my credit card wasn’t in my wallet as expected and I don’t know where it is.
- The Benefit: This led me to review my bank statement in more detail this morning and while I luckily don’t have any fraud, I noticed a few recurring transactions that I didn’t realize I was being charged for and took steps to cancel/rectify as needed. (Hopefully, the longer-term benefit will be that I pay more attention to my cc statements so that doesn’t go on for too long again.)
So you get it. The idea with benefit finding is to intentionally practice seeing the benefit in frustrating situations so that eventually you are rewriting your reactions at the moment and adopting a growth mindset in real-time.
I like to think I do this already, but I know I fall into the victimhood trap some days. I want to be the kind of person who sees the good and learns from it and this is a tactical way to actually practice that value.
With Love,
Natalie