Receiving the Gift of Positive Psychology During a Hard Time

By Rachael Gaibel

We all encounter challenges, both personally and collectively. What we choose to do in the face of these challenges does make a difference, often more than we realize until afterward.

I first learned this lesson the hard way, during a difficult time in my own life. Initially, I did not have many strategies or tools to effectively cope. Through receiving the gift of positive psychology and mindfulness, I developed inner resources that helped me to not only cope but grow. What I discovered so deeply changed my life that, years later, it’s one reason I chose to pursue WBI’s Positive Psychology Coaching Certification program.

Here’s my story of how positive psychology impacted my life during that time.

I looked out the car window at the fog-filled green canopy surrounding my husband and me as we drove through an old-growth forest in Olympic National Park, Washington.

The words, “It’s okay, sweetheart” echoed in my ears. I had just finished listening to psychologist and meditation teacher Tara Brach’s Dharma talk, in which she shared a story about a woman speaking critically about her body because of its recent limitations. Tara had suggested to her, “Put your hand on your heart, letting the touch be tender, and send a message inward. It might be ‘It’s okay, sweetheart.’”

But it did not feel okay to me. My body was not doing what it was supposed to. It was supposed to get pregnant by now. We had been trying for nearly a year. I thought my body had failed me. My self-talk had become overly critical and harsh.

Once at our rental cabin, I followed Tara’s instructions from the Dharma talk. I could sense the tightness in my body loosen, with the first inkling of self-kindness appearing in this situation.

This is one example of how making slight changes to the ways I related to myself began to shift my inner world. Once sporadic practices such as self-compassion became daily routines and habits, I noticed significant improvements in my well-being and overall life.

5 Ways Positive Psychology Influenced Me

While the approaches below are based on my experience navigating infertility and also career burnout, they can broadly apply to meeting many different types of challenges. I continue to embrace these vital practices and others in my life to meet what arises—the good and the difficult.

1. Develop self-compassion

As I shared above, I had been so self-critical towards myself and my body. I began to notice the harsh voice in my head and intentionally change my inner dialogue to be more self-accepting and compassionate. By learning how to speak to myself in a kind and loving way, I found I could be there for myself fully and completely, no matter what happened. I started to believe my body was doing the best it could.

2. Intentionally take in the good

I was truly navigating significant challenges—infertility has a comparable anxiety and depression levels to those diagnosed with cancer. And yet, I recognized I had gotten overly caught up in the negative and wasn’t as attentive to the good around me. To counteract my brain’s negativity bias, I intentionally sought out, took in, and savored positive emotions.

By “taking in the good”—a term Rick Hanson, psychologist and senior fellow at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, framed in his book Hardwiring Happiness—I learned how to experience increased genuine positivity in my life each day. Taking in the good should not be mistaken for the harmful concept of toxic positivity, where people feel pressured to pretend everything is falsely positive while suppressing and rejecting what is hard.

3. Allow myself to feel my difficult emotions

Before cultivating mindfulness-based practices, I honestly did not know how to effectively feel the often intensely painful feelings coming up for me. I generally resisted, reacted, ruminated, or complained about what I was feeling and my undesirable circumstances.

Once I developed skills for feeling my feelings, it improved my ability to cope and relate to my tough emotions. Tara Brach’s RAIN practice, which stands for Recognize, Allow, Investigate, and Nurture, taught me that by turning toward my feelings, I could gain a better understanding about and be compassionate to what arose.

4. Envision an ideal future

During the Search Inside Yourself mindfulness and emotional intelligence two-day program, the facilitators provided a journaling exercise that gave me permission to dream. The prompt was to write about my ideal life in five years. Though I had been hyperfocused on becoming pregnant, I hadn’t concentrated on what might be possible for my life once I hopefully became a mother.

This exercise brought me out of the ups and downs of each month. By focusing long-term instead, it gave me hope. I imagined a life where I was already a mother, renewed from burnout, had a meaningful career with better work-life harmony, and more. I would revisit this vision again and again to remind myself of the life I longed for. It also helped me realize I didn’t need to wait to begin to build more of the life I wanted—I could make progress on this dream by taking action on what I could influence.

5. Shift the focus to what I can control

Many aspects of being diagnosed with unexplained infertility and experiencing career burnout felt out of my control. I could not control when or if I had a full-term pregnancy and baby, an incredibly humbling realization. I could not control the increasing high demands of my job.

But, I could shift my focus to what I could control: how I showed up to face these challenges, how I cared for myself and my well-being, and what actions I took. This was not a one-time shift, but rather, a practice I could return to when I noticed I was caught up in what I couldn’t control. One of the greatest gifts of this time was focusing on my own inner work, where I did have agency.

Our Choices Have an Impact

Learning about the Happiness Set Point in the WBI’s Positive Psychology Coaching Certification program validated why I believed I experienced profound growth without changing my circumstances. The theory states that about 50% of our happiness is based on our genetics and personality, 10% on our circumstances, and 40% on our choices. This means we have agency over about 40% of our happiness. Our choices and intentional actions impact our ability to thrive.

I lived this by purposefully encouraging my well-being while finding more manageable ways to navigate my difficult circumstances. I have since deepened my positive psychology practices, which helps keep me grounded and supports my well-being as an entrepreneur, mother, and wife. And now, through offering career, life, and well-being coaching, I am beginning to see the meaningful impact positive psychology can have on others’ lives, too.