Positive thinking can only get us so far in the face of unwelcome change. Dr Harry Barry prescribes pragmatism as one of the best skills to learn to deal with life’s ups and downs.

Pragmatism is a life skill whereby we become adept at quickly analysing problematic situations with a view to finding and putting into practice the most effective solutions. It is first and foremost about being practical. It teaches us how to carve through fixed or unhelpful thinking or behavioural patterns to achieve this objective. Pragmatists become experts at finding the ‘short cut’ to how best to deal with practical everyday difficulties. Pragmatism

also involves taking the world as we find it, not as we would like it to be.

Change is inevitable – an inexorable part of our existence, a constant challenge and something that has the power to make or break us. Pragmatism allows us to smoothly navigate a safe passage through difficult periods of change in our lives.

It is important to realize from the outset that pragmatism is a skill. A skill is the ability to master some area of expertise. Traditionally we associate skills with artisans such as carpenters or electricians. But all of us have an innate capacity to acquire skills in a multitude of areas. Before acquiring any skill, such as driving a car, cooking, dancing or learning the piano, it is necessary to progress through several stages.

The first stage involves learning or developing the skill. This may involve acquiring information and techniques from somebody skilled in the area. As this information

is new and strange, it requires significant mental concentration to absorb. It can also feel awkward initially when putting it into action. Just think of the first few lessons with a driving instructor to visualize these feelings.

The second stage involves you practising the skill repeatedly till it becomes more familiar. You feel increasingly comfortable putting it into action.

The third stage is reached when application of the skill in everyday life becomes routine and automatic. You no longer consciously think about using this skill in practice. It is embedded in your unconscious mind. One more skill you have mastered

The five-question pragmatic blueprint below, which will form the basis of how you can tackle change of any form in your life. Learning the skill of how to apply the following five questions to any problematic situation or change that may occur in your life can be life-transforming: a true blueprint for life. Th ese are the building blocks for making you more resilient in terms of how you cope with and adapt to periods of stressful change. If you can learn to apply this blueprint on a regular basis, you will notice how your capacity to cope with adversity will dramatically increase.

Think about a change you are currently experiencing in your life where you find yourself struggling. If nothing immediately comes to mind, think about the last time you experienced this scenario.

Now, I want you to write down the details of this example into a notebook and then take a shot at trying to analyse the situation or issue you’ve chosen by answering the following five questions:

1. How is this situation making me feel? (Is it making you feel anxious or frustrated, for example?)

2. What is it about this situation that is causing me to feel this way?

3. What in my thinking is preventing me from dealing with this situation?

4. What in my behaviour is preventing me from dealing with this situation?

5. How can I short circuit these thinking and behavioural blocks to deal more effectively with this situation?

How did you do? You probably found this exercise to be quite challenging to begin with and this is what I would expect, as it is unlikely that you have ever broken down such situations in this manner. 

This process feels quite strange when you do it for the first time but, as with all skills, with time and practice you will become more comfortable applying this pragmatic blueprint. Nonetheless, immediately you might notice how you are already looking at the problematic situation in a completely different manner. This is because you are turning the full force of your rational brain towards analysing what it is about the change that is bothering you and, more importantly, what you can do to manage the situation differently. 

Now let’s try to unpack these five questions in more detail and show how they would work in practice by applying them to the following hypothetical example: You have applied for a highly prized job at a major international company and have gone through a series of online, phone

and face-to-face interviews. You are now one of two candidates remaining and you feel that you are best placed to get the post – you are even planning your new life in another country. It is so exciting. Then, instead of that phone call, you get an email letting you know that you have been unsuccessful. The new life you had built up around the post disappears in an instant. Within a few days, you become emotionally depressed, withdraw socially from friends and family, drink excessively and ruminate constantly about the situation.

If you applied our blueprint, the answers might look like this:

1. How is this situation making me feel? The answer here is quite simple: ‘I am feeling emotionally depressed’.

2. What is it about this situation that is causing me to feel this way? This question is based on the concept that, in life, it is not what happens to us that makes us feel emotionally distressed, but instead how we are looking at or interpreting it. In other words, it is how are you thinking

about the situation which is making you distressed. Why is the situation bothering you at all? In this case, you are asking yourself: what is it about missing out on this post that is causing me to feel depressed? The answer here might be: ‘I am feeling depressed because I believe that I was not good enough in the eyes of the recruiters. I failed in my task of getting the job, and because of this, I believe that I am a failure’.

3. What in my thinking is preventing me from dealing with this situation? This question is based on the concept that most of us develop fixed ways of thinking about situations, which

are often irrational and unhelpful and prevent us from dealing with the situation. In this example, the answer might be: ‘It is my fixed belief that because I failed this job interview, I am a failure as a person’.

4. What in my behaviour is preventing me from dealing with this situation? This question is based on the concept that how we behave as a result of our emotional reaction to a situation can either hinder or help us deal with it. Unfortunately, much of the time our behavioural responses only worsen the situation and delay or prevent us from dealing with it. In this example the answer might be: ‘It is my ruminating, social withdrawal, refusal to look at other options and excessive drinking as a consequence of feeling emotionally depressed which are blocking me from managing the situation.’

5. How can I short circuit these thinking and behavioural blocks to deal more effectively with this situation? This assumes that you have already explored your emotional, thinking and behavioural responses to the situation through the previous four questions. It then challenges you to see how you could bypass any unhelpful thinking patterns or negative behaviours to deal with the situation more effectively. In this example, it is clear that the major thinking block is your belief that ‘I as a person can be classified as a failure simply because I was unsuccessful at a job application’.

This of course makes no sense. The more pragmatic approach would be to accept that human beings cannot be classified as either a success or a failure as a person but can obviously be successful or fail at a task such as a job application. That sort of failure is a part of life and

one of the ways in which we learn. The only real failure is not getting back up again, so you might need to go through a number of similar applications before you land the job of your dreams.

The negative behavioural blocks in this example that you have to tackle are pretty obvious. ‘I will have to reduce my alcohol in-take, share how I feel with my friends and family and seek out new job opportunities for the future’.

Embracing Change: How to build resilience and make change work for you is available now, €16.99 from dubraybooks.ie