MindCraft Challenges

Hope training has been used with people facing big obstacles (like the cancer patients linked in the ‘Read More’ section). Hope training involves learning to set goals, to imagine pathways, and to talk to yourself about how to accomplish those goals.

Challenge: Hope training can also help people overcome everyday obstacles. On mindcraftchallenge.com, you will find a set of diary prompts for a week-long home hope training challenge. You can track your hopeful progress using the hope scale we discussed in class: https://cognopod.com/sketch/HOPE.

Hope Training Prompts:
https://mindcraftchallenge.com/RESOURCES/HOPE-TRAINING-WORKSHEET.docx

Read More
Hope training diary prompts
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2020.110383
Hope training helps cancer patients
https://doi.org/10.1177/2377960819844381

Metacognition is the term used in psychological science to describe thinking about one's own thinking. Metacognition encourages people to think about their thoughts from new perspectives, which opens up the possibility of introducing new and different responses. You have already seen this example in Challenge #4, where it was used in distant self-talk. We can apply a similar kind of distancing to dealing with cravings (remember that for uncontrollable cravings, you should talk to a professional).

Challenge: When you feel a craving for something you are trying to avoid or a habit you are trying to break, imagine distancing or looking at your thoughts from far away and remind yourself that the craving is “just a thought”. If you are a Christian, you may find it helpful to consider the craving as “just a thought,” subject to Romans 7:25—you can be delivered from it through Jesus Christ.

Read More
Distancing is the key skill to developing control over cravings
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2014.01.072
Metacognition involves distancing
https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691615594577

In many everyday settings, the default choice is to simply experience negative emotions as they arise, rather than attempting to reappraise them. Gaurav Suri and his colleagues noted that when the default is ‘do nothing’, people only try to reappraise in a lab task only 16% of the time.

Challenge: Try a day of reappraisal. You will try to change your default by leaving yourself “reappraise!” messages (notes in your room and car, a sticky note or home screen on your phone, etc.). Any time you experience a negative event throughout the day, you will try to follow the reappraisal instruction. Because Suri and his colleagues found that there was the possibility that reappraisal instructions might also have a small effect on the likelihood of reappraisal, you should read this handout with descriptions of how to do two kinds of reappraisal.

Read More
Defaults predict whether reappraisal will happen
https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000011
Instructions for two kinds of reappraisal
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01173-x

One way that we think about and explain our identity is by telling our life story. When the most important events in our lives and the turning points (where the story of a life could have changed completely) are linked to meaning-making (understanding some aspect of one’s self), identity formation moves toward identity achievement.

One way to engage in meaning-making is through counterfactual thinking-imagining other paths that your life could have taken. Choose some aspect of your life right now (where you go to school, your major, the church you attend, your hobbies). Think about how you ended up at this point in your life.  Looking back, list (write about) the broad sequence of things that led to you being where you are. 

Next, write about all the ways things could have turned out differently. Did counterfactual thinking increase the feeling that your life is meaningful?

Read More
The Psychology of Life Stories
https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.5.2.100
Life Stories and Meaning-Making
https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.42.4.714
Counterfactual Thinking and Meaning-Making
https://doi.org/10.1037/a0017905
A Group Process for Reducing Identity Distress
https://doi.org/10.1080/15283488.2014.944696

Ethan Kross and his colleagues have recommended using distanced talk to shift thinking from negative emotions and a cycle of rumination to positive actions to achieve goals (hope).

Challenge:
Use distanced self-talk five times daily for several days to coach yourself at points of stress, during negative thoughts, or when you feel you made a mistake. Note whether your control over your emotions, thoughts, and ability to take positive actions improves.

Read More:
How to change your self-talk:
https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721419861411