Robert, a senior executive with a major pharmaceutical firm, was describing a tense situation with his colleague. Finally, he paused…and suddenly broke out in a loud belly laugh. He had just remembered a little flic his 15 year old son had shared with him that very morning: hey apple!

As you can imagine, I was curious as to what video would cause such a turnaround in an indvidual’s emotional state….

Regardless of whether you find this video funny… the key message is that a powerful technique to cope with adversity is using paradoxical intention — take your worst-case-scenario thoughts to the extreme, deliberately intensify your emotional state, until you see just how irrational these thoughts are [and ideally begin to laugh and stop any further neurotic thinking].

Such a positive outlook allows you to focus your energy on the solution as opposed to the problem. This in turn promotes bouncing back from adversity and building your overall resilience to stress – an important coping mechanism in today’s competitive work place. So hey apple … try this!