MEET MONSTER-TAMER BARBIE

Ever find yourself diving to the worst case scenario and spinning stuff round in your head? Same. Overthinking is exhausting. But don’t worry, this Barbie has a simple trick to help make friends with mental monsters. She’s good like that.  

What’s Barbie’s Secret?

Monster-tamer Barbie turns “what ifs” into “what thens” by making the unthinkable, knowable and taming it. And thank goodness she does, because my unthinkables go like this:

• I’ve dropped a ball. Doh.

• Everyone’s going to hate me.

• I’ll probably lose my job.

• Then I can’t pay the rent.

• That means I’ll be living under a bridge with a toothless dog called Ferret…

It’s stupid, right? But we all do it… don’t we?

Psychologists call this catastrophising - I just call it sleepless nights. Luckily, Barbie has a trick to help us tame those mental monsters. Just name them, and tame them by thinking pink.

Here’s how it works.

• Monster attack: What if I lose my job?

• Monster taming: That would suck. But there’s stacks of stuff on SEEK so I’ll maybe find something better and probably make new friends. Score.

Let’s tame those monsters

Call it back up plans. Call it Monster taming. Call it what you like, the secret is to think through what bad stuff might look like and find a way to be okay with it. Like this:

Be like Barbie and think pink

It’s easy to fall into a cycle of “what if?”, but when you call out the monsters and make friends with them, they lose all their power. Some of them might even be your friends. So turn “what if” into “what then” and you’ll be a monster-tamer in no time – just like Barbie.