Grid is a tool to help you live a better life. The Grid method is designed to bring balance and wellbeing to your life so that you can look after yourself and achieve your goals all in one place.

In this blog, we will look at the psychological concepts that make the Grid so effective. You don’t need to know this information for the Grid to work, but if you love the science, here it is.

Positive Mental States and Negative Mental States

It is well established in psychology that clutter, unfinished projects, and long to-do lists, as well as disorganisation, contribute to negative mental states such as stress, anxiety, and depression.

Being organized has been linked to:

• better sleep,
• reduction in stress levels,
• healthier relationships,
• greater resilience,
• reduced depression and anxiety,
• higher self-esteem.

As we tackle work and reach completion, we feel more relaxed and happy.

The Grid helps you live your best life by tapping into these positive mental states of organization and completion. The very foundation of the Grid is a simple framework to organize your life. In fact, many people associate happiness with order and clarity which Grid creates.

Building Resilience and Promoting Creativity

Studies in psychology show that changing existing routines helps the unconscious mind process information in novel ways and fosters cognitive resilience. What’s more, the act of adapting to these changes in routine boosts creativity.

Grid achieves this by creating more free time to think. It helps people live a better life by shifting from being busy to being truly productive and balanced. It encourages creativity and inspiration through energy flow instead of using rigid pre-prescribed schedules.

People are encouraged to be visionaries and creative architects of their lives. Living your best life blossoms through self-realization of your true potential; one task at a time.

Working on Positive Self-image

Positive self-image and personal sense of agency rest on a core belief that you can achieve what you sets out to do. This is critical to a healthy self-concept which in turn leads to the feeling of living a productive life.

Grid supports this in three ways:

1. encouraging personal agency,
2. focusing on tangible progress and
3. continuous learning and improvement.

This way of working and being also has been shown to counter mental health problems such as depression. In fact, we have seen Grid be very useful for people recovering from depression and also for individuals living with ADHD.

By focusing on tasks that can be done, even small progress builds up positive self-esteem. There is nothing more compelling for positive self-regard than tangible results. The energy task matching and energy surfing approach that the Grid employs also helps to counter procrastination which has been shown to lower self-esteem.

Motivation and Fulfilment

Much of psychology is concerned with why we do what we do and how we improve, feel good, and motivate action.

Grid builds on this by giving you full agency to create your future according to the goals you want to have. These goals or macro pictures represent personal aspirations. They also frequently bring to light past adversity and traumas. This is what makes the Grid invaluable in therapeutic approaches designed to increase your overall resourcefulness, confidence, and positive self-regard.

Grid easily highlights goals and activities that bring fulfillment and those that do not. The latter often come to light as tasks that are either left undone or they get completed last. Does this sound at all familiar?

Grid helps visualize where action and inaction occur giving rise to important questions about root causes for specific behaviors that underpin desired results. Grid is an excellent aid for psychologists, coaches, and therapists as well as their clients. Health professionals can use the Grid as a tool to point towards specific personality traits, innate strengths and highlight specific aptitudes.

Self-awareness

Human empowerment through greater self-awareness, flourishing and healing is one of the key goals of psychology. As a framework, tool and process, Grid method adopts the same key aim to move people towards feeling and doing better. Through visual feedback, the Grid coaches people towards constant optimization of their approach, priorities, and ways of doing and being.

Flourish and Live a Better Life

Finally, the emphasis of positive psychology is on how humans flourish. Grid offers a practical means of helping people live a better life by asking the right questions about their personal life, work, self-care and career. It also invites the larger and more holistic question that is at the heart of overall flourishing: how do I flourish best overall?

By focusing on each quadrant the Grid can help pinpoint helpful resources, effective strategies and habits, and provides a simple process of self-improvement.

You Can Live a Better Life

Understanding what we do and why we do it, as well as how we can do better, helps live our best life.

Using the foundations of psychology, Grid can contribute to improving your self-image, boost resilience, and help you develop and flourish. We have the evidence that the Grid works whether you are 16 or 68 years of age.

We hope that what we’ve shared with you here inspires you to give this method a try!