If you want to support independent women's media, become a Mamamia subscriber . Get an all-access pass to everything we make, including exclusive podcasts, articles, videos and our exercise app, MOVE.

Every morning felt like an uphill battle against the calendar, the weather, and my own brain.

I was spiralling fast, stuck in a loop I couldn't seem to shake. Then I learnt about a 60-second hack, and something shifted.

I suffer from 'winter-itis'. It happens every single year without fail. I hate the cold.

And when it hits, everything feels harder for no good reason. Getting out of bed. The cold air that ambushes you before a hot shower.

Even making a coffee feels like a chore when the kitchen is freezing. The revolving door of germs and illness. Leaving work when it's already dark outside.

Watch: Ellidy's onion health hack on You Beauty. Post continues below.

The most frustrating part? I actually love my job. I am not miserable. I am just cold, and somehow that is enough to send me into a full spiral of Groundhog Day dread.

Yet there I was, audibly groaning the moment my alarm went off, thinking: Ugh, not this again.

Stuck in a loop of default negativity, dreading the exact life I had worked hard to build, until I found something while doomscrolling on the bus one morning that stopped me, cold.

The 60-second trick that shocked me out of it.

Clinical psychologist Karen Stewart has a confronting habit. When clients spiral into rants, she cuts them off mid-sentence and drops a sharp, immediate reality check:

"What would happen if you woke up tomorrow and received a letter saying your services were no longer needed?"

The shift, Stewart told Time, is instantaneous. "You immediately see their face change," she said.

"They start thinking, 'Well, actually, it's not that terrible.'"

This psychological tool, developed by researchers at Harvard and the University of Virginia, is known as mental subtraction.

It's not about wallowing in worst-case scenarios or inviting negativity into your day.

It's a rapid cognitive reset designed to help you rediscover the value of the things that are "irking you", whether it's a partner who leaves a towel on the floor, a parent who nags you about microplastics, or a pet who chews your favourite shoes.

Now imagine that partner is gone. You go to call your parent and remember you can't. Your pet runs away.

Suddenly, your mum telling you to throw out everything plastic in your house doesn't seem so bad.

The concept is rooted in research showing that we adapt surprisingly quickly to good things in our lives. What once felt exciting or meaningful starts to fade into the background of our daily routine.

While a gratitude list reminds you of what you appreciate, mental subtraction works by briefly removing something from that routine in your imagination, just long enough for your brain to register what it would actually feel like to lose it. And the cost.

And it makes sense. Because when something is taken away from us, there is a particular sting to it that choosing to leave never quite produces.

Think about the guy who was pretty 'mid' anyway, but the moment he ended things, suddenly you were devastated. Or the rental you didn't even like, until you got the vacate notice and had to pack up your life. It hits differently when the power and the choice are taken out of your hands.

There is something about losing control of a situation that forces you to confront how much you actually value it.

And if you try it and feel relieved? That's information too. Maybe it is not the job, the relationship, or the city for you. Maybe it's time to go. Not every subtraction reveals loss. Sometimes it reveals a door.

How to try it yourself.

If you find yourself stuck in a motivational rut, here's how you can use the framework to shift your perspective in less than a minute.

The moment you're most annoyed is when it's most useful.

Step 1: Identify your target. Focus on the exact thing causing your current funk. For me, it was the alarm, the commute, the winter morning routine that had started to feel like punishment.

Step 2: Subtract it completely. Imagine that thing is suddenly, involuntarily gone. Frame it exactly as Stewart suggests, where the choice is entirely out of your hands. You did not decide to leave. It was decided for you.

Step 3: Sit with the imaginary loss. For just a few breaths, genuinely picture the immediate aftermath. What would that look like? What would you miss? What would your days feel like without that person, structure or purpose?

Step 4: Come back. Step back into the present moment. Your obligations are still there, the alarm will still go off tomorrow, but your relationship to all of it has quietly shifted.

What happened when I tried it.

Sitting on the bus that morning, I put the trick to the test. I closed my eyes and pictured my job entirely gone. No alarm. No commute. No purpose pulling me out of the warmth of my bed.

The imagined reality hit me harder than I expected.

I had a sudden, clarifying realisation: as much as winter makes everything colder, darker, and harder to face, I would be absolutely devastated without the reason to get up and face it.

Even if we set aside the fact that I am not an heiress and need to work to survive… without that purpose, my routine would crumble entirely. I would miss the job I get to go to. I would miss the people I love working with. I would miss all the weird and wonderful things I get to do on any given day, the things that are anything but ordinary.

Sixty seconds of imagining the loss was enough to shock me straight out of my Groundhog Day loop.

As tropey as it sounds, there really is something in being shocked into gratitude. We are wired to take things for granted. As Joni Mitchell put it, "We don't know what we've got til it's gone."

It also made me think about something bigger. If we never experienced the freezing, darker winter months, we would take the summer sun completely for granted.

Part of what makes the warmth so special is the contrast. We have to move through the chill to fully appreciate the heat on the other side.

Life operates the same way. It moves in seasons, some harder and more restrictive than others, and the difficult ones are not just something to survive. They are what make everything else feel worth it.

By forcing myself to mentally subtract what I have, even just for sixty seconds on a cold morning bus, I realised just how fortunate I am to be exactly where I am.

I still hate cold mornings. I still dread the cold air before a hot shower. But I no longer dread the alarm, because I know what it means to have one worth setting.

Feature Image: Supplied.