This year has been rough for everyone, but the most common work complaints haven’t changed much over the years.

If you’re like a lot of folks, there’s a good chance that you’re experiencing at least one or two items on this list:

• Feeling stressed and overwhelmed

• Being plagued by procrastination

• Getting beaten down (or up) by management

• Suffering with coworkers who are loud, rude, lazy, or take credit for the good stuff you do

• Acting grumpy and snapping at people, even those you love most

• Scoring low on your sleep, healthy eating, and exercise routines

• Scoring high on too much drinking and maybe drugging

• Indulging in too much retail “therapy”

Whether it’s managing your career or even your personal life, the problem is that most of us go at it the wrong way.

We depend on the mental models that we’ve created in our heads--models that help us make sense of ourselves, the people around us, our environment, and the circumstances we find ourselves in.

But our mental models---and the stories they generate--also can lead us astray.

We end up focusing on certain aspects of our experience while overlooking or ignoring others.

Then, we generalize and turn those generalizations into principles that guide our actions.

We mistake our mental models for reality. And the stories we tell ourselves based on those mental models may end up holding us back . . . or worse.

So what can you do instead?.

Learn a few simple tricks to make sure your mental models work and fit for you.