How much do we all take for granted? How much do you take for granted? Why does it take something monumental, traumatic or even tragic for us to focus on our true values and begin living our lives everyday, rather than living in the fantasy of "One day I`ll...."?
I have no answers, only questions.....
Here`s someone who could teach us all a lesson and he didn`t have the luxury of time.
"You`re not here to make a living; you`re here to make a difference" - Andrew Matthews
People often believe that it takes a special kind of person to touch lives and change them for the better, but the truth is, everyone of us has the potential to do that almost everyday, often without even noticing it........
There was an art teacher at a
local high school. He had been there for many years and was well liked and
respected by colleagues and students alike. On one particular day he was
visited by an ex student, returning after four or five years to show off her
wedding ring, her new baby and her promising career. He remembered her as a
quiet, plain girl who mostly kept herself to herself and was generally quite
shy. Now she was a confident young woman, and a mother. She had come to see her
former art teacher for a specific reason.
“When I was in high school,”
she explained, “my stepfather abused me. He hit me and came into my bed at
night. It was horrible. I was deeply ashamed. I told no one. No one knew.
Finally, I decided I`d had
enough. My parents went away for a weekend, leaving me alone for the first
time. I planned my escape.
They left on Thursday evening,
so I spent the entire night preparing. I did my homework,wrote a long letter
to my mother, and organised my belongings. I bought a roll of wide plastic tape
and spent an hour taping all the outside doors and windows of the garage from
the inside. I put the keys in the ignition of my mother`s car, put my teddy
bear on the passenger`s seat and then went up to bed.
My plan was to go to school as
usual on Friday and catch the bus home, as usual. I would wait at home until my
parents called, talk to them, and then go to the garage and start the engine. I
thought nobody would find me until Sunday afternoon when my parents returned. I
would be dead. I would be free.”
She stuck to her plan until the
last lesson of the day, her art class. When her teacher sat on a stool next to
her, looked at her artwork and slipped an arm around her shoulder. He made
small talk. He complimented her on her ability, asked a few questions, listened to her answers, squeezed her arm gently and moved on. That was it.
She went home that Friday
afternoon and wrote a second, different letter of goodbye to her mother. She
removed the tape from the garage and packed her teddy bear with the rest of her
belongings. Then she called her priest, who immediately came for her. She left
her parent`s home and never went back. Her life turned a corner at that point
and she gave her art teacher the credit.
“Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word,
a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of
which have the potential to turn a life around”
- Leo
Buscaglia
Isn`t it interesting that in
the politically correct world in which we live, where to touch a pupil would
be distinctly discouraged and spending time on idle chit chat would be deemed
“wasted” time, in this particular situation, with this particular teacher, it
seemed perfectly natural. He probably used that approach a hundred times.It
was his style. It was natural. It saved a life. To him it was
nothing special. To this particular student, at this particular time it altered
her entire life. She decided in that moment, in that art class, that if a
casually friendly teacher cared enough about her to take the time to stop, make
contact, look at her and listen to her, then there must be other people who cared about her too.
After all these years she had
come back to tell him that he had saved her life!
The key point here is, he didn`t even remember the incident!
You may like it, you may hate it, but it will be yours for
the entire period this time around. So many people are dissatisfied with their
bodies, particularly young people.
Recommendation:- Learn
to like it! Look after it! It is difficult to have a healthy self
esteem, if you don`t like yourself. Good self esteem and a strong positive self
image are essential to long term success and happiness.
2.“YOU WILL
LEARN LESSONS”
You are enrolled in a full time informal school called life.
Each day in this school , you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You
may like the lessons or think them irrelevant and stupid. (You may not even
realise that they are lessons at all! – and if so, you won`t learn from them.
Have you ever noticed how certain things happen to certain people?
Every time someone abuses you, each time you blow a sale, or
your girlfriend/boyfriend dumps you, there was a lesson staring you in the
face. If you find yourself being miserable most of the time, it`s likely you`ve
missed a lesson somewhere along the line.
We are not here to be
punished - we are here to be educated!
Everything that happens to us has the potential to transform
us.
ACT AS IF EVERY EVENT HAS A PURPOSE AND YOUR LIFE WILL HAVE
A PURPOSE.
3.“A LESSON IS
REPEATED UNTIL LEARNED”
A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you
have learned it. When we fail to learn a lesson, we get to take it again and
again! Once we have learned a lesson we move on to the next one. We reach
points in our lives when we are ready for new information (it`s called
maturity!) Until then, something could be staring us in the face and we don`t
recognise it. So life provides us with gentle reminders and if we don`t respond,
it gives us a nudge, and then a slap at the back of the head!
“Growth is most
painful when we resist it!”
Because most people fear change, they don`t change until
they have to:-
They exercise and diet – after the coronary
They study at school and begin to work hard – when they`re about to fail
They start to deliver excellent customer service – when the customers are leaving
They work on the marriage – when the relationship is falling apart
Winners recognise the lessons earlier – losers ignore the
warning signs.
And when we are forced to learn the lesson, what do we often
find -
“That`s the best thing that ever happened to me!”
4.“THERE ARE
NO MISTAKES, ONLY LESSONS”
There is no failure, only feedback! Growth is a process of
trial and error and experimentation. The “failed” experiments are as much a
part of the process as the experiment that ultimately “works”.
We often
celebrate our successes – but we don`t learn too much. Negative feedback is a powerful teacher. When did we get the most negative feedback? As kids!
Everything was a steep learning curve. Did we think of it as failure? No! So when
did we suddenly get the idea that failure was wrong?
5.“LEARNING
DOES NOT END”
There is no part of life that does not contain its lessons.
If you are alive there are lessons to be learned, which is bad news for those
people who thought that learning stopped when they left school/university! Does
life get simpler? No! But you can learn
to handle it better. We know that we have to keep retaking lessons until we
have learned them, but the other inference of this pillar of wisdom is, we
should proactively learn. The future belongs to those who keep
learning. What have you learned recently? What new skills have you
acquired?
6.“THERE", IS
NO BETTER THAN “HERE”
When your “there” has become a “here”, you will simply
obtain another “there” that will again look better than “here”. Otherwise known
as “the greener grass syndrome”. Learn to love what you do – cut out jealousy
and envy of others. If you want to be “there” instead of “here” because you are
surrounded by problems “here”, don`t be surprised if when you get “there”, you
find the same set of problems you had when you were “here”!(because you
probably took them with you). Remember, you create your own environment.
7.“OTHERS ARE
MERELY MIRRORS OF YOU”
You cannot love or hate something about another person
unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself. Lesson no.
1. Start learning to love yourself. One of the most important gifts you can
give anyone is the gift of self esteem – helping people feel good about
themselves. What about your own self esteem? What kind of self image have you
designed? Some people are well balanced – They have a chip on both shoulders!
8.“WHAT YOU
MAKE OF YOUR LIFE IS UP TO YOU”
You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do
with them is up to you. The choice is yours. Life is all about
choices:-
“The entirety of one`s adult life is a series of personal
choices, decisions. If we can accept this totally, then we become free people.
To the extent to which we do not accept this we will forever feel victims” - The
Road Less Travelled (M. Scott Peck)
When
you ask people what they want out of life they say happiness, guess what - Happiness
is a choice! It`s all in your attitude. You choose your
attitude. The facts don`t count. The fact that it rains has nothing to do with
how you feel – unless you let it!
The fact that someone cuts you up on the motorway doesn`t bother
you unless you let it!
The fact that you didn`t get a job doesn`t mean that you are
a loser unless you think that!
"Men are disturbed, not by the things that happen to them, but rather by their opinion of the things that happen" - EPICTETUS.
9.“YOUR
ANSWERS LIE INSIDE YOU”
All the world`s great philosophers, teachers, leaders and
wise men since the beginning of recorded time Confucius, Lao Tzu, Jesus,
Buddha are agreed in one thing -
The answers to life`s questions lie inside you. All you need
to do is look, listen and trust. They hadn`t got the benefit of modern neuro
science, they had no knowledge of the power of the subconscious. We can now
explain some of what they knew
instinctively. They just knew that when people meditated they got insights,
answers, truths. We know that the bio computer is capable of solving virtually
any problem that you pose it. Many of the world`s greatest discoveries have
come as flashes of inspiration after a period of concentrated thought/meditation or even sleep ( Study MOZART,
McCARTNEY, EDISON to see how this phenomenon operates)
Plant the seed, wait, listen and trust!
10. “YOU WILL FORGET ALL THIS” (Adapted from Cherie Scott Carter)
For some powerful, positive affirmations check out this video:-
It is
often stated that,” It`s not what you say,
but what you do”, that counts. Nevertheless,
words are still the building blocks of communication.
The
combination of certain words can have a real impact. If you want to build
relationships and high performing teams, these are some of the most potent
combinations:-
THE 6 MOST IMPORTANT WORDS……
“I`m sorry I made a mistake”
There
isn`t a human being who hasn`t made a mistake, but there are plenty who would
never admit it! It is often quoted that it takes a “big man” to admit when he`s
wrong. Most just ignore it or get into the “Blame Game” syndrome and start
pointing the finger. One of the hallmarks of a truly mature human being is the
ability to accept total responsibility for their lives, their actions and their
behaviours – good or bad, right or wrong. Many people mistakenly believe that
if you are a manager or hold some prestigious title you aren`t allowed to make
mistakes! Of course you are! More importantly, if you are not, you are not
trying hard enough. People actually like to work for someone who is human like
them! Nobody likes a “Peter Perfect” neither do they want a “Calamity Jane”,
but there is a desperate need for someone, somewhere to accept full
responsibility when things go wrong. “I`m
sorry”, is a good start.
THE 5 MOST IMPORTANT WORDS………
“You did a good job”
Positive
feedback and recognition are “endorphins for the soul”. Human beings thrive on
them. In fact they can only thrive if they get enough of them, enough of the
time. Unfortunately, there are still managers who subscribe to the old paradigm
of, “Why should they be rewarded for doing a good job when that`s what they get
paid to do?” These people clearly have no idea about human nature. It is this
kind of blinkered , ignorant, one dimensional thinking that gets just the
response it deserves, i.e. “minimalist employees”, who do just enough and no
more. Positive recognition costs nothing
and yet delivers so much.
THE 4 MOST IMPORTANT WORDS…….
“What is your opinion?”
Where
there is no involvement, there is no commitment. How can we realistically
expect employees to be committed to Mission Statements or corporate goals, etc.
when the first they hear of them is when the senior management team descend
from their “Ivory Towers” clutching their tablets of stone proclaiming, “This
is where we are doing, this is where we are going. Now get to it!” These
Mission Statements and goals are not those of the employees, they are the
managers. They only become the employees when they have been involved in the
process. The first stage of involvement is, “What do you think?” In addition,
by asking people, you are giving them positive recognition, you are according
them respect. They begin to feel valued. Being
valued is one of the most profound desires of human beings.
THE 3 MOST IMPORTANT WORDS…….
“Would you please…….?”
Only
in Her Majesty`s armed forces and services can you give orders and expect to
get away with it. Ask, don`t order. How we communicate our requests determine
how they are received. People generally want to be helpful, to feel useful
(again it reinforces our primary need to be valued). If they feel as if you are
requesting their help they will be only too pleased, but if it sounds like an order, they will do it grudgingly!
THE 2 MOST IMPORTANT WORDS……
“Thank you!”
Without
question, the most common complaint I hear when running management training
courses is, “we don`t feel appreciated”, and, “a simple thank you would mean a
lot”.
So simple, so obvious, so ignored.
More often than not people don`t want lavish praise or over the top ceremonies.
A simple, sincere “thank you” is often reward enough. Even more powerful would
be a “thank you” note/card. Never be too busy to acknowledge people`s help or
contribution. These are two little words
that make a big difference.
THE 1 MOST IMPORTANT WORD……
“We”
“We”,
is a word that reflects teamwork, togetherness, unity, and should be liberally
used in conjunction with success, achievements and celebration. The best
leaders accept personal liability when things go wrong and acknowledge the team
contribution when things go well. Any long term, enduring success can only come
by working with people. As Stephen
Covey points out in his “Maturity Continuum”:-
The
three stages of maturity are 1. Dependence
(as children we depend upon everyone else for all our needs), 2. Independence (when we can fend for
ourselves and feel we are self sufficient), 3. Interdependence – this is the maturity to realise that we need
others, and working together with others give us our greatest success. Remember,
people will often do more for the “team” than they will ever do for themselves.
Harness the power of “we”, and there
will be very little you cannot achieve.
What difference it could make in our families, businesses and relationships if we all committed to using these words on a more regular basis. What do you think?
Here`s something else to consider about the power of words:-
The truth is when it comes to creating REAL change there are only two forces that really drive us:-
Inspired Action - When something ignites such a powerful force inside you that you will do whatever it takes to succeed. You will overcome whatever obstacle is in your way - internal or external, in order to achieve your goal. Desperate Action - When you get to the stage where you say, "That`s it. I`ve had enough. I`m not going to put up with this any more!"
It seems that for most people significant change only takes place when the pain of inaction becomes greater than the pain of taking action! Then, and only then will they begin to move forward.
If you really want to galvanise yourself you can combine both strategies. Visualise the long term pain of not changing and at the same time get a very clear picture and feeling of the pleasure of achieving your goal.
(N.B. It`s important to associate extreme pain to inaction and the maintenance of the status quo and extreme pleasure to moving forward and attaining your goal).
It doesn`t matter which force drives you as long as you get the right result. It`s truly amazing what you can achieve when you have a big enough WHY. Here`s a brilliantly powerful and moving example.....
"Cheer up. Stop worrying. Don’t work so hard. Good advice for a long life?" As it turns out, no. In a groundbreaking study of personality as a predictor of longevity, University of California, Riverside researchers found just the opposite.
"It's surprising just how often common assumptions -- by both scientists and the media -- are wrong," said Howard S. Friedman, distinguished professor of psychology who led the 20-year study.
Friedman and Martin examined, refined and supplemented data gathered by the late Stanford University psychologist Louis Terman and subsequent researchers on more than 1,500 bright children who were about 10 years old when they were first studied in 1921. "Probably our most amazing finding was that personality characteristics and social relations from childhood can predict one's risk of dying decades later," Friedman concluded.
The Longevity Project, as the study became known, followed the children through their lives, collecting information that included family histories and relationships, teacher and parent ratings of personality, hobbies, pet ownership, job success, education levels, military service and numerous other details.
"When we started, we were frustrated with the state of research about individual differences, stress, health and longevity," Friedman recalled. "It was clear that some people were more prone to disease, took longer to recover, or died sooner, while others of the same age were able to thrive. All sorts of explanations were being proposed -- anxiety, lack of exercise, nerve-racking careers, risk-taking, lack of religion, unsociability, disintegrating social groups, pessimism, poor access to medical care, and Type A behavior patterns." But none were well-studied over the long term. That is, none followed people step-by-step throughout their lives.
When Friedman and Martin began their research in 1991, they planned to spend six months examining predictors of health and longevity among the Terman participants.
But the project continued over the next two decades -- funded in part by the National Institute on Aging -- and the team eventually involved more than 100 graduate and undergraduate students who tracked down death certificates, evaluated interviews, and analyzed tens of thousands of pages of information about the Terman participants through the years.
"We came to a new understanding about happiness and health," said Martin, now a psychology professor at La Sierra University in Riverside.
"One of the findings that really astounds people, including us, is that the Longevity Project participants who were the most cheerful and had the best sense of humor as kids lived shorter lives, on average, than those who were less cheerful and joking. It was the most prudent and persistent individuals who stayed healthiest and lived the longest."
Part of the explanation lies in health behaviors -- the cheerful, happy-go-lucky kids tended to take more risks with their health across the years, Friedman noted. While an optimistic approach can be helpful in a crisis, "we found that as a general life-orientation, too much of a sense that 'everything will be just fine' can be dangerous because it can lead one to be careless about things that are important to health and long life. Prudence and persistence, however, led to a lot of important benefits for many years. It turns out that happiness is not a root cause of good health. Instead, happiness and health go together because they have common roots."
Many of the UCR findings fly in the face of conventional wisdom. For example:
Marriage may be good for men's health, but doesn't really matter for women. Steadily married men -- those who remained in long-term marriages -- were likely to live to age 70 and beyond; fewer than one-third of divorced men were likely to live to 70; and men who never married outlived those who remarried and significantly outlived those who divorced -- but they did not live as long as married men.
Being divorced is much less harmful to women's health. Women who divorced and did not remarry lived nearly as long as those who were steadily married.
"Don't work too hard, don't stress," doesn't work as advice for good health and long life. Terman subjects who were the most involved and committed to their jobs did the best. Continually productive men and women lived much longer than their more laid-back comrades.
Starting formal schooling too early -- being in first grade before age 6 -- is a risk factor for earlier mortality. Having sufficient playtime and being able to relate to classmates is very important for children.
Playing with pets is not associated with longer life. Pets may sometimes improve well-being, but they are not a substitute for friends.
Combat veterans are less likely to live long lives, but surprisingly the psychological stress of war itself is not necessarily a major health threat. Rather, it is a cascade of unhealthy patterns that sometimes follows. Those who find meaning in a traumatic experience and are able to reestablish a sense of security about the world are usually the ones who return to a healthy pathway.
People who feel loved and cared for report a better sense of well-being, but it doesn't help them live longer. The clearest health benefit of social relationships comes from being involved with and helping others. The groups you associate with often determine the type of person you become -- healthy or unhealthy.
It's never too late to choose a healthier path, Friedman and Martin said. The first step is to throw away the lists and stop worrying about worrying.
"Some of the minutiae of what people think will help us lead long, healthy lives, such as worrying about the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids in the foods we eat, actually are red herrings, distracting us from the major pathways," Friedman said. "When we recognize the long-term healthy and unhealthy patterns in ourselves, we can begin to maximize the healthy patterns."
"Thinking of making changes as taking 'steps' is a great strategy," Martin advised. "You can't change major things about yourself overnight. But making small changes, and repeating those steps, can eventually create that path to longer life."
It`s interesting to note that most people I meet can`t wait to stop work. They talk of retiring and some actually want to do nothing, not realising that the research indicates that would be the worst thing possible!You can`t argue with the facts - here`s someone who has achieved extraordinary things and is very clear about what he considers the 3 keys to longevity:-
Next time you ever begin to say, "I`m too old for...." watch this!
There has been and always will be, much debate and now research, as to which frame of mind brings the best results in life. Now is the opportunity to find out the truth.......
"Imagine you divided everyone in the world into two psychological groups. You put all the optimists on one side and all the pessimists on the other (let’s leave the realists aside for now).
Amongst the optimists the conversation would all be about fantastic plans for the future and how things can only get better.
Meanwhile the pessimists are having what might seem to the optimists like a depressing discussion. Far from working out how to make their dreams come true, they’re worrying about all the things that might go wrong. They’re worried that even the things they have will be taken away from them by some cruel twist of fate.
To the optimists, the pessimists seem too down on everything, always just a little too keen to pour cold water on any exciting plans.
To the pessimists, though, the optimists are out of touch with reality. Can’t they see what a nasty, cruel and accident-prone world we live in? They are deluding themselves!
Which is better?
Over the years psychologists have examined many aspects of pessimism and optimism. They’ve wondered whether there are more optimists or pessimists. And they’ve tried to find out which approach is ‘better’. Naturally both camps are fascinated to see which way this one goes.
In fact there’s good news for all. There are some advantages to optimism like it seems to make people feel better about life. But there are also advantages for pessimism in that thinking the worst helps some pessimists cope better with the world.
But we should be less concerned with which is ‘better’ or which camp is larger and more interested in why people see the world in such different ways in the first place.
After all, when an extreme optimist talks to an extreme pessimist, it’s like they come from two completely different worlds. How do people come to be polarized in this way?
What’s my motivation?
A clue comes from a new line of research into how both pessimists and optimists use their differing views of the world to motivate themselves.
We all know how difficult it is to predict what’s going to happen in the future. Life is always throwing us curveballs and most of us accept that our plans often don’t work out. It’s not that we’re doing anything wrong, just that life is unpredictable.
To cope with this unpredictability some of us choose to think optimistically because it helps motivate us to try, try again. For others a pessimistic mindset performs the same function. By thinking about what might go wrong it helps protect us against when things do go wrong.
In both cases what the optimistic and pessimistic standpoints are doing is working in service of motivation. Each provides a protective buffer against what Shakespeare called “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”.
Insight from anagrams
Evidence for this connection between motivation and optimism or pessimism was found in a new study by Abigail Hazlett and colleagues (Hazlett et al., 2011), published in Social Cognition.
In two initial studies optimists were found to have a ‘promotion focus’. In other words they preferred to think about how they could advance and grow. Pessimists, meanwhile, were more preoccupied with security and safety.
This suggested a connection with motivation, but we need a true experiment for stronger evidence. So, in their third study they had participants trying to solve anagrams. However they were split into two groups. While doing the anagrams half were encouraged to think optimistic thoughts and half pessimistic thoughts.
The researchers also measured participants’ natural tendencies towards either optimism or pessimism. This meant that some people would be using their preferred strategy and others would be forced to think against the grain.
What the results showed was that pessimists performed better when thinking in negative ways. At the same time optimists were more engaged with their task when they were thinking positive thoughts.
It also turned out that people’s performance depended on how persistent they were at trying to crack the anagrams. It seems that when the optimists were using their preferred positive thinking strategy, they were more persistent. And the same went for the pessimists, who were most successful when thinking negative thoughts.
Different strokes
What’s emerging, from studies like this, is that both optimism and pessimism have important roles to play in people’s lives.
Being optimistic allows people to pursue their goals in a positive way: to dream a bigger and better dream, which they can work their way towards. Optimists also seem to respond better to positive feedback, and part of being optimistic may be generating this feedback for themselves, i.e. thinking positive thoughts.
On the other hand being pessimistic may help people reduce their natural anxiety and to perform better. Also, pessimists seem to respond better to negative feedback. They like to hear what the problems were, so they can correct them. Again, part of why pessimists generate these sorts of negative thoughts is that it helps them perform better.
So it’s different strokes for different folks. Optimism and pessimism aren’t just accidents; this evidence suggests they are two different, but effective, strategies of coping with a complex and unpredictable world."
(Source:Jeremy Dean)
That said, I am inclined to favour what I would call a "healthy optimism bias!" for more fascinating information check out this video by Tali Sharot...
