Turning problems into opportunities

If you ever feel down and depressed because you feel life has dealt you a bad hand. If you ever ask the question, "Why me?" If you ever feel sorry for yourself and continue to focus on the perceived negative around you. Then watch this powerful, short video of an object lesson in changing your perspective and changing your results.

Br careful what you choose to focus on.....

The truth about positive thinking

Better quality friendships, marital satisfaction, higher incomes, better physical health and even greater longevity? Can all this really be achieved through positive thinking? Check out this fascinating article by James Clear and and then decide......

"Positive thinking sounds useful on the surface. (Most of us would prefer to be positive rather than negative.) But "positive thinking" is also a soft and fluffy term that is easy to dismiss. In the real world, it rarely carries the same weight as words like "work ethic" or "persistence."

But those views may be changing.

Research is beginning to reveal that positive thinking is about much more than just being happy or displaying an upbeat attitude. Positive thoughts can actually create real value in your life and help you build skills that last much longer than a smile.

The impact of positive thinking on your work, your health, and your life is being studied by people who are much smarter than me. One of these people is Barbara Fredrickson.

Fredrickson is a positive psychology researcher at the University of North Carolina, and she published a landmark paper that provides surprising insights about positive thinking and its impact on your skills. Her work is among the most referenced and cited in her field, and it is surprisingly useful in everyday life.

Let's talk about Fredrickson's discovery and what it means for you...

What Negative Thoughts Do to Your Brain

Play along with me for a moment.

Let's say that you're walking through the forest and suddenly a tiger steps onto the path ahead of you. When this happens, your brain registers a negative emotion -- in this case, fear.

Researchers have long known that negative emotions program your brain to do a specific action. When that tiger crosses your path, for example, you run. The rest of the world doesn't matter. You are focused entirely on the tiger, the fear it creates, and how you can get away from it.

In other words, negative emotions narrow your mind and focus your thoughts. At that same moment, you might have the option to climb a tree, pick up a leaf, or grab a stick -- but your brain ignores all of those options because they seem irrelevant when a tiger is standing in front of you.

This is a useful instinct if you're trying to save life and limb, but in our modern society we don't have to worry about stumbling across tigers in the wilderness. The problem is that your brain is still programmed to respond to negative emotions in the same way -- by shutting off the outside world and limiting the options you see around you.

For example, when you're in a fight with someone, your anger and emotion might consume you to the point where you can't think about anything else. Or, when you are stressed out about everything you have to get done today, you may find it hard to actual start anything because you're paralyzed by how long your to-do list has become. Or, if you feel bad about not exercising or not eating healthy, all you think about is how little willpower you have, how you're lazy, and how you don't have any motivation.

In each case, your brain closes off from the outside world and focuses on the negative emotions of fear, anger, and stress -- just like it did with the tiger. Negative emotions prevent your brain from seeing the other options and choices that surround you. It's your survival instinct.

Now, let's compare this to what positive emotions do to your brain. This is where Barbara Fredrickson returns to the story.

What Positive Thoughts Do to Your Brain

Fredrickson tested the impact of positive emotions on the brain by setting up a little experiment. During this experiment, she divided her research subjects into five groups and showed each group different film clips.

The first two groups were shown clips that created positive emotions. Group 1 saw images that created feelings of joy. Group 2 saw images that created feelings of contentment.

Group 3 was the control group. They saw images that were neutral and produced no significant emotion.

The last two groups were shown clips that created negative emotions. Group 4 saw images that created feelings of fear. Group 5 saw images that created feelings of anger.

Afterward, each participant was asked to imagine themselves in a situation where similar feelings would arise and to write down what they would do. Each participant was handed a piece of paper with 20 blank lines that started with the phrase, "I would like to..."

Participants who saw images of fear and anger wrote down the fewest responses. Meanwhile, the participants who saw images of joy and contentment, wrote down a significantly higher number of actions that they would take, even when compared to the neutral group.

In other words, when you are experiencing positive emotions like joy, contentment, and love, you will see more possibilities in your life. These findings were among the first that suggested positive emotions broaden your sense of possibility and open your mind up to more options.

But that was just the beginning. The really interesting impact of positive thinking happens later...

How Positive Thinking Builds Your Skill Set

The benefits of positive emotions don't stop after a few minutes of good feelings subside. In fact, the biggest benefit that positive emotions provide is an enhanced ability to build skills and develop resources for use later in life.

Let's consider a real-world example.

A child who runs around outside, swinging on branches and playing with friends, develops the ability to move athletically (physical skills), the ability to play with others and communicate with a team (social skills), and the ability to explore and examine the world around them (creative skills). In this way, the positive emotions of play and joy prompt the child to build skills that are useful and valuable in everyday life.

These skills last much longer than the emotions that initiated them. Years later, that foundation of athletic movement might develop into a scholarship as a college athlete or the communication skills may blossom into a job offer as a business manager. The happiness that promoted the exploration and creation of new skills has long since ended, but the skills themselves live on.

Fredrickson refers to this as the "broaden and build" theory because positive emotions broaden your sense of possibilities and open your mind, which in turn allows you to build new skills and resources that can provide value in other areas of your life.

As we discussed earlier, negative emotions do the opposite. Why? Because building skills for future use is irrelevant when there is immediate threat or danger (like the tiger on the path).

All of this research begs the most important question of all: If positive thinking is so useful for developing valuable skills and appreciating the big picture of life, how do you actually get yourself to be positive?

How to Increase Positive Thinking in Your Life

What you can do to increase positive emotions and take advantage of the "broaden and build" theory in your life?

Well, anything that sparks feelings of joy, contentment, and love will do the trick. You probably know what things work well for you. Maybe it's playing the guitar. Maybe it's spending time with a certain person. Maybe it's carving tiny wooden lawn gnomes.

That said, here are three ideas for you to consider...

1. Meditation -- Recent research by Fredrickson and her colleagues has revealed that people who meditate daily display more positive emotions that those who do not. As expected, people who meditated also built valuable long-term skills. For example, three months after the experiment was over, the people who meditated daily continued to display increased mindfulness, purpose in life, social support, and decreased illness symptoms.

Note: If you're looking for an easy way to start meditation, here is a 10-minute guided meditation that was recently sent to me. Just close your eyes, breathe, and follow along.

2. Writing -- This study, published in the Journal of Research in Personality, examined a group of 90 undergraduate students who were split into two groups. The first group wrote about an intensely positive experience each day for three consecutive days. The second group wrote about a control topic.

Three months later, the students who wrote about positive experiences had better mood levels, fewer visits to the health center, and experienced fewer illnesses. (This blew me away. Better health after just three days of writing about positive things!)

Note: I used to be very erratic in my writing, but now I publish a new blog every Monday and Thursday. I've written more about my writing process and how you can stick to your goals in this blog and this blog.

3. Play -- Schedule time to play into your life. We schedule meetings, conference calls, weekly events, and other responsibilities into our daily calendars... why not schedule time to play?

When was the last time you blocked out an hour on your calendar just to explore and experiment? When was the last time you intentionally carved out time to have fun? You can't tell me that being happy is less important than your Wednesday meeting, and yet, we act like it is because we never give it a time and space to live on our calendars.

Give yourself permission to smile and enjoy the benefits of positive emotion. Schedule time for play and adventure so that you can experience contentment and joy, and explore and build new skills.

Happiness vs. Success (Which Comes First?)

There's no doubt that happiness is the result of achievement. Winning a championship, landing a better job, finding someone you love -- these things will bring joy and contentment to your life. But so often, we wrongly assume that this means happiness always follows success.

How often have you thought, "If I just get ___, then I'll be set."

Or, "Once I achieve ___, I'll be satisfied."

I know I'm guilty of putting off happiness until I achieve some arbitrary goal. But as Fredrickson's "broaden and build" theory proves, happiness is essential to building the skills that allow for success.

In other words, happiness is both the precursor to success and the result of it.

In fact, researchers have often noticed a compounding effect or an "upward spiral" that occurs with happy people. They are happy, so they develop new skills, those skills lead to new success, which results in more happiness, and the process repeats itself.

Where to Go From Here

Positive thinking isn't just a soft and fluffy feel-good term. Yes, it's great to simply "be happy," but those moments of happiness are also critical for opening your mind to explore and build the skills that become so valuable in other areas of your life.

Finding ways to build happiness and positive emotions into your life -- whether it is through meditation, writing, playing a pickup basketball game, or anything else -- provides more than just a momentary decrease in stress and a few smiles.

Periods of positive emotion and unhindered exploration are when you see the possibilities for how your past experiences fit into your future life, when you begin to develop skills that blossom into useful talents later on, and when you spark the urge for further exploration and adventure.

To put it simply: Seek joy, play often, and pursue adventure. Your brain will do the rest."

If you want some practical tips on developing the right kind of thinking watch this.......

How to beat frustration

Have you ever felt really annoyed that things are not going your way? You know, one of those days where you get up on the wrong side of bed and nothing goes according to plan?

If you have, then it’s likely your familiar with feelings of frustration. When we’re frustrated, it can at times feel like the world is against us as we struggle to regain control of everyday things. So before I take you through a 5 step strategy to reduce your frustration, first let’s get an understanding of what frustration is and where it comes from.

What is frustration?

If you think about it, frustration is an emotion that pops up when we don’t get what we want. It’s essentially ‘control’ in action. Next time you feel frustrated, check in to see if you are feeling out of control and I’ll bet the answer is yes.

We tend to feel frustrated when we can’t control what’s happening around us. For example – have you ever planned out your day only to have a few unexpected ‘things’ pop up out of blue? Suddenly it’s not an option to carry on as you had planned, now you have to make some changes and feel forced into doing a few things that you hadn’t anticipated. Before you know it those feelings of frustration are starting to bubble up and you’re muttering things like:

* “I don’t want to be doing this.”
* “Why can’t things just work out as I planned!”
* “Why does everything have to be so hard today!”
* “Why me?!”

Stop fighting life

All of these thoughts are essentially you trying to fight what is happening in that present moment. This is pure resistance in action – and it’s this resistance that creates frustration. I once read somewhere that we must ‘Stop fighting life.’ That thought has stuck with me ever since because it rings true right?

Why do we fight life, instead of just allowing it to flow? And even more poignant – can we ever win a battle against life? In my opinion – the answer is no. In which case, if it’s pointless trying to fight life, we may as-well accept it right? Go with the flow?

Persistent resistance

Carl Jung has a really great saying:

“What you resist persists.”

It’s so true. Have you noticed how the more frustrated you get, the more of what you’re resisting persists? It’s like a blockage is created somehow by the very act of resistance. Before you know it, more and more of what you are resisting is showing up in your life and you spiral into a whirlpool of negativity.

I’ve talked about the power of thoughts before in a few articles, and my belief is that we get what we think about all day. So if we think about what we don’t want all day long, then this is (unfortunately) what we will get in life.

Take this approach back to frustration and if you think about it, the very act of resistance is pure negative thinking. When we resist something we are thinking specifically about what we don’t want. So, this is pure negativity in action – without us even realizing it!

The danger is that this behavior is like a chain reaction – once given permission to be negative, the brain goes to town and finds all sorts of other negative things to focus on and this can have a really detrimental effect on our lives.

We must take control of our mind and our thinking, before it takes control of us.

Acceptance

Here’s a thought for you. What would happen if you were to accept everything that’s happening to you? Instead of resisting changes as they happen, you were to first notice any resistance and then secondly allow this change to just be what it is. To let go of trying to control whatever is happening to you. Some call this:

The art of letting go.

When we let go, there’s no room for frustration or resistance because we are not trying to fight anything, So instead of attempting to control life, we are flowing with life. Now I don’t mean that we should roll over and just let life happen to us. I don’t mean that at all. We still must take action and make things happen. But Open Minded Action– where we are free to things happening in ways that are unexpected, often ways that turn out to be much better than we could have ever planned.

Simple Life Strategy: 5 Steps to be Less Frustrated

1. Become aware. Notice when those feelings of frustration start to creep up on you.

2. Identify why you are frustrated. Is it because you are trying to control something?

3. Remember the saying ‘What you resist persists.’ Know that if you keep resisting whatever is happening to you, more of it will show up in your life.

4. Consider if you are thinking about what you don’t want. Remember that this is essentially negative thinking in action and is to be avoided at all costs.

5. Accept what’s happening. Simply let go of trying to control your situation and accept it. Instead of fighting life, flow with it and notice how much easier things become.

(Source: Zoe B - Simple Life Strategies)

Or, you could try this approach.....

"Life can change in an instant..."

Lessons from a plane crash

Ric Elias got a second chance. He was fortunate. He got an opportunity to re-focus, to re-evaluate what was really important to him. If you had the same "opportunity", what three things would you focus on? More importantly, what are you waiting for??

Get clear - get focused - get started

"You don`t have to find out you`re dying to start living"

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.

                                                               What do you think?

What difference are you making?

"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!

Whose life have you changed today??

 Whose life will you change tomorrow?

"The 10 Pillars of Wisdom" - (or what your mother should have told you!)

1.                 “YOU WILL RECEIVE A BODY”

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:-