Let me extend my best wishes for the New Year.

I think you’ll have to agree that these are interesting times.  It
doesn’t take a lot of effort to find things to be concerned about
these days.

I’ve been impressed with the amount of distress I see in people.
It is certainly understandable in someone who’s lost their job or
home (or both), but I see it even in people where that isn’t the
case.

Most people’s day to day life isn’t that different now than it was
a year ago, yet their sense of well-being has plummeted.

Maybe their home no longer has the market value it had a year ago
and their retirement savings have shrunk, but they still have their
home, their health, their loved ones, worthwhile work, and so on.
Really, their day-to-day life, what they actually experience
personally, is no different than it was a year ago.

Even so, their quality of life has changed because of a change in
mindset.Now I’m certainly not saying that people don’t have real problems,
issues and difficulties.  But I am saying that some ways of facing
them are better than others.

At a simple level, the serenity prayer offers good advice in this
regard.  I’m sure you know it:  “Lord grant me the strength to
change the things I can, the serenity to accept the things I can’t
change and the wisdom to know the difference.”

On other levels, there is now a science around successful coping
and happiness.  I’ll tell you more about that in a moment, but
first I want to mention something from my life.

One of Jackie and my joys over this holiday season has been having
our son home from college.  It’s been especially poignant for us
because of an incident at school that happened a few weeks before
Jon came home.

One of Jon’s friends at school was climbing on the roof of a dorm
one Saturday morning and fell to his death.

The young man was a rock climbing enthusiast and didn’t respect
the danger.  I suppose like a lot of twenty year olds, he felt
somewhat invincible.

I can’t imagine his parent s angst.  Getting a phone call like
that is every parent’s greatest dread.

Ryan’s death was a reminder of how fragile life is and what’s
really important.  Having our son with us is a blessing.  It made
be especially grateful when I went to pick Jon up at school.

Against this background, the fact that the investment funds we
saved to pay Jon’s tuition are down about a semester’s worth really
isn’t a big problem.

However, one of the things I find myself struggling with now is not
worrying about Jon.  I realize I can’t wrap him up in cotton
batting and protect him from every danger in life.  I really
wouldn’t want to if I could.  I want my son to experience life
fully, to be engaged.  I want him to know adventure.

Jackie and I stayed home last night, but Jon naturally wanted to go
to a party with his friends on New Years Eve.  It was snowing and
with the memory of Ryan’s death still on my mind, I found myself
worrying about road conditions.  Jon doesn’t drink alcohol, but
unfortunately there are people out there who do drink and drive.  I
stared imaging all kinds of bad scenarios.

I could have driven myself crazy with “What if…” thoughts.

Fortunately I know some techniques and ways of focusing my thoughts
that I’m finding very helpful, which brings me to my New Year’s
resolution.

I usually don’t make New Year resolutions.  I like to create a
series on-going goals year ‘round.  But this year I think I will
make a resolution and I’m asking you to help hold me to it.

One of the great developments in the field of wellness has been the
new field of Positive Psychology.  Using what I’ve learned from
studying has helped keep me from getting out of balance worrying
about Jon.

Rather than focusing on dysfunction, neuroses and pathology,
positive psychology looks at people who are resilient, successful
and handling life’s ups and downs well to see how they do it.

Success leaves clues.  Is it possible that we could learn how to
live life well from those that are already doing it?

It turns out that genetics and circumstances determine sixty
percent of our happiness but fully forty percent could be
completely under our control.  Yet most of us live life by
happenstance, and worse look for happiness in the wrong places.

Positive psychology tells us how to take control and where to look.

For quite a while I’ve intended to help get the word out by doing
something – sending a series of emails, writing a book, creating a
home study course - something.  But I haven’t done anything about it.

My New Years resolution is to do it, to produce something to teach
people.   I think in these “interesting” times it could be the best
contribution I could make.

Help hold me to my intention.  If I don’t mention my project, write me write a post to ask me about.   I like to think of
myself as someone who honors his commitments, so hold me to this one.

Again, best wishes for the New Year.  And thanks for your help.

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How to Use Action and the Law of Attraction to Make Your Dreams Real
To get something done, generally you’re going to have to do something.

Pretty obvious, right?  It should be, but these days a lot of people have interpreted the Law of Attraction to mean that dreaming alone is all that is required to make those dreams a reality.

Not in this physical world.  Bringing a dream to physical reality requires some form of action.

All creation begins first as an idea in someone’s head.  Then action makes it real.

For example, an engineer may get an idea for a fantastic new style of bridge.  He sees it in his minds eye, but it’s not yet real.  Making it so requires action.

The engineer needs to translate the idea to paper (or these days a computer screen).  Perhaps there’ll be discussions with colleagues, review of material manuals, construction of models and so forth.  All of these are actions.

With each action, the engineer adds more energy to the project.  The bridge begins to move from the world of ideas and dreams to the realm of the physical.

Eventually, completion of the bridge becomes the next logical step.

The dream was important, but its manifestation came through action.

I think action works through two mechanisms.

First, it gets something done in the physical world, and small results add up.  As the proverb goes: “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”.

More importantly, taking action convinces your subconscious mind that you’re serious.  Action primes the subconscious to bring opportunities related to your dream to your conscious attention.

This is what Goethe alludes to when he says:
“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.”

Thoreau says much the same thing:

“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”

The first time I clearly experienced this was in my final year of medical school.

Fourth year medical students have several months of elective courses.  If you followed certain guidelines, you have wide leeway in arranging the elective you take, including taking one at another medical school.

Most of my classmates took the path of least resistance.  They took an elective offered at our medical school.

Others took electives at the institutions they wanted to apply to for their residencies, hoping to increase their chance of acceptance.

My roommate and I went a different route.

We did our elective at Johannesburg Non-European Hospital in South Africa.  It was a fabulous, fabulous experience.  It was medically excellent and politically eye-opening  (apartheid was in full swing at the time).  We grew in many ways during our time there.

At the end of the year, when everyone had completed their electives and we were all comparing notes, Joe (my roommate) and I encountered several different reactions.

Many were glad for us.  They may have had no desire to do what we did but enjoyed the fact that we had done it.

Others had a response that bordered on jealousy with a twinge of resentment tossed in.

These students made different choices and had different experiences.  Most had gone the easy route and done an elective at our school

When they heard where we had gone, what we saw, how we grew, what we learned, they realized what an opportunity the elective time had been.  They regretted not taking full advantage of it.

In response, they made excuses for why they didn’t do something more adventurous.  Often, their internal story involved Joe and I having some special connection that made it easier for us than it was for anyone else.

“You sure are lucky.”

“Wish I knew who you know.”

“Wish I had the money.”

“I was going to do something like that too, but I couldn’t because…”

The people that were jealous chose to think we were able to do it because we had of some special access or knowledge or grace or ability or whatever that they didn’t have access to.

I knew differently.  I knew that the only reason we completed our trip was that we dreamed.  Then we took action.

It began in junior year.  My roommate was on medical rotation with a Chief Resident from South Africa.  Many times on rounds, the resident told stories about a professor he studied with in South Africa.

My roommate repeated these stories to me and over time Professor Seftel grew to mythic proportions.   Gradually the idea of doing an elective with this professor was born.

Making this elective a reality was a big dream.  It didn’t exist.  No one had done it before.

Remember, this was way before the internet. Making arrangements between Washington, DC and South Africa was an affair of letters.  Write to enquire, send it off, wait for a response, send more information, get forms, send back, etc.

Looking at the whole process was daunting.  But writing the first letter was easy. (“Dear Professor Seftel, I’m a medical student at Georgetown University School of Medicine and I’m writing to ask if …).

Each subsequent step of a rather involved process (applications, department approvals, visas, figuring out how to pay for it, finding someplace to live, etc.) was also small in itself.

A logical sequence unfolded.  Eventually, the small steps accomplished a great goal.  The dream became real.

The dream was important, but so was the action.

Goal setting, vision boards, visualization, etc. are all important and useful.  And it is true that sometimes someone will put a list of goals away, forget about it, then years later come across it and realize that they had achieved the items on their list without consciously thinking of them.  In fact, that’s happened to me.

But you’ll always find that action was necessary.  Ideally the action flows from spontaneous inclination rather than a sense of trying to force something to happen.

I differentiate between forced action and what Jerry and Esther Hicks call “inspired action”.

When we set a goal or identify a desire, we generate energy around it.  We’ve cued our subconscious to notice things relating to it.

The trick now is to keep a relaxed attitude, not one of effort or struggle or forcing, and notice what arises.

Playing around with the idea in an open-minded, wondering way often brings forth an idea for action.  This is the inspired action.

You recognize an inspired action because you’re drawn to it.  You want to do it.  Often it seems easy, or at least the effort required inspires rater than discourages.

All this, of course, is easier to talk about than to do.  And it’s easier to do when the issues don’t feel major.

When the issue seems important, our desire for the outcome can make us feel anxious.  We may worry about the possibility of not getting what we want.  These feelings works against us.  It leads us away from inspired action to forced action.

My best advice is to keep your focus clearly on what you want, not what you don’t want.  Dream your dreams.

Then, when you feel a call for action, do it!

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Even if you don’t believe in visualization, I’ll bet you practice at least one form of it sometimes.

Most people have heard of visualization – clearly imagining a desired outcome.  Many people use it hoping to increase their chance of success.

Other people consider visualization New Age fluff.  They deride those who recommend it.

However, even though they scoff, they’re often dedicated practitioners of a specific form of visualization.

In this form, they dwell on an outcome to the point of obsession. They imagine in such detail that they actually experience emotions and shift their physiology.

In fact, this form of visualization may be the most commonly applied.  The only problem with it is that it focuses on negative outcomes.  It’s usually goes by its common name: worry.

Think about it.  Worry is really just a form of negative visualization.

A person worries by vividly imagining an undesired outcome.

People say they can’t visualize, but they have no difficulty worrying.  With no coaching at all, they’re able to conjure up vivid images of the feared event or outcome.  They have no trouble enhancing the images with gruesome details of any possible negative consequence.

Some people are really quite creative as they do this.

Asking the same person to imagine a positive outcome stymies them.

It’s ironic that master worriers often dismiss positive visualization as New Age fluff.  Then they visualize away, only they specialize in the negative.

I’m not quite sure why they consider negative visualization (worry) a responsible, mature use of their time yet denigrate the positive version of the same activity.

In reality, most awful things people worry about never happen.  As Mark Twain expressed it:  “I’ve experienced many terrible things in my life, most of which have fortunately never occurred.”

Vividly imagine something and you do experience it.  Not only that, you might be charting your future.

Athletes know this.  They use visualization to imagine their success – whether it’s a perfect golf shot or a personal record in a race.

I’ve found it useful to prepare for performing surgery.  When I performed major operations, I mentally rehearsed them the night before.  I imagined making the incision and obtaining exposure.  I’d mentally go through the technical aspects in precise detail.  I imagined difficulties I might face or anatomic variations I might encounter.  Then I imagined how I would handle them.  Naturally, I imagined a very successful outcome.

Maybe it was only superstition, but I always thought the operations went better when I did that.

However, there’s a proven added bonus for spending your time imaging positive outcomes.  It makes you happy. (1)

Worry, on the other hand, accomplishes no good.

Now, I’m not talking about evaluating a grim situation to decide what action is most appropriate. That’s responsible and appropriate.

By worry, I mean repeatedly dwelling on grim outcomes when no action is possible.  Worry itself won’t resolve the situation.  It only makes you miserable.

For example, worrying about your teenager driver won’t get them home safely any sooner.

What worry does do is poison your present moment.   You imagine now, in the present.  If you think disturbing, negative thoughts, you’re making a choice that leads you to suffer in this moment.  You aren’t experiencing where you are and what’s actually happening now.  Instead, you’re experiencing what might (or might not) happen in the future.

Not only that, but worrisome thoughts and emotions drive your body to release hormones associated with stress.  Over time, this has a very detrimental effect on your wellbeing.

Some people become habitual worriers.  For them, it may be difficult to stop.  I’ll give some specific advice on how to deal with habitual worry in the future.  For now, know that it is possible to change.

A good start is to imagine positive outcomes for a change.  You can do it for task specific events, such as my examples before of athletes or my preparing for surgery.

But why not do it just for fun?

As children, we daydreamed naturally.  We easily imagined joyfully.  As we grew, most of us daydreamed less and worried more.

There’s no need to go into why we changed.  It’s enough to know that as mature people taking responsibility for our lives we are in control.  We may have unconsciously drifted into patterns of thought that didn’t serve us.  Now that we recognize what’s going on, we’re back in charge. We can choose how we use our mind and to what end we direct our mental energies.

1)  King;  Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 27: 798-807

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 A Modest Proposal That May Shock You

Here’s a two-week experiment to help you clear your mind of distorted perceptions.  As a bonus, you’ll find yourself happier.

We all like to think that we have an accurate worldview.  Most of the time, we’re wrong – we have a distorted view of the world around us.

A large part of this distortion occurs because we’re careless about what we let affect our internal filters. 

You notice what you’re interested in.  Your perceptions tend to support your pre-existing beliefs.  You can sift through the external world and find evidence to back up just about any belief you want.

For example, can you recall, from your own personal experience, events to support the belief that people are shallow, self-centered, and mean and will stab you in the back if you give them half a chance?  I imagine that you can.

However, I also imagine that you can recall, again from your own experience, events to support the belief that people are kind, generous, and supportive and often go out of their way to help others.

Evidence exists for either belief.  Which you notice and remember depends in part on what you are primed to notice.

A person with a pre-existing belief tends to notice events supporting that belief.  They’re blind to equally valid evidence of the opposite viewpoint.

In a way, it’s the same as noticing all the blue Ford cars on the road the day after you buy one yourself.

We have control over our beliefs and our filters, but only if we actively exert that control.  If we don’t take control, outside influences will do it for us.

The news media constitutes one such outside influence.  It consistently and persistently presents a very selective and distorted worldview.  If we follow the media regularly, we’re at great risk of assuming this distorted perspective as our own.

I remember teachers in high school declaring that good citizens should follow the news media to “stay abreast of the world around us”.  That was lousy advice.

The news media, God bless it, doesn’t exist as a public service.  Their primary mission is not to inform and educate.  It does not give us a balanced view of the good and the bad in the world.  If it did, good news would hugely dominate.

Zzzzip.

“What was that?”

“Oh, that was just the bad news for the year.”

The media doesn’t strive for balance.  The media’s overarching drive is to attract viewers or readers.

To that end, the media picks its stories based on their sensationalism, their likelihood of getting attention.  The saying in the newsroom is “If it bleeds, it leads”.

Most news stories convey little or no information you need to know or that you’ll be able to take action on.

For example, I used to have my clock radio set to go off with the radio rather than an alarm.  As often as not, I’d wake up to the top-of–the-hour news summaries.  Awful. 

One morning, in the horrifying few seconds it took me to rouse enough to push the off button, I heard about a serious school bus accident in Europe, a child in Texas that died because his mother left him in a car on a hot day and a soldier who was killed on his way back to base by someone throwing a cinder block off an overpass.

Consider those stories.  Yes, they’re true, they happened.  But what do they have to do with my life?  Is there some action I can take about any of them?  Is the information useful?  Of course not. 

The wire service this radio station subscribed to scoured the globe looking for the most sensational, headline-grabbing stories they could find.  They weren’t interested in accurately representing the overall state of the world. They just wanted to get people’s attention. These were the most sensational stories they could find and they foisted them onto me
As a result, I began my day with my mind filled with horrible images.  They were remarkably hard to shake.

How do you think hearing those stories might have affected my internal filters and my thoughts about the world we live in?  Rather badly, obviously.

Filters based on those stories would be extremely inaccurate.
 
Yes, there was a school bus accident.  It’s also true that every day, year in and year out, tens of thousands of school buses safely convey millions of students between their homes and school.  Also, maternal love, care and nurturing expressed all over the globe daily far outweighs the rare episodes of maternal neglect that make the headlines.

If you let the news media decide what stories enter your experience, you’ll be seeing the world through a very distorted set of filters.

So here’s my modest proposal.  Drop the media.  Fire them. 

You don’t have to do it forever.  Just as a trial, say for two weeks.

For two weeks, I’d like you to avoid any media news sources.  That means no radio, no CNN, no news blogs, no news magazines – none of it.

The point is to just notice what you notice.

You might experience a change in the way you feel.  Your outlook may shift.  You may find yourself more engaged in the world immediately around you.  If you’re not distracted by news about mud slides in California, you’re more likely to appreciate the beautiful weather that’s your experience.

Some people find this experiment difficult because they’ve established a habit of checking the news.  That means it’s even more important for them to try it.

Others worry that they’ll miss something important.  They don’t need to.  If something truly important happens, someone will tell them.  Here’s how that goes.

We all remember where we were when we heard of the attack on the World Trade Center. I was in middle of an operation on a man’s carotid artery. 

An OR nurse not involved with the case came to the operating room to tell us about the first plane going into the World Trade Center. 

Then she felt the need to come back with updates.

After about the third news flash, I rather sharply told her to stay the hell out of my operating room.  I had the major artery to one side of a man’s brain opened and I needed to have my attention and the attention of everyone in the room completely focused on the job at hand.

Even important stories can have low priority in your personal world.

This news fast is only an experiment. It’s just something to try.  I want you to experience the quality of your life with and without the news media in it.  If you think the media really helps you and you’re better off with it, great – go back to following it.  I think you won’t want to.

But you won’t know for sure unless you try the experiment.

One more story.  Most of the things we think are so important in the present moment turn out to be completely irrelevant in the very near future.  Watching a movie recently brought this point home to me.

“Dave” is a pleasant romantic comedy.  In it, Kevin Klein plays a man who looks amazingly like the president of the United States.  In a plot twist typical of romantic comedies, he winds up standing in for the president (hey – it might happen). 

If you enjoy light comedies, I recommend the movie. I gave it 4 out of 5 stars on Netflix.

I mention it here because it was filmed in 1993.  Because of its political theme, the movie had a cute little twist of major politicians and news reporters doing cameo appearances as themselves.  These folks were the movers and shakers of the time.

What struck me as I watched it was how forgotten most of them are now. 

You may remember “Tip” O’Neal, but even his performance on the national stage has become a footnote.  His contemporaries’ roles have faded even more.

This suggests to me that time spent following the soap opera that was politics of the early 90’s might not have been the best investment of one’s time and attention. 

I think we’ll feel the same someday soon about the big stories of today.

So try this little experiment.  I think you’ll find your world a better place and your view of it much clearer.

 I’d love to hear your results.  Email me at jsphfm-jfm@yahoo.com

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Here’s a concept for you to consider.

Our experience of the world isn’t what’s out there; it’s what we perceive to be out there.  That means our reality can be quite arbitrary because we sense the outside world through filters.  These filters exist beneath our conscious mind.  Most people aren’t even aware they’re there.  Yet they determine just what we perceive and therefore deterimine our reality.

We need these filters – we couldn’t possibly keep track of all the information coming in otherwise.

For example, if I asked you what your right foot feels like right now, you could tell me.  It feels warm or cool or you shoe’s too tight or it’s comfortable or whatever.  The point is you could immediately tell me.  Yet a moment before I asked, you weren’t aware of your foot.

How did that happen?  What changed?  Is there a little switch in your brain that turned on the nerves to your foot when I asked the question so you could answer it?

No, of course not.  The nerves in your foot, and everywhere else, send a constant stream of information to your brain.  That information gets filtered out at a pre-conscious level unless you need it – I ask a question or you step on a nail.

The same thing goes on with all your other senses and perceptions.  There’s  a flood of information coming in.  Only a small bit that the filters pass along reaches conscious awareness.

This works at a higher level of functioning as well.  This filtering is why, for example, you buy a certain make and model of a car and then start to notice all the other cars like it on the road. 

I used to drive a green 1994 Intrepid.  I still notice green Intrepids of that model when I see them. 

The cars like yours were always there – it just didn’t mean anything to you until you had one of them.  Before you bought the car, ones like it were filtered out.  When you bought your car, your filter changed and you began to see them.

As I began, this means your experience of life isn’t as much determined by what’s out there as by what you perceive to be out there.

Here’s something else: your perceptions may well be distorted by your filters. 

A real life example of this is a lunch my brother Chris had with a client in New York.  They had a lousy waiter.  The client was convinced they received such terrible service because he was Jewish.  He saw the waiter as anti-Semitic. 

Chris just thought the waiter was a frustrated aspiring actor not at all into his job as waiter.

Which perception was accurate?  Who knows?  We do know that two men sitting at the same table at the same time with the same external events had different experiences based on their filters.

Also, we can be pretty sure that that lunch wasn’t the first time Chris’s client saw life through the filter of anti-Semitism.  Anti-Semitism exists, but it probably doesn’t exist in as many places as he sees it.  He might be able to improve the quality of his life if he adjusted his filter somewhat.

There’s a very effective form of psychological therapy called cognitive restructuring that does just that.  It’s based on the premise that most emotional distress arises from distorted perceptions and that if you clear up the distortions, the distress goes away.

I’ll teach some cognitive restructuring techniques in future notes.  For now I just want you to realize that these filters exist, that there’s a possibility they might be distorted, and, most importantly, that you can change them.

Dr. Bruce Lipton has a fun exercise at his talks.  He has the audience select a pair of glasses with either green or red lenses.  Then he shows a slide.  Depending on which color glasses the audience member is wearing, they see either a friendly cottage and the word “love” or a scary haunted house and the word “fear”. 

What they see depends on which set of filters they use.  When they change filters, they change their experience.

Most of us develop our filters haphazardly as we go through life.  We pick them up from family, the media, early experiences and any number of other sources.  We never examine them for accuracy or usefulness. 

Now you’re different.  You know they exist.  That’s the first step to taking control of them and using them to give you the life you desire and deserve.

 

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A few days ago, I described the four stages of learning.  In that post, I used a child learning to tie their shoelaces as an example of the process.

Since I wrote that, it’s occurred to me that there’s another point to be made using that example. It’s at least as important as the knowledge of the four stages.  Realizing this will both speed your progress and increase your joy as you achieve unconscious competence.

Consider again the example of a child learning to tie their shoes.  The child is awkward and fumbling and slow and fails many times as they try. 

Now consider the adult sitting next to them, coaching them as they try to learn.

Most adults patiently go over the steps one by one.  They watch the child practice, pointing out where they can improve and heaping praise on them when they make progress.  The child focuses on the task and takes pride in their progress.

How would the child react to harsh criticism?  How would they feel if the adult expressed disgust at their clumsiness?  Do you think that helps the child progress faster?

That style of coaching doesn’t help.  In fact, it slows learning and robs it of joy.

Yet that critical style is exactly the inner talk many of us use on ourselves as we acquire a new skill.  We expect instant mastery.  When we don’t provide, it we criticize ourselves harshly.  That doesn’t help us any more than it helps the child.

Another point to consider:  When we teach a child to tie their shoes, do we ever doubt that they’ll learn how?  Of course not.  We know they’ll learn.  It may take one child a little longer and a little more practice than another, but we know all children will learn to tie their shoes. 

Think of all the other very complex skills we just assume children will learn, like walking and talking.  We know it may take one child longer than another. We expect there will be differences in learning style.  But we always assume the final result will be mastery.

Children learn at their own pace and in their own style.  My son took a while to start talking.  When he did it was in complete sentences. 

We support our children as they learn and never doubt their eventual success. 

How many hundreds of times does an infant fall as he learns to walk?  Do we give him a certain number of tries and if he doesn’t master it by then tell him to give up?

No we don’t – we assume his eventual success and encourage them to continue trying. We encourage him no matter how many times he “fails”.

And when do we offer the child praise?  Do we wait until they walk absolutely perfectly to tell them they’re doing well?  Or do we praise every small improvement?

The answer’s obvious.  Parents enthusiastically encourage their child to take their first tentative, wobbly step.  When they do, even if the child immediately falls, the parents go wild with praise and encouragement.

How differently we treat ourselves.

So as you learn any new skill, coach and evaluate yourself in a way that serves you.  Use the same degree of patience and appreciation and acceptance with yourself that you would if you were coaching a young person you very much cared for.

After all, praise and appreciation are really the only appropriate responses to someone continually working to learn and grow and acquire new skills.  Even if you aren’t perfect yet, appreciate your involvement in the process of learning.  Mastery will come all the sooner.

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We all need help sometimes to understand or communicate complex ideas.  There are lots of tools we can use to do that, and metaphors are among the most powerful.  A metaphor indirectly compares one thing to another, implying that they share similar characteristics.  To the extent the comparison is valid, it can help us understand the newly introduced concept.

Metaphors also affect our way of looking at a situation – once we define a comparison, we tend to think in those terms.  This can either serve us or hurt us.

For example, if we say “It’s a dog eat dog world”, how are we going to think about the people we interact with every day?  If “Business is a battle and there are winners and losers”, how will we approach negotiations with a client or a vendor?  It’s not too likely that a business person using a war metaphor to define their world view will think win-win.

The same fact applies to our life.  We often have metaphors we aren’t consciously aware of, and these metaphors affect the quality of our interactions.  Metaphors can serve us or they can sabotage us.

If, like the previously mentioned business man, we think that life’s a war, how do we react to others?  That metaphor doesn’t really serve us.  Sure, we can think of examples where life might seem like a battle, but we can with equal validity think of examples where life is joyous.   Our metaphors help determine which examples we notice.

We have a choice in this.  We can live with the metaphors we picked up unconsciously over our lifetime, or we can actively consider options and choose one that serves us. 

A metaphor I’ve chosen for life is to live it as “A work of art in progress”.  I like it, and for now it serves me well.  One of the things I like about it is that the “…in progress” part gives me permission to change if a better concept comes along.

Living life as a “work of art” automatically implies creativity and fresh thinking.  It allows for, and actually encourages, originality. 

Art can be collaborative and interactive – artists from various disciplines often inspire and help each other – so there’s room for social interaction and joint creation.

Perhaps what I like most is that being an artist is a process and the best artist is often more interested in the process of creating that necessarily the end result.  And the art is refined as judgment and technique and taste are developed.

A potter doesn’t throw a lump of clay on a wheel and walk away in disgust because a beautifully proportioned bowl wasn’t instantly created.  The artist works with the raw materials available.   They apply their skill and unique art, continually refining.  The end result is beauty made real and brought to the world – even though they started with something as unremarkable as a lump of mud.

I like that metaphor – feel free to use it yourself.  Until, of course, you find one that serves you even better.

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Our thoughts are extremely powerful.  Our experience of the moment is not determined by what is happening but rather by the thoughts we are thinking.
 
For example, the other day I was at an intersection and the driver of a car at the cross street thought I was going to pull out in front of him.  He blew his horn and scowled at me as he drove by.  It was a minor case of road rage.  He wasn’t having a very good experience at that moment, and it had nothing to do with me.

I wasn’t going to pull out in front of him and I wished him no ill.  His anger arose purely from his thoughts and perceptions.  At some other time, I might have responded in kind, letting my own thoughts ruin my experience, but on that day I was in a great mood and easily let it go.  If anything, I felt sorry for him that he let a trivial event add anger to a beautiful day.

It’s not the events that determine our experience but our thoughts about them.

Another point to keep in mind is that all of our experience occurs now.  If we remember a past event, we are doing it now, in our current present moment. If we imagine some future event, we are also doing that now, in our current present moment. 

Again, how we direct, control and focus our mind determines our experience.
 
Many people tend to remember negative things longer and in greater detail than the positive things that have happened in their lives. They remember the compliments they received for a few minutes and dwell on the insults they received for years!

By doing so, they become in effect garbage collectors holding onto trash they picked up long ago. As a result, they contine to suffer since they allow their mind to be occupied by thoughts of past bad experiences.

We are in control of our own mind and heart. We can choose to make happiness and joy the center of our world.  Or not. 

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Motivation is simply the reason behind a particular set of action. If you want to be accepted for a job, what steps do you take? Of course, the most obvious one is to see if you are qualified for the job, then apply if you are.

If you would like to be considered for a promotion for the job that you already have, what steps would you take? First, you need to make sure that all your hard work is noticed so that you can at least qualify for the position.

These two instances are examples of actions which clearly show the motivation behind it. Through motivation, you will be able to set a direction for your actions. Be it a personal or material reward, the proper motivation will inspire you to achieve whatever goals that you have set for yourself.

Goal setting plays an important role in motivation. Without a goal or a ‘target’, you will not be motivated to take actions that will lead you towards achieving your goal. Take a game of darts, for example. Your target is the literal one: to shoot the dart and point it towards the circular, black center so that you can hit the ‘bull’s eye’.

If you are not looking at the center of the dart board and you do not aim the dart towards that direction, do you think that your aim will be even close? The same principle applies to motivation. The center of the dart board is your goal, and the action of hitting that spot with the dart that you will throw is your motivation.

With goal setting, you will be able to figure out clearly the set of actions that you will take to achieve your goal. Again, this all boils down to motivation and the reasons behind your goal is what will inspire you to achieve them. Take a look at the following tips on how you can use goal setting towards proper motivation:

1. Create a clear picture in your mind of what you would like to be a few years from now.
This may be a cliché, but it is a fact that seeing yourself being the person that you would like to be several years from now is motivation enough to achieve your goals.

2. Be specific enough when setting your goals.
Dreams may be vague and have a broader concept, but goals have to be more specific. Be realistic when goal setting so that you can have a mindset that it is possible for you to achieve these goals.

Again, goal setting is the key towards proper motivation. By setting specific and realistic goals, you will be able to properly motivate yourself to achieve your goals, no matter how far or near they are in the future.

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Is there anything you desire that you feel you cannot have? Is what you want always far from your reach? Anything you want is yours for the taking if you can just tap into the power of your mind. With imagination and belief, you can turn your thoughts into reality. Below are some tips to help you turn your thoughts into reality.

Desire it. Passion is a strong bridge between you and what you want. Ask yourself – how much do you really want this thing you are thinking of? Is it something you can do without, or something you are really passionate about? Passion is power.

 

Be specific. Be very clear about what you want. What you get is only as clear as what you want. If you want a house, see it very clearly on your mind – the architectural design of the interior and exterior, the garden, and more. Set a deadline. When do you want to have that house?

Visualize. This is arguably the most powerful tool of the mind. Be the director and leading actor in your own movie. Walk through your dream house, see the sights, smell the scents, feel the feeling of being there. The subconscious brain does not differentiate between a real experience and an imagined experience. So, once you vividly imagine a scene, you are close to letting it manifest into reality. Visualize daily.

Believe. Fear and doubt stand in the way between you and your dream. Should you feel any doubts, believe that the universe will give it to you. The universe is overflowing in blessings and abundance if only you ask and believe! What you believe, the universe gives. If you believe that you will get it, the universe will give it to you. If you believe you won’t, then the universe won’t give it to you.

Take inspired action. From your daily visualizations, you may suddenly get a spark of an idea of how to get the house. Or you might meet a person who knows where you can buy your dream house. At these moments, don’t hesitate. Act!

Follow these steps and you will prove that you can indeed turn your thoughts into reality!
   

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