Looking at the Inner You!

What can you tell yourself that you don’t already know?  Well, there is quite a lot.

In the privacy of your mind you constantly talk to yourself.  Your inner monologue might seem pointless at times, but the truth is the act of talking to yourself can help you learn and maintain a positive lifelong trajectory.  Therefore, collected below are six effective topics for self-talk, so the next time you talk to yourself you will know exactly what to say.

1.  What you love.

When it comes to lifelong labors and dreams, lukewarm is no good.  Hot is no good either.  White hot and passionate is the only way to work and live.

Invest your thoughts and time in the things you love.  Don’t wait around for too long to get involved in something that moves you.  Realize how important it is to be an enthusiast in life.  If you are interested in something, no matter what it is, explore it.  Get up and go after it.  Embrace it, hug it, love it, and above all, let your passion flow freely.

The most important decision you will ever make is what you do with the limited time that has been given to you.  Before you know it you’ll be asking, “How did it get so late so soon?”  So put your thoughts and time to good use, and let yourself be drawn to the strange pull of what you love – doing so will not lead you astray.  Live your life so that when you’re old, you never have to let the person you became fantasize about the person you were capable of being.

2.  Your own inner truth.

Why worry about what others think of you?  Should you have more confidence in their opinions than you do your own?

Truth be told, how others see you is not nearly as important as how you see yourself.  To be happy means to live confidently in your own skin – to be faithful to that which exists within you.  What you’re doing by being yourself is keeping it real, and you are being really brave.

When you choose to stay true to YOU, some people might refuse to accept you for who you are.  Forget them.  Rather than being false and incurring the pain and confusion of trying to be someone you’re not, choose to stand strong, even at the risk of incurring ridicule, when you are comfortable in your skin, not everyone in this world will like you, and that is perfectly OK.  You could be the ripest, juiciest apple in the world, and there’s going to be at least a few people out there who hate apples. 

3.  What you are willing to sacrifice for your goals?

When it comes to goal setting, you must be specific.  If you find yourself talking to yourself about wanting everything, it means you are treacherously close to achieving nothing.  It means you are avoiding the effort required to get anywhere at all.

Usually, it’s not too difficult to decide what you want your life to look like in a year from now.  What is difficult is figuring out what you’re willing to give up in order to do the things that must be done to get to where you want to go.

This takes serious commitment, and it requires momentary discomfort.  When you decide to aim for something higher, you must be willing to suffer a bit of unsteadiness – the fear of falling.  And you must be willing to fight against that voice of emptiness below you which tempts and lures you to believe that you don’t have enough strength to ascend any higher.

4.  The little victories of each day.

Sometimes the human mind operates in mysterious ways when it comes to achievements and happiness.  We dream of something and we wait and wait and feel like it’s taking forever to arrive.  Then it does and it’s over, and all we really want is to curl back up in that moment before things change again.

Although there’s nothing wrong with enjoying a fulfilled dream, you must realize that it is just one small moment of your life.  Like every other moment, this one instance of victory is fleeting.  Lifelong happiness is not found in any one particular moment, it is found in all the moments and memories leading up to our inevitable sunset – all the small victories of each day that fall between the big events.

Ultimately you will realize that your highest aspirations should just be a target – a point on the horizon to step towards.  You may not ever reach it, but you can always look up after every small step and see beauty of where that step has taken you.

5.  How to help others.

Talk yourself into helping someone today.

No exercise is better for your heart and mind than reaching down and helping others up.  Happiness and success in life doesn’t come through selfishness, but through selflessness.  Everything you do comes back around to you.

The best way to feel alive is to get up and do something positive for someone else.  Don’t wait around for good things to happen in this world.  If you go out and make good things happen, you will fill the world with happiness and you will make yourself smile in the process.

Greet people with positivity.  Encourage them.  Compliment them.  Lend them a helping hand.  Notice their progress, cheer them on and make them smile, or even make them laugh.  Love and kindness is contagious.  The more happiness and success you help others find, the more happiness and success you will find every single day of your life. 

6.  The immediate reality of your own happiness.

Right now, you have more than enough to be happy.

Right now, you have the full capacity to find something small to celebrate.

Right now, you have a choice to make.

Don’t make the mistake of waiting on someone or something to come along and make you happy.   True happiness comes from within. When you choose not to allow another person or event to control your emotions, and when you choose to focus on what you have, not what you have not.

One of the great secrets to happiness is to pay more attention to the beginnings than the endings.  So many people say they want a new life, but then they take the new one they get every morning for granted.  Don’t do this.  Don’t wait until your life is almost over to realize how great it has been.  A great life begins right now, when you stop wanting a better one.

My mother-in-law passed away last week.  As we gathered as a family, we remembered all the great joy she brought to us.  She sacrificed for all of us with a pleasant smile and filled with joy upon any of our achievements.  Our memories of her brought joy to our hearts and comfort to our souls. “Life is good!”

The floor is yours…

What have you been talking to yourself about lately?  Is it positive or negative self-talk?  What kind of positive self-talk do you use to motivate yourself?  What kind of negative self-talk do you need to stop?

Honing In On Your Listening Skills

Many people in the business world take classes in the art of verbal communication: how to give a speech, make a presentation, chair a meeting, but the other half of the equation -- listening -- gets scant attention, at least until now.

1. Focus closely on the person speaking. Don't half-listen while you check your messages and schedule conferences. At any meeting -- a conference or a departmental review -- be there in full. Otherwise, you are likely to miss something.

2. Listen carefully for things you don't know. Our brains home in on what's familiar because it's easy and comfortable, and it reassures us of our intelligence. But that's no way to learn anything. Listen for new information, discontinuities, things you didn't know but could learn from. If there's nothing to be gained from this strategy, you may be in the wrong meeting.

3. Challenge yourself and what you hear. Don't just nod and accept it as a given. Ask yourself: What do I know that confirms this? What do I know that contradicts it? Let your head play an active role.

4. Be prepared to change your mind. I used to think everything about computers was wonderful; now I am not so sure. If we listen hard and ask ourselves good questions, we may take our thoughts to places we didn't expect.

5. If you find sitting still difficult, then either take notes or doodle or both. My wife is a fantastic artist and has painted some amazing works.  In particular painting the canvas of the great artist Edward Hopper. She has volumes of works done for family and friends. Some of us aren't so gifted -- but we can doodle. All the evidence shows that both help you focus. And if you aren't focused -- why are you there?

The skills of listening are really life skills: treasuring the precious and always limited time that you have. Why waste it?

The Optimistic Point of View

When looking at the half glass of water, the optimist would say it is half filled.  The pessimist says that it is half empty.  The idealist would say that the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

People who carry an optimistic outlook are typically healthier and more productive than their pessimistic peers.  They catch fewer colds, cope better with life’s daily struggles, and may even live longer due to reduced levels of stress.

So what about you?  Can you become an optimist?

The answer is: YES!  Optimism is not an inborn trait bestowed on a lucky few.  It’s a skill that can be learned.  Here are six things optimists do and some ideas on how to follow in their footsteps:

1.  They make optimal use of all available options.

The reality is those who seem “too optimistic irritate most people” but this is usually an unfortunate misinterpretation of the difference between and optimist and an idealist.

An optimist is neither naive, nor in denial, nor blind to the realities of life.  An optimist believes in the optimal usage of all the available options, no matter how narrow the supply.  As a result, optimistic people are able to better see the “big picture”. They can more accurately visualize and mange the present possibilities.  In other words, an optimist is simply a positive realist.

For comparison’s sake:  An idealist focuses only on the absolute best aspects of situations and ignores the negatives in total detriment to reality, a pessimist sees no possibilities at all, and an optimist strives to see all the possibilities so they can find the best possible option among them.

So, when picking lemons off a lemon tree, an idealist endlessly reaches for the ripest looking lemon, a pessimist settles for whichever one is closest, while an optimist picks all the lemons in sight and makes lemonade.

2.  They respect themselves for who they are.

As a child, you impressed and inspired yourself on a daily basis.  You ran, jumped, swung, sang and danced openly without a care in the world, and without worrying about what everyone else thought of you.  You didn’t need anyone else’s constant approval, because deep down you knew you were amazing.

As you grew into adulthood, the pressure from peers, popular media and society as a whole began to wear on you.  You started comparing yourself to everyone around you.  You judged and measured your body, your lifestyle, your career, and your relationships against other people’s lives.  And when you realized that many of these people have things that you do not, bitterness set in and you gradually stopped appreciating all the great things you do have in your life.

Optimists defend themselves against this self-dislike in two primary ways.  First, they get back to trusting their own intuition when it comes to their daily activities.  They stop asking for everyone else’s approval and simply do what they know in their heart feels right.  Second, optimists don’t judge themselves against a set of unrealistic, third party ideals.  They let go of the ideals and instead hold on to the belief that they are always good enough just the way they are, even as they grow into a stronger, wiser version of themselves.

3.  They disconnect happiness from achievement.

In order to be optimistic, you have to be generally content with your life.  In order to find this contentment, you have to look within yourself.  Happiness, after all, is an inside job.

If you look for happiness outside yourself, by tying it to a specific achievement you much reach, you have two big problems:

You may never succeed. – If you feel like something is wrong with you and needs to be fixed, but you continuously fall short of fixing it, you will start yourself on a downward spiral where every time you fail to fix it you feel even worse.  Eventually you will be unable to succeed simply because you no longer believe in your ability to do so.

You may succeed and decide you want even more. – If you feel like something is wrong with you and needs to be fixed, and you succeed at fixing it, you will likely find something new about yourself that needs fixing too.  Maybe you’ve lost 20 pounds, but now you want tighter abs.  Maybe you’ve paid down your debt, but now you want a bank account with a million dollars in it.  You get the idea.  It’s a never-ending cycle for your entire life.  You never reach it, because you’re always looking for happiness from external achievements.  You don’t find the happiness from within so you look to other sources.

Optimists disconnect achievement from happiness and give themselves permission to be happy in each moment, without the need for anything more.  This isn’t to say that they are complacent.  They still set goals, work hard, help others, and grow, but they learn to indulge joyously in the journey, not the destination. 

4.  They avoid negative people and create positivity.

You are only as good as the company you keep, and misery loves company.  If you spend too much time around negative people, there’s a strong chance you won’t find much to be happy about.  Do yourself a favor and dodge other people’s negativity.  Surround yourself with positive, emotionally supportive friends and spend time together doing things that make you smile.

Optimism is a learned habit, and it is positively contagious.  So surround yourself with people who could infect you with positivity, and then pass your new good mood on to a friend or stranger via kind words and deeds – tell a friend how good they look today, let somebody have that parking space, let that person with only a few items cut in front of you at the market.  The simple act of doing something nice for those around you will help create more positive people to interact with.

The bottom line is that life is way too amazing and short to waste time with people who don’t treat you right.  Surround yourself with people who lift you up when you’re down, and then return the favor when you’re able.

5.  They expect life to be a series of ups and downs.

Just because you’re an optimist doesn’t mean you’re not going to have bad days.  You will – that’s reality.  Life isn’t always rainbows and butterflies.  A foundation of realism keeps things in perspective and helps prevent things from being blown out of proportion.

Expecting life to be wonderful all the time is wanting to swim in an ocean in which waves only rise up and never come crashing down.  However, when you recognize that the rising and crashing waves are part of the exact same ocean, you are able to let go and be at peace with reality of these ups and downs.  It becomes clear that life’s ups require life’s downs.

Bottom line:  Prepare for the downs but capitalize on the ups – the former makes you sensible and the latter makes you an optimist. 

6.  They use positive language and gestures.

It’s not always what happens that determines your mood, but how you verbalize and express what happens that counts.

For instance, when an optimist experiences a bout of success she might say, “That’s just as I had anticipated; I studied hard and my diligence paid off,” while a pessimist might say, “Goodness, was I lucky to get a good grade on that test,” not giving herself any credit and literally snatching her own defeat from the hands of victory.

If an optimist encounters a do-it-yourself project she can’t figure out, she’s likely to say something like, “Either the instructions I’m following are unclear, or this project is going to require a bit more effort than I thought, or maybe I’m just having a rough day.”  In other words, an optimist uses positive self-talk to keep the struggle outside herself (”the instructions”), specific (”more effort”), and temporary (”a rough day”), while the pessimist would likely get down on herself and interpret the same struggle as internal, widespread, and everlasting.

Go ahead and follow in the optimist’s footsteps by speaking to yourself in a more positive way regardless of whether you succeed or fail, and you’ll gradually become more optimistic.

Physical body language is also important.  Your smile actually influences your mood in a positive way.  When you feel down, your brain tells your face that you’re sad, and your facial muscles respond by putting on a frown, which in turn conveys a message back to your brain that says, “Yep, we’re feeling unhappy.”  You can flip the switch on this internal reaction by adjusting your facial muscles into a smile so they don’t correspond to what you’re feeling.  This is a clever way of sending a different message back to your brain: “Hey, life is still pretty good and I’m doing OK.”  Your brain will respond by gradually changing your mood accordingly.

“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; 


An optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty
”.

―Winston Churchill―