Daily Gratitude: Huh? What does this mean? It has to do with the thing I hammer home all the time. Your thoughts create your life. What you put your attention on and think about will come about. This doesn’t mean that if you think about something for the first time today that it will happen tomorrow. It’s a pattern of your thoughts. I know you’ve heard of self-fulfilling prophecies and this is the same thing. Once you develop a list of good things, any time you start thinking negatively, you can move to that list, pick something to concentrate on – switching gears. Get your mind focusing on good things. That’s why I recommend having a success list or even just a “happiness” list. This makes it easy to find something without much effort. Then you can more easily switch your focus. Try this for a day or two and see how it works.

Daily Gratitude: Not only do our fears point us in the direction of the right thing to do but also in the direction of what we need. What lesson are we to learn from this fear? Have you ever asked yourself that question? I haven’t until recently but it’s definitely a valid question. Take for example my “dislike” (an ‘it sounds bette than’ word for fear) of talking on the telephone. What lesson am I supposed to learn from that? Bottom line (after much introspection) is that I have to learn to listen to people’s words without having to have all the other visual clues I’ve always used to “really know” what they were saying. That reflects a measure of distrust (stemming totally from my childhood) and if I remind myself that I’m no longer a child and don’t need all the protective mechanisms I had back then, then it becomes easier to enter into a conversation with someone without having to “examine” all the evidence. If I can reassure those immature parts that are still petty active in me, then I have a chance to show them (and subsequently get them to back off and relinquish their role) that I can handle life without their help. Removing that barrier should enable me to be able to no longer fear the telephone. It sounds simple but it requires delving into the real reason behind some of our thoughts or behaviors. Just ask yourself-“what is the lesson I’m supposed to learn from this fear?”

Daily Gratitude: It’s important to know why 10 people can see the same thing and yet react in 10 different ways. The key point here is that once we see or experience something, it goes through our massive data bank and is “processed”. That means it’s analyzed and compared to anything the brain can find that’s related to it (based on our prior experience- that’s why the first time a child sees the hot burner he or she puts their hand down on it without pause. This creates a memory which is stored under the “danger” category. It may be reinforced by “no” shouted from mom’s mouth but the pain is probably enough. The next time the child sees an object that looks like that (he or she doesn’t have the cognitive awareness yet to say ‘oh, that’s a burner even though it doesn’t look like the last one’), the brain jumps in and says “nope not going to do that again”). In this case there’s a conclusion and a judgment but no attribution since it’s an object. As the child becomes exposed to other humans and equates actions with outcomes, it creates the attribution, which is particular to him and his circumstances. This all falls under the concept of predictive coding. If you watch yourself, you’ll see how you take first impressions and then make judgments and also determine the other’s motives. But I might interpret everything totally differently based on what’s in my database. I hope this makes some sense because it’s a big key to understanding WHY others do the things they do; the things that make us scratch our heads. Read “Crucial Conversations”. It’s a phenomenal book and it will help you navigate almost any discussion.