Day 8

Welcome to Day 8! 

Congratulations!  You’ve now spent a week looking for things that make you happy, starting the day off with a positive statement, noticing the negative thoughts you think.  You’ve learned how important it is to be positive from several perspectives – the effect that thoughts have on the cells in your body, the idea that everything is energy and that like attracts like. 

 

Let’s continue with the idea of redirecting your thoughts.  In my live seminars I do an activity called the Interruption Game to make the point that when our thinking is going off track, we get the chance to interrupt ourselves in the process.  In the game participants have fun trying to interrupt each other but there’s much more to the concept of derailing ourselves – and others – who are going down the negative path.  I gave you an example of how I interrupted myself the other day.
 

I also use this interruption concept to help someone who is caught up in telling their negative story if I think the telling is harmful to them in the long run.  We all know people who tell the same negative story over and over again.  If Dr. Lipton is right about those cells being affected by negativity, if doctors Chopra and Tanzi are right that the brain doesn’t know the difference between what’s actually happening and the story we're talking about, then the story teller is not benefiting from telling the story except perhaps if they’re getting attention for the telling.

 

You might be thinking that it's not my job to control any conversation. I agree. I also know people need to vent. But there's a big difference between venting and obsessing. If they're obsessing and I can help, I will try to redirect them.  I hope someone does the same for me.  In fact if someone does that for me I'm truly grateful.

 

Unfortunately our culture seems to thrive on outdoing each other with negative stories.  How often have you heard, “You think that’s bad!  What til you hear what happened to me!” or some variation of that.  Bad enough the news channels are full of negative stories, most of which we have no need to hear.  Let’s cut back on our own.  We all have a story of why something didn’t work, why we don’t have something we want.  But the continual telling of that lack doesn’t help on any level. 

 

Let me share an example without getting into too much detail because then I’d be telling a negative story.  I’ve spent years trying to get my Strategies program into schools around the country.  I won’t tell you that whole journey because it would not be the same positive story that happened when I created the program.  As I learned more about Law of Attraction, I began to wonder if all the times I talked about how it didn’t work, all the negativity I felt in not being able to reach the teens I wanted to actually prevented it from being found.  Negative attracts negative, right? 

 

I stopped the story about 2 months ago.  I tell a new story now, one where I believe that schools are ready and willing to add this for their students.  Soon after I changed my story, interrupted the sad tale I was telling, I found a fax from a Montana high school. They wanted the program.  I also have two big possibilities coming up that might get it out there in a big way.  One is connected with Newtown, CT who I truly wanted to help with my program or with strategies after their horrific loss in 2012.  I’ve met two people this week who loved the idea of my program.  Where were they both from?  Newtown.  Different story, different results.

 

Tony Robbins says, “The only thing keeping you from what you want is the story you keep telling yourself about why you can’t have it.”  Spot on!

 

So what stories do you repeatedly tell?  Do they make you feel better or worse?  There’s power in words; there are feelings generated by words.  We’ll talk more about that on a later day but it’s good to start thinking about the stories we’re telling the world…and ourselves. 

 

If you catch yourself telling a story about something you can’t have or something that never works, ask yourself why you’re telling it.  If it’s just to share information about your life, fine...up to a point.  But just realize that the more detail you give it, the more momentum it gains, the bigger the story gets, the more you tell it, the worse you will probably feel.  Maybe it’s better to catch it before it gets too far.  Interrupt yourself, drop a penny in the jar and go find something that makes you feel better.  Works for me…and I know it will work for you too!

 

Have a great day!  Make it a day full of stories worth telling!

 

P.S.  Now you can choose to continue to the next day or wait until tomorrow.  Either way, here's a link to the next chapter.