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| Insights on Life Articles |  Take the Struggle out of Life by Todd H. Corbin
Life offers so many opportunities for growth it can sometimes appear overwhelming.
Just take this possible Monday morning, for example.
As you back your car down the driveway, you crush the side-view mirror on the fence post.
As you enter the highway, there is an accident causing you to arrive an hour late for work.
Once you get to the office, you find out that your largest client is leaving your company for a competitor.
Later in the day, the school principal calls to inform you of some challenging issues with your child in the classroom.
You want to scream inside as you feel that your life is a huge struggle.
At this point it might help us to remember the words of author Stuart Wilde, "Life was never meant to be a struggle and doesn't have to be."
| |  | So how can you take the struggle of those apparently terrible situations and turn them into terrific ones? It is all a matter of perspective and focus that dictates how we view each life experience. Interestingly enough, if you look at the words terrible and terrific, they both start with the same first five letters:terri. These two words have opposite meanings, but most of us are not aware of how to shift our minds from one to the other.
Leonardo Da Vinci once said, "Great minds ask great questions." |
| The next time one of those apparently terrible situations happens in your life, try asking yourself this question. WHAT'S GREAT ABOUT THIS? It is a powerful question that can transform your perception. Once you change your perspective about the situation, you will be able to see the good in any situation. Once you start to focus on the positives, you then begin to experience empowering emotions like joy and love, instead of anger or fear. | All of our life experiences start the same way. A situation happens and then may cause us to feel a certain way. The life occurrence is neither good nor bad until we decide what it means. Victor Frankl made this abundantly clear in his powerful book, Man's Search for Meaning. It is only when we attach a meaning to the event, that is has any meaning at all.
The highway accident causing you to be late for work is neither good nor bad. It just is.
When you make a decision that this is awful and that being late for work is a terrible thing, you may then start to feel this as a negative experience. This can obviously be detrimental to your emotional state of mind.
Dale Carnegie, author of How to Win Friends and Influence People, suggested that when any apparently terrible situation occurs, immediately come up with three positives.
So how can you come up with positive things? Ask, What's Great About This?
If you are in that traffic jam on the highway, you might think:
- At least I have a cell phone to conduct some business until I get in the office
- It is a good thing I wasn't involved in the accident.
- I now have some extra time to listen to my favorite book on tape. You still might not be happy in a traffic backup, but the negative impact of this situation will be lessened.
So the next time a frustrating or apparently terrible situation appears in your life, make it a terrific one by remembering to ask WHAT'S GREAT ABOUT THIS? | Previous Newsletter List
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