A Powerful Question

We ARE what we think about all day long.

If you want to know what you think about, look at your life. Your life is simply the manifestation of all your thoughts over all the years of your life.

If you want your life to be different, you have to THINK differently. This can be a challenge because, as recent studies have shown, the brain is neurologically programmed to notice what isn’t working. In terms of our evolution, this has been a good thing. When you’re in a jungle, you have to look for what’s wrong in order to survive.

Now that we don’t have to keep an eye out for tigers and charging lions, we can step forward into a new way of thinking. This way involves scanning your environment not for what’s wrong, but for what’s right.

As psychologist Martin Seligman, the godfather of the positive psychology moment, has shown, we can learn to be optimists. Optimists consistently talk about what they are rather than what they are not, or what they have instead of what they don’t have. Pessimists talk about why things are not the way they should be and what they don’t have.

If you want to start “inclining the mind” as the Buddhists say, towards what is positive, here is a great tool. Ask yourself this questions throughout your day: “How might this be a good thing?”

This question will get you searching for the positive. It will start training your mind to work the world differently than how it’s been programmed to do. It’s a great start.  Let me know how it goes.