attitude:
Posted by Amy Hale on October 31, 2011 at 7:22 am
Remember going to the carnival as a child? You were in such awe as you watched and maybe even participated in the spectacular shows and rides that were offered. The clowns and actors made spectacles of themselves to entertain you and the rest of the audience. If you had a sore toe or were feeling a little blue, having fun helped you refocus on something that made you feel good.
Letting your imagination take you to new places within yourself can also alter your perception and state of being. Even though the world seems like it’s becoming less stable and other people are struggling to pay their bills, you can evolve to a higher state by using your wonderful imagination.
When you are feeling down or negative, do you scold or even belittle yourself for having an attitude that feels bad? Have you ever thought about letting yourself have the negative without attaching yourself to them? Rather, let the come up, however, let them float away just the same. Instead of scolding yourself or judging the emotion as bad, could you just let it be for a moment?
When going through the feelings of sadness, anxiety, or resentment, people tend to forget to allow themselves to be human. Humans are emotional beings. When people stuff their emotions down or tell themselves that they are bad, they learn to distrust themselves and he value of of all of their emotions.
If you beat yourself up for having a negative emotion, this often activates a justification of unworthiness of better things. Our self-worth lowers as a result and guilt sets in for not being in control. It’s a big cycle. However, when you allow yourself to feel and metabolize your feelings and all self-forgiveness to take place, we see things in a different light plus we move from that space instead of resentment.
This week’s experiment:
Recognize your feelings for what they really are. Thoughts about people, events and things generate feelings. Do you best to acknowledge all of your feelings, including the ones that feel bad – like fear or sadness. Allow these feelings to be. Don’t judge them. Imagine them moving through your body and out your feet.
Then work at noticing how that affects your life. You’ll find that you’re more at peace, centered in the present moment, and your get more done with less effort.
Let me know your thoughts and how you do.
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Posted by Amy Hale on January 25, 2011 at 10:45 pm
If your favorite team is playing this season, do you want a tense, stressed-out person shooting a free throw, or kicking a long field goal in the last moments of the game? Or would you rather see a confident, calm, rested player step up to the challenge?
Most people stress themselves out believing it’s as a form of caring. But it’s not caring, it’s just stressing out. Stressing out makes one do worse. True caring makes one do better. That’s why it’s vital to know the difference. The two couldn’t be more different.
Caring is relaxing, focusing and calling on all of my resources, all of that relaxed magic, that “lazy dynamite” that I bring to bear when I pay full attention with peace of mind. No one performs better than when they are relaxed and focused.
“Stress is basically a disconnection from the earth,” says the great creativity teacher Natalie Goldberg. “It’s a forgetting of the breath. Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency. Nothing is that important. Just lie down.”
A successful person knows when to lie down. And when to stand up.
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Posted by Amy Hale on April 30, 2010 at 5:47 am
There is a paradox in asking for help. It appears to be a sign of weakness and surrender, when, in truth, it is a sign of strength.
Not asking for help only means you have a bigger commitment to your story than you do to your success. Maybe your story says you don’t need help. Your story says you can do this on your own.
But what if you were committed instead to success? What if you had no interest in building a heroic story and your sole focus was on achieving great things? Then you’d get help. Because the commitment would be to the result instead of how you appear to others.
I like this quote:
“We work on ourselves in order to help others, but also we help others in order to work on ourselves.” – Pema Chodron
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Posted by Amy Hale on April 23, 2010 at 6:00 am
“Wishing is a way to remove oneself from what is going on now. Hope is how most of us avoid growing up.” – Dr. Brad Blanton
I love that quotation from Dr. Blanton. It really puts wishing and hoping in their proper infantile place.
I was having lunch with a friend who is writing a book and as we reviewed the remarkable successes in his life coming from nothing, no advantages, an underdog, how he succeeded academically and in business and in many other ways. I asked him his secret and he said, “Action. Nothing beats action.”
One of the reasons I believe the Owner versus Victim distinction connects with people so quickly and deeply is because ownership is all about action. Taking creative action in the face of challenges and opportunities. Instead of complaining.
Victims spend their days and nights complaining. About how they were not “GIVEN” what they thought they deserved. They are out of action. And I love it when the news delivers a story like the one about the college student who is SUING HER COLLEGE for a full refund of her four year tuition because she “can’t find a job.”
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Posted by Amy Hale on March 31, 2010 at 5:48 am
The brilliant psychiatrist David Viscott writes about the concept of taking risks to achieve success. When we step out of our comfort zone, we take a risk and extraordinary successful people do this every day. They risk loss of face, loss of ego, risk embarrassment in the name of creating and connecting and truly making a difference in someone else’s life.
Dr. Viscott says:
- If you cannot risk, you cannot grow.
- If you cannot grow, you cannot become your best.
- If you cannot become your best, you cannot be happy.
- And if you cannot be happy, what else matters?
He marries the link between RISKING and happiness itself. Our greatest growth happens when we are children risking and daring and falling down and embarrassing ourselves all day long. We then find ways of protecting ourselves: excuses, bad habits, negative attitudes often not even knowing we are doing it until we are on our death beds looking back. Kicking ourselves. I’m not willing to let that happen to me. What about you?
Please share your thoughts with me.
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Posted by Amy Hale on March 26, 2010 at 5:43 am
Success is simple. It’s our thinking that makes success over-challenging. Success can actually be achieved in two steps. The first step is to decide what you want. The second step is to act on that decision. The best description of the second step I’ve ever read was written by Og Mandino:
“I will act now. I will act now. I will act now. Henceforth, I will repeat these words each hour, each day, everyday, until the words become as much a habit as my breathing, and the action which follows becomes as instinctive as the blinking of my eyelids. With these words I can condition my mind to perform every action necessary for my success. I will act now. I will repeat these words again and again and again. I will walk where failures fear to walk. I will work when failures seek rest. I will act now for now is all I have. Tomorrow is the day reserved for the labor of the lazy. I am not lazy. Tomorrow is the day when the failure will succeed. I am not a failure. I will act now. Success will not wait. If I delay, success will become wed to another and lost to me forever. This is the time. This is the place. I am the person.”
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Posted by Amy Hale on February 11, 2010 at 5:48 pm
I talk out loud when I drive. I don’t worry about what I look like or who might notice. I don’t care if they think I’m on the phone or not. When I talk in the car, I talk to my inner team or to a customer who I want to make sure gets what I am wanting to convey. I might even sing a tune.
I learned to do this when I recognized how much I beat myself up while driving. Have you ever looked around and noticed that most people who are driving, if they’re not on their cell phones, their faces appear worried or angry. Or maybe their listening to all of the bad things in the new on the radio.
How do you want to feel when you’re driving to your destination? Do you want to bully yourself, hear more about a crummy economy or would you rather engage in a conversation with your team to make it the best day you’ve ever had?
Personally, I find that using my driving time to build myself up instead of using ways that break down my mindset is far more useful to me. When you hold worries and anger inside your head, it brings on headaches, ulcers and more worry and anger. Your whole nervous system goes wild.
Plus, if you’re not use to hearing your own voice or you want to practice moving toward fearless public speaking, the car is the perfect place to speak out.
Just think, your competitors don’t do this. They’re listening to their negative self-talk, terrible news or swearing at traffic. So speak to your inner team and step out from the crowd and make success happen – one drive at a time.
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Posted by Amy Hale on January 31, 2010 at 11:27 am
Adapted from Wayne Dyer
- Have a mind that is open to everything
- Practice non-attachment.
- You cannot give what you don’t have. (e.g. love) If you are in the habit of saying “gimme”, the universe will say the same thing. If you are in the habit of saying “what can I do for you”, the universe will say the same thing.
- There are no justifiable resentments.
- Don’t Die with your music still in you. All of you have a heroic mission. There is a purpose to everyone.
- Embrace silence. (Here you will connect with God.)
- Give up your personal history.
- You can’t solve a problem with the same mind that created it. (Literally rewrite your agreement with your reality. Admit you were wrong and you’re not going to make those choices anymore. It didn’t work. Now I realize that it didn’t work, I will change my mind.)
- Treat yourself as if you already were what you would like to become.
- Wisdom is avoiding all thoughts which weaken you.
9GCC5FKENWW2
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Posted by Amy Hale on January 4, 2010 at 10:36 am
Fear comes in many forms. It’s hypnotic and no one entirely escapes its grasp. People rationalize their fears which helps them excuse themselves from moving forward with their goals and visions for themselves.
Hate is a form of fear. Where there is one, there is often the other. “I hate meetings” could mean for some, “I’m afraid of speaking up in front of my boss because he is mean.” It turns into, “I’ll speak up next time,” but that next time doesn’t seem to ever come.
Some people tend to look at some of their fear on the bright side. “At least I won’t look foolish” or “if I say that, then I open myself up for being put down.”
But then a week goes by and everything is still the same. The person hasn’t spoken up in order to be noticed enough to be a credible part of the team. So s/he stays in the same old cubicle.
Are things better off than a year ago?
If not, things aren’t going to improve by themselves. It’s time to stop putting on the brake and really take some initiative to move ahead? Do you want to spend the next 40 years of your life feeling the same way? How many years are you going to let yourself just hang there in the same place in the hellish dungeon of rationalization?
If you want your life to move, you’re going to have to move it. No one is going to save you. If they were going to, they already would have. So, what are you waiting for?
Un-optimistic fear tends to get people moving forward. I can’t believe how many people come to see me when they find out they might be cut from their job or their doctor just diagnosed them with diabetes. They didn’t move until they were afraid.
So here’s an idea, define the worst thing that could happen if you didn’t accomplished what you want to accomplish? What are you putting off because of fear and what is it really costing you – financially, emotionally, and physically – by postponing taking action?
What are you waiting for? If you say you don’t have time or the time is not right, I can almost guarantee that fear is standing in your way and your rationalizing it so that you stay in the same place.
This post is intended to be a wake-up call for you and the wonderful life that awaits you. By thinking about the worst thing that could possible happen by not taking action – like being miserable or bored in the same job, not being able to make ends meet and feeling like a worthless pile or even living with someone you just don’t even like anymore – you can motivate yourself to take action.
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