Controlling Your Destiny
When you think about influence, what comes to mind?
Many of you think of influential people as those who are in high-level positions—at work, in politics, at church, and in your community. Sometimes it seems you need lots of money to wield influence. (It certainly doesn’t hurt.)
Or do you think of influence as the ability to control circumstances? If you are influential, you wield greater control. BINGO! Influence does give you more control over circumstances.
Why am I so passionate about finding the most effective ways to impact circumstances? Primarily because there was a long period of my life during which I felt out of control; I felt like a victim. It felt awful. When you are a victim, you lack the ability to do something about what’s happening to you.
When did you have a similar time in your life?
At the heart of what we all want is control over our own destinies. If you ever wonder why some homeless people are adamant about staying on the streets versus accepting shelter when it’s offered, it is often because they are determined to control their own destinies.
Controlling one’s own destiny is why I am so crazy about the power of questions. Without a doubt, the easiest and most impactful way to increase your influence has to do with asking the right questions—of others and of yourself.
When I was feeling victimized, I often wondered, “Why me?” or “What did I do to deserve this?” Here’s the problem with questions like that. When you ask your mind a question, it will answer you! So you can imagine the kinds of negative answers I was given in response to those questions.
I wish I had known some alternative questions:
- What can you do today to make things just a little better?
- What are three things about your life that you like?
- Where in the world did that missing sock go?
I have a similar wish about my work as a manager and as a parent. Instead of giving others instructions and suggestions, I wish I had asked questions that empowered them. I see now that my team and my children wanted control over their destinies and that too often I robbed them of that. Maybe they couldn’t control the things required of them (we all have rules and laws we have to follow) but certainly they deserved to have some influence over how they performed their assignments.
You needn’t be in charge of others to influence them. You have daily opportunities to influence. In fact, you already do—the question is are you influencing in a positive direction or a negative one?
As you go about your work and your life, start noticing situations where a good question could influence your or someone else’s day toward the positive.
Here’s an example: instead of asking, “How was your day?” ask, “What was the best part of your day?” This is a particularly good question to pose at the dinner table with your family but it can be used in other situations as well. However you utilize it, the conversation will turn in a wonderful direction. I’d love to hear from you after you do this. What were the results?
Passionate Self Care XI – Take Inspired Action
Action taken in any negative state—resentment, anger or a feeling of victimization—is uninspired and will never produce the results you want Why? Because the Law of Attraction says, “You can only attract to you what you ‘are’ in that moment.” If you are resentful, you can only attract circumstances that match and fuel the resentment.
This is why I am encouraging you to only take action when you are inspired to do so. Not only is this an extraordinary way to make the Law of Attraction work in your favor, it will also ensure that you produce the results you want with very little effort.
Think about past vacations. (If you can’t remember one, you really DO need Passionate Self Care!) When you scheduled a special event and it was necessary to get up early to go on your adventure, did you rise from your bed moaning and complaining? Of course not! You bounded out of bed, often before the alarm rang, excited to “get at it.”
This is one reason vacations produce such great fun. The action you take is inspired. You don’t need to be brought to it kicking and screaming. And, because the Law of Attraction is always at work, when you feel good on vacation, you naturally attract additional circumstances that make you feel even better. It can be no other way.
You may very well say to me, “But Silver, if I wait until I’m inspired to take action, nothing will ever get done!” I didn’t suggest you wait until you get “struck” with inspiration. You can create it yourself. How? By asking yourself one simple question that is designed to inspire you:
Why do I want to do this?
I cannot emphasize enough how incredibly powerful this question is. Answering it causes you to envision the positive result you are trying to produce by taking the action.
Visualizing something is the fastest way to bring it into being. The more clear the picture, the quicker it will happen. Answering the question, “Why do I want to do this?” causes the picture to come into focus easily.
Of course, the possible answers to, “Why do I want to do this?” are as varied as the people who ask it.
Maybe you want to do it because it will please your boss and you like to please your boss. The vision you would hold in your mind is the look on your boss’ face or the note of praise you receive.
You may want to do it because someone suggested you are incapable of doing it and you want to prove you can. The picture that comes into focus could be the look of surprise on the naysayer’s face.
Perhaps you get a real kick out of crossing things off your “to do” list. Then by all means, envision yourself doing so with a great big grin on your face.
Another very good reason for doing something, especially something unpleasant, is because you know it will feel SO good when it’s over. See yourself leaving work with a dance in your step because you’ve completed this important but tedious task.
Look at the question carefully. It doesn’t ask, “Do you want to do this?” It doesn’t query, “Why would you want to do this?” It assumes you want to do it, you just don’t realize why. Once you can answer the question, “Why do I want to do this?” you will be able to consciously take inspired action. And inspired action always produces good results.
How will you know if your action is inspired? It will feel good to do it! It’s as simple as that!
When you use this powerful question, you will have learned how to clearly visualize what you want to achieve and you will be naturally inspired to take the next step. If something is “the next natural step,” you will never have to force yourself to do it; it will be a pleasure.
By the way, the more inspired the action, the better the results. Actions inspired in joy produce joyful results.
Key #11 to Passionate Self Care: Take Inspired Action
This is the eleventh installment in my series on Passionate Self Care. Go to http://silverspeaks.com/blogs/ for related articles.
Passionate Self Care VI – Be Careful What You Feed Your Mind
I’ve made no secret of the fact that I am in recovery from 30 years of clinical depression. Much of what I learned about keeping depression at bay is what I bring to my teaching whether the topic is Passionate Self-Care or Dancing With Change.
A few years back I learned something new that has helped me immeasurably in my quest to stay balanced. It happened one day when I was in a foul mood. If you’ve ever been in this type of mood, you know it’s very different from a regular old bad mood—it’s like a bad mood on steroids—angry and ugly. I couldn’t figure out what was causing it. Nothing was going particularly wrong in my life. In fact, things were quite good. And then it dawned on me. For entertainment I had been listening to the latest James Patterson book on tape.
James Patterson is an incredible writer. He’s so good, in fact that all of the violent ugliness that took place in this book was all too real. It felt as if I were a part of it and my brain reacted by releasing all the appropriate stress hormones that hit your system when you’re involved in or witness to violence. I was in fight or flight mode and it was awful.
This was the day I realized that a good deal of my depression was self-inflicted. The Law of Attraction says that you get more of what you focus on. Choosing where to place your focus in essential to Passionate Self-Care. We all know that, don’t we? And yet most of us don’t practice it. Take the news, for example. We think that following it keeps us well informed when in fact the news is simply someone else’s opinion about what happened. It’s not “the truth” and it’s designed to whip us into an emotional frenzy. In fact, most of the news is none of our business.
We think violent movies, TV shows or games don’t hurt us but they do. If they’re any good, they make you feel as if you are right there. That’s great if you’re part of the dance sequence in Footloose but if you’re watching a movie where someone is being subjected to a horrific act it affects you mentally, emotionally, spiritually and physically. And once you get those images into your brain, they are there forever. Ask anyone who suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as I have and we will tell you—forever as in those images never go away. If that’s true, why not implant images that make you smile instead of grimace?
If you are truly serious about taking better care of yourself then being careful about what you feed your mind is a key component. Watch movies and read books with happy endings or ones that are at least neutral. Look for the good in others instead of the bad (including yourself). Listen to happy music. If the paper’s lying around, read the comics or the Opinion Page but throw the front page into the garbage where it belongs.
When we do this are we denying the reality of how the world really is? I say no. What we are rejecting is the idea that life is mostly awful. We are saying to those who present it as such, “I’m no longer willing to listen to you.” When I was in the midst of my worst depression my world was awful and most of it was self-created. I watched maudlin movies, I read horrific books, I engaged in constant complaints disguised as intellectual discussions. My focus was on the travails of life and that’s precisely what I attracted.
Life is no different today but I am. Do I still have challenges? You bet I do. My life partner Bill has pancreatic cancer and it is terrifying. What’s different is that I’m not making it worse by feeding my mind a load of self-pity or engaging in conversations about how unfair life is. Do I talk about my fears to Bill and to dear friends? Yes, I do. But mostly I choose to focus on the incredible love we share and the fact that he’s here with me now.
The only real control any of us have has to do with what we feed our minds. Use this gift wisely and watch how wonderful life can be.
Dancing with Passionate Self Care – II
Because the Law of Attraction says, “You get more of what you focus on,” a critically important component of Passionate Self Care is focus. If you want to train yourself to recognize where your focus is, start by listening to conversations around you. What is the focus of each? Now look at the people holding those conversations. Are they a match to what they’re focused on?
Never is this so clear as when you listen to the elderly. Those who are having lengthy conversations about their aches and pains and pills and surgeries are the ones who are in the worst shape.
The ones who are talking about their gardens, pets, hobbies or grandchildren are vibrant and healthy. They may have aches and pains but they don’t dwell on them. Because of that, their aches and pains are manageable.
Sullen teens are obsessed with how unfair life is and how ridiculous adults and their rules are. Well-adjusted teens are focused on sports, music, school, or sharing cool new trends with each other.
What are you and your friends focused on? Start listening to your words – those that come out of your mouth or those you type into email messages and texts. Will the recipient of your words be happy to hear from you or inwardly groan?
We all agree that we don’t like to be around negative people but many of us who express that sentiment ARE the negative ones people don’t like to be around. And we don’t even know it. How can that be? How is it that we can be primarily focused on the negative and unaware of it? It’s because it’s become a socially accepted habit.
The news media consistently focuses on the worst events. When we broadcast our own personal news, we seem somehow embarrassed to share what’s going well in our lives. Doctors are trained to look for what’s wrong versus ways for us to stay healthy. Managers, until recently, have been trained to focus on employees’ weaknesses instead of their strengths.
There’s a new trend in management I would like you to steal for your Passionate Self Care. It’s called Appreciative Inquiry. An example of how it’s being applied will help clarify what it is:
The traditional style of conducting an employee’s performance review consists of 10-15 minutes focus on what an employee does well (employees refer to this as “buttering us up for the kill”), with the balance of the meeting focused on everything the employee needs to improve. In other words, the manager mainly focuses on what’s NOT working versus what IS.
A manager who practices Appreciative Inquiry would flip the time. She would spend 10-15 minutes focused on what an employee needs to improve and the rest of the meeting on everything the employee does well and how to leverage those skills. This manager focuses on what IS working instead of what’s NOT.
When I talk about this in my workshops, people get very excited, “Yes, that’s what my supervisor needs to do.” They stop in their tracks when I tell them it works both ways. “What do you mean?” they ask.
If you want your supervisor to focus on what you’re doing well, you must also focus on what you are doing well. You can’t expect to attract a supervisor (or a mate, friend, or child for that matter) who focuses on your good qualities if you are continually focused on your failings. Remember, you get what you focus on. That includes getting people in your life who agree with your self-assessment.
Appreciative Inquiry is the daily practice of looking for what you like about a person, place or thing (and that includes you). As you begin to focus on what you appreciate, you’ll begin to attract more of that into your life.
Appreciation is a feeling that can only attract good things to you. As you begin this practice of appreciating your friends, your community, your house, your children, your health, your family, and on and on and on, you will begin to feel more energetic and more vibrant. The Law of Attraction says it can be no other way.
I can’t think of anything more important to Passionate Self Care than using Appreciative Inquiry in all that you do. Try it. You’ll see.
2
Dancing With Overwhelm
Are you feeling like there is just too much to do?
Too much to learn?
Not enough time?
Join the club!
Lately, I have been keenly aware that the list of things that could, should or “it would be nice” to get done is expanding quicker than the blob grew in that horror movie of old. I realize that it’s time to get back to basics. It’s time to remember and then utilize what has worked in the past. And that always brings me back to the bottom-line principle called The Law of Attraction that tells us we get more of what we focus on.
Like many teachers, I’ve neglected to apply what I teach to my own life. How embarrassing.
So when you re-read the first two paragraphs, what does it tell you about where my focus has been? Exactly! I’ve focused on the problem and, here’s a shock, it’s getting worse! Where have you misused focus to add steroids to some of your own problems?
It’s such a habit this looking at the problem. And it is impossible to break a habit because, as you attempt to, where is your focus? What works well instead is to replace the habit that’s not serving you well with a new one that will.
So what is the fastest way out of overwhelm?
The answer is to develop the habit of celebrating what we’ve accomplished, even if we don’t think it’s nearly enough. As we celebrate the accomplishments of each day—even the seemingly trivial ones—the more accomplishments we attract. My negative focus threw me down the rabbit hole of “not enough.” As I begin to celebrate my accomplishments (and the first one is finishing and sending this blog), instead of spiraling downward, I begin to spiral upward and it’s a much more fun ride!
So I challenge you to take two minutes and write a list of everything you’ve accomplished today so far. Then stand up and do whatever your version is of “the touchdown dance.”
For the rest of the day, when you’ve accomplished something more, do something to celebrate even if it’s to say, “Yes!” and pump your arm for emphasis. Watch what a different day you’ll have.
Tell me how it goes. I’d love your feedback.
I’m off to do my touchdown dance!