Waves Of Bad News..
I received this in email form. I liked it so much I wanted to share it with our readers. We are living in a most interesting time. Daily, waves of bad news pound against our already badly damaged economy shaking the fragile underpinnings of business and our personal lives. When we personally experience any of very real, yet unwanted difficulties, we can easily be swept away into the depths of anxiety, frustration and despair.
It is difficult enough to swim against the tide, let go of the anxiety and climb up and out of these circumstances without adding the burden of destructive and unhealthy thought processes.
When we engage in destructive thought processes, we can engage in fantasy and attempt to put “tomorrow’s gold in today’s purse.” As we do so, we can experience short-term spurts of euphoria, which are always and rudely interrupted by reality and most often with serious emotional consequences.
Conversely, we can obsess over events, “which we may never witness” or “torment ourselves with problems that may never come to pass.” Sadly the form of destructive thought often creates self-fulfilling, dooms-day prophecy.
Og Mandino writes speaking of these unhealthy and destructive habits of thinking, “I have surrendered my free will to the years of accumulated habits and the past deeds of my life have already marked out a path which threatens to imprison my future.”
If we get swept into this dark dungeon of the mind it can add enormous amounts of unwanted stress on our businesses. Unnecessary stress can and usually does result in decreases in creativity and productivity, two of the most critical ingredients of success. The inevitable result of these decreases is simply more stress.
In our personal relationships this level of stress can impair our clarity. We can quickly become short sighted and short tempered. This slippery slope can destroy commitment and trust, dampen if not destroy much needed intimacy and rip apart once loving relationships. Innocent children often pay the highest price when we are myopic.
However, when we learn to think constructively, we receive inspired ideas, impressions and solutions to problems. This clear vision ignites our passion – our willingness to suffer for something we love. This passion drives our focus, discipline, effort and action. As we live in the now in passion-driven action, people are put on our path that we can serve and who can serve us. Our natural genius is awakened and accessed. When needed, we are endowed with even more ability. We create tangible results in tangible reality and experience a sense of accomplishment, meaning and purpose. Our self-esteem heals and our confidence is restored.
Viktor Frankl wrote immediately following his release from a concentration camp, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.”
Viktor shared this timely principle in a most poignant context. While in the camp he lost his pregnant wife, his mother and father and several good friends. They were all killed. His life’s work, an exhaustive manuscript, was torn up in his face while vile and angry tormenters cursed and scoffed. Everything he had lived for, his family and career was brutally destroyed.
Viktor and others who were spared from the gas chambers were assigned to grueling work details – an interminable sentence to hell. Beaten down by the shear gravity of their desperate and dire circumstances and with no hope in sight, many gave up. They simply died in their sleep. However, Viktor noted that those who used their minds to vividly visualize constructively, created a clear vision that gave them purpose in their suffering and joy in their journey despite all the catastrophic losses. Many survived.
We would never want to compare the challenges of our day with the horror of a concentration camp. It would be an insult to humanity. What we can do is learn this valuable lesson. In spite of the unspeakable, many still made the conscious decision to exercise the last of the human freedoms – to consciously choose one’s attitude in any circumstance, and Viktor meant “any circumstance.” From his words and actions and all those who courageously joined him in this conscious decision to think constructively and live, we can take courage. If they could do that, we can certainly do this!!
Yes, some things are awful – they really are – but we can learn how to be okay while standing in the middle of the firestorms of life. When we do, we are free to be in creation – mentally and physically. However, to think constructively, find peace of mind and stay in creation, we may have to change some of our old, deeply seated and unhealthy habits of thinking. James Allen wrote, “Let a man radically alter his thoughts and he will be astonished at the rapid transformation it will effect in the material conditions of his life.”
I hope you enjoyed this message as much as I did.
To your success,
Herb Hunter, 734-285-6792, hunter645@aol.com
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Great post Herb