(“The Thinker” – Rodin Museum”; courtesy of Chris_In_Philly_’08)
“We are shaped by our thoughts. We become what we think.” Buddha
During the course of a day we have on average 60,000 thoughts. The thoughts that run through your head are either helping you to get what you want, or are keeping you from your potential. An important way to optimize your life is by making the most of your thinking. Below you will find five thinking strategies you can consider adopting, and I encourage you to always be on the lookout for other thinking strategies that will help you to create your best life.
Ask Better Questions
In “Living Your Best Life”, Laura Berman Fortgang suggests that you begin to ask yourself better questions. She explains that the questions that you ask yourself are like typing in a keyword or keyword phrase on “google” or “yahoo”. Your brain will simply search its resources and come up with possible answers. Therefore, she advises that you move away from questions in which you try to understand a problem, since this will only serve to recreate the drama, add details to a hurtful situation, and perpetuate an unresourceful state of mind. Instead, by asking what she calls “Wisdom Access Questions” (WAQ), you’ll be instructing your brain to access answers that have the power to move you forward. Some examples of WAQs are:
• What will help me get through this?
• What is the solution?
• What will get me what I want?
• What is the next best step I could take?
• What can I learn from this situation so that I can make the right choice in the future?
• What do I want?
• What am I building toward?
• What other choices do I have?
• What is the simplest solution here?
Fortgang explains that you have two choices: you can stay stuck—by asking questions such as: “Why did this happen to me?”; “How could he have done that?”; and “Why am I this way?”–or you can move forward, by asking WAQs like those listed above.
Accept Responsibility for What Happens to You
“Managing the power of choice, with all of its creative and spiritual implications, is the essence of the human experience . . . Choice is the process of creation itself.” — Caroline Myss
In his book, “Life Strategies”, Phillip C. McGraw (Dr. Phil) cautions that if you don’t accept responsibility for yourself and for your life you will misdiagnose every problem and will therefore mistreat every situation. Stop thinking of yourself as a victim and stop attributing your pain to an external source; instead, start concentrating on the thoughts, behaviors, and choices you can change to get a better result. Dr. Phil suggests that you remember the following:
• You choose where to be.
• You choose how to act.
• You choose what to say.
• You choose whether to go or stay.
• You choose whom to be with.
• You choose what to concentrate on.
• You choose what to believe.
• You choose what behaviors to take in reaction to different stimuli.
• You choose what you’re saying to yourself about the circumstances you find yourself in.
Optimal Thinking
In her book, “Optimal Thinking – How to Be Your Best Self”, Rosalene Glickman suggests that the best thinking strategy is neither negative nor positive thinking, but optimal thinking. Optimal thinkers have realistic expectations and focus on optimizing situations within their control. For example, if you’ve invested in the stock market and are having doubts about whether to stay in or sell and get out, you have three thinking options:
• Negative thinking: “Of course the stock market is going to come crashing down, now that I’ve decided to invest in it.”
• Positive thinking: “Well, I’m just going to trust that everything will turn out well in the end.”
• Optimal thinking: “What are the most constructive actions I can take right now under these circumstances?”
Set Up the Rules so That You Can Win
Here’s a story Anthony Robbins tells in his book “Awaken the Giant Within” of a conversation between Gregory Bateson—author of “Steps to an Ecology of Mind”—and Bateson’s daughter:
Daughter: “Daddy, how come things get muddled so easily?”
Bateson: “What do you mean by ‘muddled’ honey?”
Daughter: “You know, Daddy. When things aren’t perfect. Look at my desk right now. Stuff is all over the place. It’s muddled. And just last night I worked so hard to make it perfect. But things don’t stay perfect, they get muddled so easily!”
Bateson: “Show me what it’s like when things are perfect.”
Daughter: (Moves everything on her shelf into individually assigned positions.) “There, Daddy, now it’s perfect. But it won’t stay that way.”
Bateson: “What if I moved your paint box over here twelve inches? Then what happens?”
Daughter: “No, Daddy, now it’s muddled. Anyway, it would have to be straight, not all crooked the way you put it down.”
Bateson: “What if I moved your pencil from this spot to over here?”
Daughter: “Now your making it muddled again.”
Bateson: “What if this book were left partially open?”
Daughter: “That’s muddled too!”
Bateson: “Honey, it’s not that things get muddled so easily. It’s that you have more ways for things to get muddled. You have only one way for things to be perfect.”
Robbins goes on to explain that most of us have created many ways to feel bad, while we only have a few ways to feel good. Stop setting up endless rigid rules and requirements for yourself and for others to follow in order for you to feel satisfied. You don’t need to have rigid, almost-impossible-to-meet rules to be driven; instead, you should set up the game so that you can win. Follow Robbins’ advice and develop rules that encourage you to take action, that cause you to feel joy, and that cause you to follow through.
Keep Things in Perspective
In a previous post, “Five Tips for Dealing with Failure”, I wrote about the importance of keeping things in perspective and not overgeneralizing. The fact that you’ve failed at something does not mean that your life is over; it does not mean that your reputation is forever ruined and that you’ll never get another chance. Don’t make the situation bigger or more pervasive than it really is. Instead, remember the line that Abraham Lincoln made famous: “And this too shall pass . . .” In addition, focusing on what you have to be grateful for instead of what you lack will help you regain perspective.
Conclusion
In addition to the five strategies described above, there are many other ways in which to improve your style of thinking so that your thoughts help you to create a life of joy and serenity. For example, another strategy is to stop taking things personally–what others say and do is about them, not about you.
Still another strategy is to learn to reframe negative situations as a positive. Reframing means to change the meaning of a situation and to look at it from a different point of view. Here’s an example: if you greet someone and they don’t greet you back, you can choose to think: “He didn’t say ‘hi’ back, there must be something wrong with me.” Or, instead, you can reframe it in the following way: “He probably didn’t hear me”; “I guess he didn’t realize I was talking to him”; or, “It looks like he’s having a bad day”.
There are many ways to begin to align your thoughts with the life that you want to create for yourself. Start paying conscious attention to your thoughts and look for ways to make your thoughts work for you, instead of working against you.
What thinking strategies do you follow that serve you well and keep you motivated?
Which of your thinking strategies brings you down and makes you want to give up?
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