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It’s a new year. That’s a fresh start; a time to focus on your goals. What do you want more of this year? What do you want less of in 2019? We want to use this momentum to our advantage and maintain traction, so let’s take a moment to set ourselves up right. One of my goals for 2019 is to find ways to say yes to opportunities that present themselves. I know this can be a double edged sword. Saying yes can open doors, lead to new opportunities, and springboard my growth and development. Saying yes can also lead to overwhelm, over-extension, and compromising values and priorities. Everything we do in life has a trade-off. Things cost money; things take time, planning and prioritization; things can be uncomfortable. For example, going to the gym has a fee associated with it, I need to coordinate childcare, I need to schedule time to go (time to get there and back and shower), and it is physically demanding. The reward of being fitter, stronger and of having that time dedicated to taking care of myself is precious to me.
Yet the gym often seems to be the first thing to go when life gets hectic. This is a symptom of not setting and protecting my priorities. It is a symptom of not being mindful of my most precious and limited resources: time and energy. It is a symptom of saying yes to things without thinking of the consequences and trade-offs of saying yes. When you are asked to do something (even if you’re the one doing the asking), take a pause. During this pause, thing through what you are being asked, and what that will take from you. Your time and energy are limited. What will need sacrificed to say yes to this? In other words, what will you have to say no to in order to fulfill this yes. For example:
When being asked to say yes to something, evaluating what you have to sacrifice or say no to in order to fulfill that yes provides you with critical information you need to make a decision. Saying no can be very difficult, but saying yes when it overextends your or compromises your values and priorities does more harm to you and your resources than saying yes. As I move forward into 2019, I want to find ways to say yes to more opportunities; but I will be taking a pause to reflect on what I need to sacrifice or say no to in order to fulfill that yes. Then I will determine whether saying yes to each opportunity is congruent with my values and priorities. I encourage you to find ways to say yes to opportunities that show up for you, as long as saying yes helps you maintain your values and priorities. #focus #goal #sayyes #tradeoff
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In my last post, I discussed how we miss the point (and power) of optimism when we think optimism is viewing the glass as half full and pessimism as half empty. Optimistic thinking is incredibly powerful, but we have to take it beyond the image of “glass half full” thinking and just seeing the good in everything. We need to identify what we did to fill the glass and what we can do to keep filling the glass. In this, we discover the super power of optimism. In these next few posts on optimism, we’ll explore ways to not only fill the glass, but keep the glass full in the face of events and circumstances that threaten to empty it. Giving Gratitude an Oomph A gratitude journal is one of the best ways to build a habit of noticing the good that happens around you. It is key to training your brain to see the glass as half full. The Army teaches this practice as a Hunt the Good Stuff journal, others call it a “5 good things” exercise, others gratitude or “give thanks” journal. In all cases, the basic premise is the same: you make a deliberate habit of looking for the good things that happen in your life. This exercise can be conducted in many ways:
There is a wealth of research to support gratitude journals increasing happiness, decreasing depression and increasing optimistic expectations about their week and engagement in healthy behaviors (Peterson, 2006; Verkuyten & Thijs, 2002; Emmons & McCullough, 2003; Froh et al., 2010; Frederickson, 2004; Komter, 2004). My family jokes that my grandma Lela has “Lela-colored” glasses. She has a very special way of looking at the world (as I imagine most grandmothers do). Every Tuesday, she prays for something special to happen to her or someone she loves. And every single week something special happens. Part of this is because we all know about it, so sometimes we made it a point to do something nice for her on a Tuesday, but part of it is she opened her aperture to find something good that happened. What truly gives my grandma her super power of optimism is her reflection of how those good things happened. She did something that helped to bring about that good thing. And she can repeat that behavior to make more good things happen. We can give gratitude an oomph so it helps build our super power of optimism by taking the time to reflect on the items we identified. This reflection helps us savor the good stuff a little more, but most importantly, it gives us a “what’s next.” The reflection gives us a way to fill our glass even more effectively.
Gratitude is about noticing and savoring the good that happens. But the super power of optimism is about identifying what is next and what can you do to generate more things to be grateful for. High-Yield Energy Investments In the Yoga Sutras, there is a moral code called Bramacharya. Most often, when bramacharya is translated, it is thought to mean celibacy. In more modern interpretations, it refers right use of energy. Again, this can often be interpreted as exercising moderation in external or hedonistic indulgences. However, the idea of right use of energy can go beyond external expenditures of energy. We can examine internal energy expenditures as well. Where attention goes, energy flows. If we really think about where our energy is spent (and wasted) throughout a day, we spend an awful lot of energy spinning our wheels worrying and complaining about factors and circumstances we can’t control. Any time something happens to us, are are we spending our energy in the right way? Low-yield energy investments tend to feel great in the moment. We complain, we vent, we identify other people or circumstances to blame for what’s going on, we look for allies to our point of view. In these energy investments, we tend to stay very problem focused; name the problem, how others created this problem for us, what it would be like if we didn’t have this problem, what we should have done differently to avoid this problem, and how great it would be if the stars aligned so this problem magically went away. High-yield energy investments don’t feel as gratifying early on, but have much higher payouts. Right use of energy is about staying solution focused. Solution-focused thinking can be fact finding (especially using opposing or differing perspectives), generating solution strategies based on what is going on and what you can do next. In short, solution focused thinking centers almost entirely on factors you can control or influence to replicate a good situation or improve a less-than-ideal situation. If you can change something about a situation, change it. If you don’t have control over anything about a certain situation, you can still control your perspective and how you spend your energy and attention on the situation. This is where positive action can occur. This is where the super power of optimism sits waiting to be unleashed. In the next post, we will explore how we refine the super power though changing our perspective and identifying where our beliefs and assumptions may be limiting our super power. References
Emmons, R. (2008). Thanks!: How Practicing Gratitude Can Make You Happier. New York: Mariner Books. Malouff, J.M. & Schutte, N.S. (2016). Can psychological interventions increase optimism? A meta-analysis. The Journal of Positive Psychology, DOI: 10.1080/17439760.2016.1221122 Newlyn, E. (2014, November 19). The Yamas: Brahmacharya, right use of energy. Retrieved from https://www.ekhartyoga.com/blog/the-yamas-brahmacharya-right-use-of-energy. Peterson, C. (2006). A Primer In Positive Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press. #optimism #gratitude #superpower #hope #optimisticthinking #solutionfocused #positivethinking |
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