Brain Training

Words: 198 Reading time: 0 minutes 40 seconds

Just thinking about our business, either as it is at the moment, or how we intend it to be, can prompt us to conceive a whole catalogue of problems. Some of those problems may be real; others are merely imagined, or even manufactured by us. And, with those obstacles in mind, we allow ourselves to be deterred.

However, obstacles are opportunities to grow, not indications of failure.

If the obstacles have been fabricated by ourselves, or are simply the result of our fertile imagination, such manifestations give us the opportunity to see them for what they are and thereby grow beyond them. If we are creating our own confines, making our own monsters, it would be sheer relief to stop, wouldn’t it?

Even if the obstacle is genuine, all is not lost. After all, obstacles are a feature of the path chosen, not a divine judgment on the eventual destination. So, meeting obstacles can certainly be seen as a welcome event, both as a temporary diversion and as a challenge to our creativity.

And the time we spend working through our business obstacles can go towards reducing the time we spend unnecessarily “Brain Training” on our Nintendo DS.

Lessons in Staying Positive – #7

Words: 526. Reading time: 1 minute 46 seconds.

By and large we all start out as resilient individuals. It is that attribute in the very young – the ability and willingness to bounce back – that takes us all through the many and varied hazards of growing up.

As youngsters we are typically curious and persistent. In learning to walk we fall many times, but it seems to make little difference. A few minutes later we are trying again. The same goes for climbing, talking, eating, dressing and a host of other skills we master as we grow.

We even shrug off our parents’ ire at being pestered and plagued into doing what they repeatedly tell us they are not going to do until our corrosive beleaguering causes them to give in to our demands, just to buy a little peace.

But, as we get older, we often lose that perseverance, even when it is in our own interests to maintain it. We give more weight to opinions that are not our own. We become more timid, self-effacing and deprecating. We pass it off as being considerate, even well-mannered, when in truth it is self-sabotaging and self-denying.

But did you know that resilience is a skill that can be re-learned?

I mean really re-learned, in life-or-death situations, not just as a soft and easy exercise in the comfort of a classroom or as part of a course.

Survivors re-learn from other survivors the resilience skills those people possess. This is true of people who have survived in a concentration camp, successfully recovered against the odds from a terminal illness or survived some other major life event or situation.

Although such 'survivors' are all different, it has been found that they all have certain traits and skills in common. These include objectivity, humour and persistence.

And you can redevelop these skills too.

Survivor traits have a fascinating irony about them.

Although you might think that to be a survivor is 100% positive, the very traits that make an individual a survivor are those that are most often criticised by others.

For example, survivors are often labelled as 'pessimists' because they anticipate problems.

However, the difference between a standard pessimist and a survivor is that survivors are 'optimistically pessimistic' – they anticipate challenges, act on them and know that whatever happens they will not only survive - but thrive.

Many survivors have also been labelled as having a 'warped' sense of humour, or of 'not fitting in' or 'not playing by the rules'.

And to survive that is sometimes what it takes. When everyone else is giving up and becoming resigned to their fate because “it is happening to everybody; it’s a world problem” you will be inevitably marked out as different if you refuse to conform to the norm and accept your fate.

There is no such thing as a “world problem”. The world has no problems, only us humans.

And you can become part of that problem, or you can build your resilience and find a solution.

As Virginia Satir put it so well, “Life is not what it’s supposed to be. It’s what it is. The way you cope with it is what makes the difference.”