Did you happen to catch Conan O’brien on 60 minutes last Sunday? You’re not missing anything. He admitted that he believes that: “Everything happens for a reason.” Really?
I suppose some people would nod in agreement. I’m not one of them. That one-liner has never appealed to me. It smacks of desperation. It smells like human spirit gone sour, now needing a catch-all phrase to unpack its guilty burden. So why don’t we just say: “I can’t make sense of this so I’m just going to imagine a force greater than myself has access to an infinite wisdom that ultimately will act in my favor. So there!” After all, isn’t that what it really means?
I’ll have none of it. I prefer pith that is a little harder to divine. I go for bold mystery and audacious assertion instead. Try these on for size:
Failure is impossible!
Or another favorite:
Do not fear mistakes – there are none.
Who needs to understand a thing? Armed with these verbal shields I can leap tall buildings in a single bound, walk through walls, and basically achieve anything to which I put my mind. Who can so sheepishly waste time feeling disappointed in the absence of failure and mistakes?
If I need a one-liner to live by these do me just fine, thank you very much.
September 16th, 2009 Positively
Start with the end in mind. This will be my epitaph: Words are great, actions are better. And how well you know yourself isn’t as dependent on paying attention to your words as it is on the sheer frequency of hearing those messages you most need to believe are true.
About frequency:
Utne reader’s September issue ran an article demonstrating how a collaboration between psychologist Barbara Fredrickson and business consultant Marcial Losada resulted in what could be called positive outcome ratios. A six-to-one ratio of positive to negative statements was the hallmark of successful, high-performing groups of people as they spoke to each other during a team meeting. Within those groups three positive events to one negative event was considered the tipping point for becoming more creatively productive. Taking this predictive model back to my own experience validates how much I need to fill my brain with positive statements in order to keep the power of negativity at bay.
Rather than wasting time resenting the fact that the default potency of negativity is so much greater than positive statements, I am now armed with knowing exactly how much positive, warm-fuzzy ammo I need in order to tip the mood in my favor. Now let’s look at the predicted tipping point for events —three to one! You need half as many (just three, not six) really positive actions or events in your life to lessen the effect of one nasty experience. Talk all you want, but if you really want to internalize the good stuff, make sure you’ve got three times as many validating, feel-good actions filling your time and the thought leaders of positive psychology assure us that you’ll be a happier person for it.
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