Taste Life Blog

Ever have a bad day that gets worse by the hour? Last Thursday I lost my phone and Internet service. What made matters worse is that Sprint cell phones do not work in my office!  Frantically, I attempted to get my phone fixed before the Wellcoach® oral exam I was giving. Danielle took her cell phone outside and had to stand at the top of our hill in the street and attempt to call Comcast and Ooma.  Danielle remained calm and kept on repeating, “Mom it is ONLY your Internet.” I tried to believe her.  Note the word “tried.”  I was what I would call “wild” with emotion! Not a good thing!

A week later, I was deleting an email from Danielle and in a blink of my eye my entire inbox, all 225 messages, disappeared! Apparently, my quick fingers pressed delete, control and shift at the same time.

My first thought was “no worries, John my IT hero can fix this.” My second thought, “but what if he can’t!” My third thought, “Alleluia my inbox is empty I can start over again.” My fourth thought, “What emails and actions were in my inbox?” I vacillated from a feeling of freedom to extreme anxiety accompanied by major hot flashing and a stomachache. I was a mess for four hours until Jaci and Marty, my heroes at Web Valence, found my backed up emails.

In my keynotes I often ask the audience what creates the most stress in your life? The typical answers are my spouse, boss and job.  The correct answer is your beliefs. William James, a pioneering psychologist, states, “The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.”  He’s right!  A belief is just a pattern of thoughts, a message that can get repeated over and over again.

How you look at life determines what you see. IT challenges, however minor, make me freeze, worry and become a “Negative Nelly.”  Danielle, “Miss Calm Problem Solver”, calmly approaches the IT challenge and works on solving it. Want to be less stressed out? Change how you perceive an event.

If we want to feel more peace right inside ourselves we often try to change the world around us. At best, that can only bring temporary relief.  Our key is to change our judgments and interpretations about the world.

Having a bad day? Pick a new belief. Pick your beliefs as they create your emotions and your emotions create your behavior.

Positive belief + positive emotion = Positive Behavior

Negative belief + negative emotion = Negative Behavior

Become compassionate towards your shortcomings. Forgive yourself and others. Dump your old limiting beliefs. Dump waiting for the future.  Get serious about living in today! Change your beliefs and change your life and have fun again!   We would love to hear what belief you dumped to have fun again.

///Image by Frame Angel///