The Lounge

When you find yourself navigating your way through a crisis, what can you do to come out on the other side, stronger for the experience? 

Every crisis involves risk. By definition, a crisis is fraught with danger, but also an opportunity for tremendous learning and growth. Crisis is a time of testing, but it's also a time of renewal. Many people, when faced with a crisis, tell themselves that they have failed and convince themselves that there's no point in trying any longer. 

For example, if a young woman tries to become a professional singer and fails, it doesn't mean she's a failure as a person or that her life is a failure. It simply means that, at this particular time in her life, her attempts at singing for a living are not working out. There are many other possible choices she can make, including trying again at some point in the future. She hasn't failed, and she doesn't have to give up her dream. But she does have to learn from this attempt and, perhaps, rethink her strategy. 

Is there another way she can go about it? Does she need more education?  More experience? More exposure? Help promoting her career? Failure is only failure if you let it cause you to quit. If you choose to let it help you, it becomes information you can learn from.  

It is in meeting each crisis with determination that we measure up to life and its challenges. In so doing, we develop tenacity and greater inner strength.

When you're taking family pictures, you want to have a clear, sharp focus. Today, let's talk about the importance of focusing in everyday life. 

Most of us live in a culture that presents us with a bewildering array of options. The confusion of too many options will largely disappear once you know how to focus. In this sense, focusing means concentrating all your attention on one particular thing, much as we do with a camera, bringing it into sharp relief to clarify your relationship with it. 

When we concentrate our attention on a particular endeavor, problem or person, we bring all our energy to it, shutting out irrelevant details. Even if we find ourselves caught in a crisis, where our attention seems to be demanded everywhere at once, when we choose to focus our attention on one aspect of the problem, a solution becomes much easier. A natural progression then begins to unfold, making it possible for us to arrive eventually at overall resolution. 

Remember, your experience in life is determined by where and upon what you choose to focus your attention and energy, just as a photographer must decide on what to focus the lens and what to leave out. If you let your attention wander all over the place, you'll end up feeling a bit muddled and blurry, just like the picture that results from a lens that is not held still.

Take charge of your attention, and you will be taking charge of the situation.

If I were to say to you, "Old people are...." and then ask you to finish the sentence, how would you fill in the blank? Think about it for a moment. 

"Old people are...." What? Fragile? Senile? At death's door? What do you believe about old people? What if I said, "Old people are bright, energetic, active and interesting"?

You see, it's really impossible to generalize about so-called old people, any more than we can safely generalize about teenagers or 50-year-olds. 

Does aging have to mean a loss of significance? Do our older selves matter less than our younger selves? Much of the answer to these terribly important, but rarely-spoken, questions lies within our attitudes. 

If these attitudes define old age as a time marked by loss and decline, we are in for some real trouble. Besides, there are simply no data to support this negative conclusion. As Norman Cousins once said, "No one knows enough to be a pessimist." 

Aging, like most everything else, turns out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. You will get largely what you expect to get, what you believe, and what you think is likely for you. Pygmalion was not a casual insight of George Bernard Shaw. It was an observation of everyday dynamics. 

So if I ask you to complete the sentence, "When I am an old person..." what will you say? Do you expect the best for yourself? Do your actions support those expectations?

Most people have heard of the captain of a ship or the captain of a team. But have you ever heard of Captain of the World? Have you ever worked for someone or lived with someone who acted like the Captain of the World? Maybe you, yourself, are holding down that job right now. 

If you are the Captain of the World, you are very big on rules and on maintaining your particular brand of order. Words like "should," "have to," "ought to," and "must," show up often in your speech. For instance, on your way home tonight or in the parking lot of your local shopping mall, try to be aware of your "inside the car" conversation when faced with traffic challenges!

You find that everywhere you look, everywhere you go, you run into inefficiency, incompetence, and people with annoying habits and inconsistencies. Thank goodness they have you around to tell them how to do it right! 

Now, you know I'm being facetious, because no one ever feels thankful that there's a Captain of the World around. In fact, they usually resent it and will often find ways to sabotage the Captain or do things to deliberately shake things up. 

You see, people just don't do well when all they hear is, "You have to." This is called restrictive motivation. It's based on fear of what happens if you don't do something. While it may work for a while, it usually backfires. 

So if you really want to motivate others and win their respect, resign your job as Captain in charge of changing the world, effective immediately. Instead, take a look at what you might change in yourself to make the world a happier place. It just might be the ultimate gift for this holiday season.

What happens to us when the culture in which we grow up doesn't value our personal attributes? 

You know, much, if not most, of our feelings of self-worth or self-esteem has to do with the messages we get from our culture. Some of those messages are overt and up front. We know without question that, currently, our culture values affluence, power, efficacy, youthfulness and health. So can you imagine how it might feel to be poor, relatively powerless, or chronically ill or disabled in this society - or for that matter any way that society sees as different or not like the majority? 

Some messages are subtle. We say we value diversity, children, old people, etc., but our behavior often says something else. If the movie stars and models are tall, beautiful and thin, what message does it send us about anyone who does not fit that mold? 

If the kids in school laugh at us because of our accent or shabby clothes, or the work our parents do for a living, what do we learn about our value? It's terribly important that all children feel proud of who they are. 

Sometimes all it takes is one concerned teacher, parent or other adult who cares enough to take the time to set the record straight in a child's mind. Every child needs to know that what supposedly is and is not valuable, according to magazines and "reality" shows, really depends on some pretty arbitrary things.

They need to know that they are loved, prized, and capable of rising above stereotypes to be uniquely valuable human beings. For in the end, we rise to our own, and each other's, expectations, or we fall to them.

How trustworthy are you? What does it mean when we say we can be trusted? In any situation, your influence is enormous if you are trusted. But if you are not trusted, it doesn't matter what your title is or how much authority you are supposed to have, your influence is virtually zero.

You see, when you are trusted, it means that you can be relied on. To do what? The right thing, whatever that may be. You build trust by sharing information that is timely, accurate, objective and complete. You build trust by keeping your word, doing what you say you will do, when you say you will do it. How can you trust anyone who is mostly talk and no action? 

Trust is fragile, too. It must be earned, and re-earned. Even small omissions or errors can damage it quickly. If you are trustworthy, it says a lot about your character. It means you have integrity - your values and your behavior are aligned, and you stand up for what you believe in. 

If you make a mistake, you don't cover it up or try to make it look like someone else's fault, even if it's going to make you look bad. And when you make decisions, you make them after thoughtfully considering alternatives and consequences. When you are trusted, other people listen to you, ask for your advice, and feel confident that you can be relied on. When you are worthy of that trust, you feel accountable to use your influence responsibly.

Think about it: Who do you trust, and why? And who has placed their trust in you? What do you do to justify that trust?

In the last couple of years, many places around the world have been hit with some pretty bad natural disasters. Hurricanes, earthquakes and volcanoes take their toll on homes and possessions leaving many homeless and without material resources. National economies are in turmoil, leaving a lot of folks wondering about their financial futures. The toll on human life and spirit can sometimes be unbearable.

While it's natural and certainly understandable to feel devastated for a while in situations like this, some folks bounce back far more quickly than others. Instead of sitting around feeling hopeless and helpless, they will pick themselves up and do whatever it takes to start over again. Instead of dwelling on what they've lost and becoming depressed, they will focus their energies on what they still have and what they need to do to recover.

Now, this quality of resiliency, or the ability to take a hit and bounce back, has a lot to do with your overall feelings of self-worth. It also has a lot to do with your belief about whether your life is largely controlled by you, or by forces outside yourself. People with high self-esteem and an internal sense of control over their lives just naturally bounce back more quickly than those who feel their lives are controlled by some thing or some one "out there."

It is important for you to know that these are qualities that you can develop in yourself and in your children. You can learn to be so resilient, that no personal setback can keep you down for long.

If Abraham Lincoln were alive today, I think he and I would have many things in common to talk about. I think he'd approve of the work The Pacific Institute is doing.  What makes me think so?

Well, Lincoln once said, "Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be," and the work The Pacific Institute does is based on the latest research in cognitive psychology. 

Now the word "cognitive" simply means having to do with thought or perception, and cognitive psychologists operate on the principle that it is your thoughts, not external events, that create your moods. 

In other words, it's not so much what happens to you, but rather how you respond to what happens to you, that determines how you feel. 

The good news is that you can learn to respond in ways that create success and happiness instead of failure and depression. You can learn to spot your negative thoughts and stop them in their tracks, and you can learn to substitute more useful thoughts in their place.

I know you can learn because I've taught literally millions of people to do just that, and they are no smarter or more capable than you are. The information is out there, but you must take accountability for seeking it out and using it - for making the changes you need to make in order to grow. 

You can do it! Why not start today?

Why is it that optimists seem to be so much happier than pessimists? 

There is something really wonderful about optimists. They're fun to be around, aren't they? No matter how bad their situation, optimists can always find something to enjoy - usually simple things like the taste of a good cup of coffee, the smell of the air on a fine spring day, the sound of a wind chime tinkling in the breeze. 

Now it's important to understand that optimism is not saying everything is getting better every day in every way. Nor is it saying that the worst is behind us, or seeing sweetness and light, when what's happening is evil and ugly. 

But optimists know that for all its faults, the world is also filled with good things to be savored and enjoyed. These positive people know that our experience in life is largely determined by where we choose to focus our attention and how we choose to respond to what happens to us. 

Optimists understand that happiness is not so much a matter of what we have and what's going on around us, as it is a choice we make. The wonders and beauty of life are all around you, right now, right where you are. All that is required is for you to be attentive and open to them and that you make a conscious choice to see and hear and experience them. 

So I ask you, do you choose to be happy today? It is up to you.