Category Archives: adaptation

Four Easy Ways to Remain Hopeless

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There’s a scene from the movie Braveheart when William Wallace loses all hope and lays down to die at the hands of the enemy. The gleam in his eye for the mission is extinguished. I’ve seen that deflated look in the eyes of some people. Many people have lost hope for a better future or job. Some have lost hope that their finances are going to improve. Some have just lost hope in hope. I myself have experienced the feeling of wanting to lay down and just give up.

It’s easy to become hopeless and stay there. It’s much harder to fight the tough realities of our lives and see the mission through. Here are some easy ways to remain hopeless:

  • Clam up with significant others and keep your struggles in an iron clad safe in your heart. Let them fester there.
  • Keep yourself from living with a faith in a loving God.
  • Maintain a mindset that chooses the defeatist attitude and loses it’s fighting spirit. Throw in the towel and call the fight.
  • Don’t fully commit to the journey you’re on in life. Play it safe at the margins and don’t invest in it fully.

What are some other easy ways to give in to hopelessness? Comment here>>

 

One way to tank your day

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I had an intuitive sense from the beginning that the movie “John Carter” was going to be a flop. Costing $350 million to make it only brought in $30 million on its opening weekend. Andrew Stanton the director is best known for the direction of “Finding Nemo” and “Wall-E”, both wildly successful. He also was a writer for all three “Toy Story” movies. He is successful, has a track record for creating hit movies and was given a shot to direct his first live action movie. It didn’t turn out good.

That would be very hard. I have no doubt he is really, really bummed and is questioning his ability to make movies beyond pixelated cartoons.
Though not on that scale, I have had many endeavors that haven’t taken off as expected. Huge bummers. I have miffed moments in relationships. No one ever wakes up in the morning intending to tank their day, but the irony is, it’s easy to do- by Rumination.

Rumination is the mental choice to dwell on our poor showing whether it is in a relationship or a project. Rumination traps us in the confines of our thoughts about the situation. We begin to create scenarios and reasons that aren’t true. Rumination, in other words, is our way of deceiving ourselves and tanking our efforts to move ahead in a healthy manner. Through our mental lingering we are unable to let go of our mistakes and weak showings.

I’m a master at the art of rumination. It can often trigger to my depressive episodes. Here are my suggestions for moving beyond dwelling on bad events and keeping us from tanking ourselves and our day.

  • Contemplate. The opposite of rumination is contemplation. It is the sustained practice of honing the skills of attention to get to the deeper truths of ourselves and our lives. Contemplation keeps us from applying knee jerk reactions. Take 20 minutes and try to let every thought that enters your mind vanish.
  • Move on. Take your perceived errors and move on.. Interrogate your thoughts and see them for what they are- perceptions of response. Your perception creates your reality and staying put in them can easily lead to a negative one. Keep moving on and do what needs to be done. Ask for forgiveness if needed and take a failure and use it to mature.
  • Be teachable. Learn from what happened and do better next time. Every day is brand new and offers a chance at a new start.
  • Tell yourself the truth. The space between the event and our response is cognitive. We can lie to ourselves and catastrophize what happened or we can tell ourselves the truth that it isn’t as bad as we are prone to think.

So don’t ruminate on things today. It’s a sure fire way to screw it up. I can ruminate on this blog and worry about its relevance and usefulness for the rest of the day or send it on its way letting it be what it is…one way or the other.

Eighteen Most Common Self-Defeating Behaviors

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Sometimes we can be our own worst enemy. It’s not that we can’t be successful and find fulfillment in life. It’s that we too easily sabotage our attempts to do so. Here are eighteen behaviors that can get the better of us and prevent us from thriving.

  • Procrastinating. If you’re always late on completing tasks, people will stop relying on you and begin resenting you.
  • Getting involved with the wrong people. If you continuously get involved with bad people, you’ll be the one who has to clean up the mess.
  • Saying “yes” when you want to say “no.” This results in burnout, loss of credibility and loss of respect from others and yourself.
  • Assuming others don’t want anything in return. It is human nature to almost always want something in return, even when people say they don’t. Thinking ahead about what others might want can save you problems in the future when they try to collect.
  • Playing it safe. The world is in a rapid state of change. Doing the same old thing over and over and expecting it to be good enough may turn out to be not so safe.
  • Always having to be right. This can create resentment and helps build a constituency of people who can’t wait to see you fail.
  • Focusing on what others are doing wrong. This is a demotivating habit.
  • Not learning from your mistakes. Successful people don’t make fewer mistakes than unsuccessful people, they just repeat fewer mistakes.
  • Talking when nobody’s listening. This leads you to think that what you’ve said is going to be done, when in fact it’s not. You will have to repeat the entire process at a later date.
  • Taking things too personally. When people take criticism too personally instead of seeing that it is about fixing a problem, the problem becomes larger and takes longer to fix.
  • Having unrealistic expectations. When you confuse what is reasonable with what is realistic you set yourself up to fail.
  • Trying to take care of everybody. In attempting to take care of everyone, no one — including you — will be satisfied.
  • Refusing to “play games.” Politics, schmoozing and small talk are all necessary in order to succeed. Putting them down because you do them poorly is costly.
  • Being envious of others. Teamwork is ruined when team members envy each other to the extent that they root against each other.
  • Quitting too soon. If you always quit, you’ll never succeed; if you always try, you’ll eventually succeed.
  • Letting fear run your life. If you let fear run your life, it might just run you out of your job.
  • Not moving on after a loss. When you spend more time mourning your losses than you do moving ahead, you can’t move ahead.
  • Not asking for what you need.If you don’t ask for what you need — whether it be for someone to help you do your job or for a promotion — you’re leaving it to other people’s imaginations.

Adapted from a list by Dr. Mark Goulston

Why is it so doggone easy to sabotage our plans and make life ineffectual? Comment here>>