The Mick Morris Musing

Exploring Resilience via Lifes Burning Issues

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Is the Glass Half Empty or Half Full?

A glass - Half empty of half full?

Half-Empty?

This is a guest post by Ben Klempner. Ben is an accomplished Social Worker with a couple of books under his belt and experience helping people deal with a wide range of issues including; anger management, addiction recovery; marriage, family and career counselling, depression, grief and anxiety.  So over to you Ben……………….

Last night as I was lying in bed I got around to thinking what to write for a blog that’s about “turning life’s crap into fertilizer.” Then it came to me….. Here it is.

Ten negative affirmations turned positive

“Life’s so unfair”  can be turned into “life’s full of interesting turns of events”

“The sky’s overcast” can be turned into ” The cloud formations are dark and beautiful”

“It looks like it is going to rain” can be turned into “The reservoirs and vegetation could really use some rain”

“I’m miserable” can be turned into “I’m ready to make some changes”

“My job stinks!” can be turned into “It’s time to start connecting with the people I work with on a more meaningful level”

“I have no friends” can be turned into “I need to start meeting new people”

“My family life is the pits” can be turned into “My family life could use some improvement”

“I’ll probably fail this test” can be turned into “I wonder what I will learn from this test about myself and my knowledge?”

“My friends and family are all sick and tired of me” can be turned into “My friends and family care about me and would like to see me putting my best foot forward”

“My television broke and now I have nothing to do” can be turned into ” My television broke. Now I have time to walk outside and breathe some fresh air.

Go ahead… in the comments section below let us know some of your own negative affirmations turned positive.

image by Globe Visions

How to make words powerful

“if you propose to speak, always ask yourself, is it true, is it necessary, is it kind” – Buddha

How many un-necessary, untrue and unhelpful conversations do we hear every day? How many of them were initiated, participated in or indulged in by you?

Words are powerful things. They have the ability to paint a picture, they relay our thoughts and our feelings, they have the power to build people up and the power to destroy them.

After years of being a member of a critical incident support team within my Fire Brigade Our team have just spent another day undertaking skills training. We spent the day examining psychological arousal following traumatic incidents and how to deal with it as first responders following trauma or disaster.

Part of the training dealt with the disjointed and possibly incongruent language, or the inability of someone in a highly aroused state to be able to access and use language to be able to explain what is happening for them, a situation of “when words fail them”. There are complex physiological and psychological reasons for this occurring.

Thankfully most of us are rarely in such a hyper aroused state. This means that our reality is that we have the power to choose our words.

How many times have we been engaged in conversations and found ourselves thinking “did I just say that? Where did that come from?”

To make our words even more powerful in our daily lives we need to be aware of what we are about to say and should take heed of the Buddhas quote and consciously seek to ensure that when we are going to speak it is necessary, truthful and kind.

If our intended words, even when delivering criticism or bad news, meet this simple test then they are valuable words. If the intended words fail on any one of the three points we should hold our thoughts and our tonques and seek to replace them with thoughts and words that do meet these tests.

How will you make your words necessary truthful and kind….even in tough situations?

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