Action Step:
Think of a negative situation and turn it around.
Chapter 8: Perspective is everything
“The optimist sees the donut, the pessimist sees the hole.”
Oscar Wilde
“A pessimist is somebody who complains about the noise when opportunity
knocks.”
Oscar Wilde
William Shakespeare said “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking
makes it so”. Put things into perspective! The closer you are to the problem and
the more in front of it, the less you see. Step back and get a more global view of
it. Understand how you feel faced with the problem and evaluate the real
importance of it. Even seeing the problem as a challenge will be helpful! Every
negative experience in your life has something good in it - search for it! If you
get into the habit of always searching for the good in every situation you will
change the quality of your life drastically.
Experiences themselves are neutral until we start to give them meaning. Your
vision of the world and your perspective “decide” if something is “good” or
“bad”. What may be a great tragedy to you could be a wakeup call for me to take
my life into my hands and thrive. In coaching we use what is called “Reframing”
to change the perspective that a client has of an event. One of my favorites is
changing “Failure” to “Feedback” or “Learning experience”.
How do you feel if you say
“I failed terribly in my last relationship”?
Now
try saying
“I learned so much from my last relationship, I’m sure I will not
make the same mistakes again!”
Can you feel the difference? Here are some
more examples of reframing:
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