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Contingencies, Positivity, Choice, and Reflection

November 1, 2011 By

The following is from an e-mail I received:

“I am reading the book right now and have already tried some things on my 3-and-a-half-year-old daughter.

“I’ve always used choices with her. It makes life simpler with little ones. But I have not always used contingencies. Saying, “If you clean up, you can go to the park” sounds so much better and works much faster than saying, “If you don’t clean up, then you can’t go to park.”

“It is so much easier for youngsters to take responsibility when you communicate in terms that are positive and prompt them to reflect on the choices they make.”

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Notice—as mentioned—that in addition to communicating in positive terms and prompting reflection, the underlying principle of choice is also involved.

All three principles are outlined in the teaching and parenting model.

Filed Under: Parenting Tagged With: , , , , ,

The Optimism Bias

June 5, 2011 By

The June 6, 2011 issue of Time Magazine headlined an article “The Optimism Bias” (pp 40-46).

The article began, “We like to think of ourselves as rational creatures” and then gave the following  definition: “The belief that the future will be much better than the past and present is known as the optimism bias.”

A key ingredient of optimism is hope because it keeps our minds at ease, lowers stress, and improves physical  health.

The article relates optimism and hope to how memory may work: The core function of the memory system could be to imagine the future—to enable us to prepare for what has yet to come. The system is not designed to perfectly replay past events. It is designed to flexibly construct future scenarios in our minds. As a result, memory also ends up being a reconstructive process, and occasionally, details are deleted and others inserted.

To think positively about our prospects, we must first be able to imagine ourselves in the future. Optimism starts with what may be the most extraordinary of human talents: mental time travels, the ability to move back and forth through space in one’s mind.

The article postulates that without a neural mechanism that generates what the future may be like in a positive scenario, all humans could be mildly depressed.

The article confirms “positivity” as the  first principle to practice from the Discipline Without Stress Model.

Filed Under: Effectiveness Tagged With: , , ,

The Key to Communicate to Influence

April 7, 2011 By

Every so often messages and stories are repeated in order to bring them back to our attention.

Often we are not conscious of the power of our communications.

The words and phrases we use in our daily interactions have three major influences:
(1) They influence how we think and experience the world,
(2) They shape the way others see us, and
(3) They determine how much cooperation and success we have with other people.

We can use words which are landmines–which will blow up our odds of getting cooperation–or we can be persuasive in a positive way. For example, if I introduce a phrase with the word, “unfortunately,” it conjures up that something bad will follow. I have communicated in such a way that it prompts the listener to set up a negative mindset.

The key is to accentuate the positive. When thoughts are guided to focus on the positive and constructive, then the self is nourished and enriched. A monkey is smart enough to eat only the nourishing banana and throw away the bitter peel. Yet, humans often “chew on the peel” of negatives. Negative thoughts and words affect us in the ways listed above.

The following short tale will help you focus on the positive so that you will think this way, will shape how others see you, and will influence how much cooperation and success you have with other people.

A salesgirl in a candy store always had customers lined up waiting while other salesgirls stood around. The owner of the store noted her popularity and asked for her secret. “It’s easy,” she said. “The other girls scoop up more than a pound of candy and then start subtracting some.”

She continued, “I always scoop up less than a pound and then add to it.”

People are like magnets. They are drawn to the positive and repelled by the negative.

Filed Under: Effectiveness Tagged With: , ,

Looking for the Gold

November 23, 2010 By

The following is one of my favorite stories in my parenting book in the chapter describing the practice of positivity.

Andrew Carnegie, the first great industrialist in America, at one point had 43 millionaires working for him. A reporter asked him how he hired all of those millionaires. His answer was that none of them were millionaires when he hired them.

The reporter inquired, “Then what did you do to develop them so they became millionaires?”

Carnegie responded that you develop people the same way you mine gold.

He said, “You go into a gold mine and you expect to remove tons of dirt to find an ounce of gold. But you don’t go into the mine looking for the dirt; you go in there looking for the gold.”

Filed Under: Effectiveness Tagged With: , , , ,

A Lou Holtz Motivational Secret

July 14, 2010 By

Before becoming the very successful football coach at Notre Dame, Lou Holtz brought his University of Arkansas team to the Orange Bowl in 1978 to play against heavily favored Oklahoma. Pundits gave Arkansas slight to no chance of winning.

Dejected players filed into a team meeting a few days before the game. Holtz picked up some newspapers and pointed out that papers have a front page for people who want the news, an editorial page for those who want opinions, and comics for people who want to be amused. He continued, “I’m amazed that you’re ready to roll over and die because you read your obituary in the newspapers.”

He warned them, “Don’t let other people tear you down and destroy your confidence.”

Holtz then asked each athlete to stand up and explain why he thought Arkansas could win the game.

Each player stood, one by one, and pointed out one of the team’s strengths or what a particular individual had to offer. As they talked, Holtz reported that he could actually see their attitudes changing. They realized their strengths and made a commitment to one another to do their best.

Following that meeting, the Arkansas team had an unbelievable practice. The next day, they beat Oklahoma 31-6.

Holtz’ motivational secret was to prompt the players to tell him why they were good. After he pointed his players in a positive direction, he just listened.

Filed Under: Effectiveness Tagged With: , , ,

Advice From My Mother

April 2, 2010 By

I was brought up on a principle my mother instilled in me, namely, “If you can’t say something nice about a person, then do not say anything at all.” In other words, refrain from negativism.

The advice of my mother found itself the bedrock of my first principle to reduce stress: POSITIVITY. I now think of it whenever something negative pops into my head or if I am about to say something that can be interpreted in a negative way. I immediately ask myself, “How can I say that in positive way?”

In building and improving relationships, its opposite—negativity—is the biggest enemy. You do not want it in your mind. You do not want it in your house. You do not want it in your environment. You do not want to express negativity to your associates, to those who may work for you, or to your friends. You do not want anything to do with it. When you see it, turn it around. If you can not turn it around, then you turn around and walk the other way.

How to  be positive is at parenting without stress.

Filed Under: Relationships Tagged With: , ,