Positive Thoughts
This week we have been working with positive daily mottos at work.
The idea is that apart from the other practices we do during work you formulate a positive motto to work with during a particular day.
I must say that I liked working with them.
The first two days were hard, because I started making the motto into another goal to reach. So that naturally led to me becoming stressed out and depressed when I didn’t live up to the “positivity” I wanted to achieve.
But after that I started using the motto “breathe out, let go” as my thought for the day.
That worked very well. As already said many many many times, I’m a perfectionist and this motto suited me. Things go well enough as they are at the moment, so there is not much else to do than just do them and enjoy.
Today I added “be content” to it, just to emphasise that aspect of my motto, so I now have worked with “breathe out, let go and be content”.
It works for me, and that’s what matters.
Positive mottos can help, I think, but there is a danger to do what I did the first days and make it into somekind of contest with yourself to reach yet another goal. I think this goes especially for people who feel they have something to prove, and doubly so for those with low selfesteem.
I remember hearing some psychologist did a study that showed that most self help programs that use positive thoughts actually can have a very bad effect of the last group. It works for a few days and then normal negative patterns set in. People end up feeling even worse about themselves because they even fail at positive thinking!
So I think that when using the method it’s important to keep a light touch. The thought is there as a reminder, not a command. It’s also worth noting that you can change it during the day if it doesn’t work for you. Nobody is forcing you to stick to it, although that can be revealing to do as an experiment.
In short, it’s been a good week and I’m looking forward to next one. We’re currently rebuilding our bookshop. The manly men have just knocked a non supporting wall out and I think it’s going to look very nice.
Have a good day!
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This entry was posted on Friday, February 19th, 2010 at 21:13 and is filed under Buddhism, Daily, Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
