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(57) Think Positively

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How to Feel Good - Release Emotional Blockages!

TP56

What if I don’t feel terrific?

Whenever I do a presentation and recommend to the audience that they give a very upbeat response to How are you? someone always comes up to me afterward and says, “What if I really don’t feel terrific? I don’t want to lie to my friends and co-workers by telling them everything is wonderful when it isn’t.”

Now don’t get me wrong. I put the highest value on integrity... and telling the truth. Yet, I don’t think this is a matter of telling the truth. Let me explain. Assume for a moment that Sally feels tired. When someone at work asks her How are you? she wants to be perfectly honest so she says, I’m tired. Here’s what will happen. Sally will reinforce the belief that she’s tired. She’ll feel even more fatigued.

She’ll probably slump her shoulders and let out a sigh. She’ll have a lousy, unproductive day at work. And let’s get back to the person who asked Sally the question - and who probably regrets it now! That person also feels worse. After all, when someone tells you how tired she is, do you feel uplifted? No way. Just the suggestion of the word “tired” and you start yawning.

So, Sally has brought herself down, as well as her co-worker Okay, Sally goes home after her grueling day, and now she’s exhausted. So she plops into her favorite chair and opens the newspaper to look at the winning lottery numbers. As she pulls her own ticket out of her wallet, she discovers that she’s holding the winning ticket. She just won $10 million!

What do you think Sally would do? Remember, she’s very tired. You and I both know that Sally would leap out of her chair, be jumping up and down, screaming, and waving her arms in the air. You’d think she was leading an aerobics class. Naturally, she’d run to pick up the phone to call her family and friends. She’d be a bundle of energy and would probably stay up all night celebrating... and planning what to do with the money!

But wait a second. Ten seconds ago, this woman was exhausted. Now, she’s got the energy of a 15-year-old cheerleader who has just been told she made the cheerleading squad. What happened in those 10 seconds to change someone from being utterly exhausted... to wildly exuberant? Did she get a shot of vitamin B-12? Did anyone throw a bucket of ice water in her face?

No. Her transformation was entirely mental! Now I’m not trying to diminish what Sally was feeling. Her fatigue was very real, but it wasn’t as much physical as mental. So, was Sally telling the truth when she said she was tired? It really has very little to do with the truth. It’s a matter of what Sally chose to focus on. She could concentrate on feeling tired. That was one option. On the other hand, she could have thought about the many blessings in her life and felt very fortunate and energized.

How we feel is very often a subjective matter. When we tell ourselves that we’re tired, we feel tired. When we tell ourselves that we feel terrific, we feel energized. We become what we think about.

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