Dr. Wayne Dyer

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WEEK 23: Think Positive, Act Positive, Be Positive

“If you realized how powerful your thoughts are, you would never think a negative thought.” ~ Peace Pilgrim

I really didn’t expect that I would have much trouble with this week’s topic because ever since my first health scare a few years ago, I have been a true believer in the power of positive thinking. Since it had worked pretty well for me during those difficult times, it seemed that it wouldn’t be too hard keeping my thoughts positive when things were actually going relatively smoothly.

As it turned out, the week for this ‘assignment’ was the same week that I was going to be down in Florida with my mom and sisters, celebrating my mom’s 84th birthday. I had been the one to organize all of the logistics for the trip – choosing the hotel, renting the car, and coordinating our flights so that we would all get there about the same time. The thing is, as those who know me will attest, I can be a bit of a worrier, especially when I’m the one in charge of something.

So to think, act and be positive this particular week was actually going to be a little more challenging than I thought.

I remembered a trick I’d been taught back when I was sick, which was to imagine a stop sign in my mind every time I caught myself thinking negatively about my situation. Somehow the image of the stop sign really helped to remind me to switch the direction of my thoughts before I ended up at the worst-case scenario.

So I decided my ‘assignment’ for the week would be to look for the stop sign whenever I started to worry that the hotel wouldn’t be nice enough, or someone’s flight would be delayed, or the weather would be bad. And, hopefully, when I saw it, I would remember to switch the direction of my thoughts before my worrying became a reality.

Happily, the trip started out incredibly smoothly. Our flights all got in on time – in fact, some were even early. And although it was pretty cloudy, the sun peaked out just as I was landing, which I took to be a really good sign. The drive to the hotel was very easy.

But when we pulled into the hotel driveway and it started to rain, it was as though every single negative thought I had kept at bay the past few days had materialized right in front of me. Everywhere I looked I noticed something wrong. The hotel was old…and small. The parking was impossible. The pool was tiny. By the time we got up to our suite I was a wreck…and even though my mom and sisters were nice about it, I felt terrible.

And what’s even worse is that I never once saw a stop sign. As soon as we drove in the driveway, the negative thoughts started piling up so fast that I don’t think I would have noticed one even if I had crashed into it.  Really, I’m not exaggerating…just ask my mom and sisters!

It wasn’t until we were having dinner a little later that I even remembered it was ‘Think Positive, Act Positive, Be Positive’ week, and I honestly started to laugh out loud. How in the world had I let myself get so caught up in what was wrong that I missed everything that was right?

Because, actually, a lot of things were right. For one thing, our suite had gorgeous ocean views from every window. It was really spacious. It was clean. There was a beautiful print that reminded me of my grandparents’ house. And most important of all, I was sitting around a table with my mom and sisters, which just doesn’t happen that often.

So why couldn’t I have seen all those positive things sooner? Why was it so much easier to let myself get sucked into such a negative vortex?

Well, as it turns out, there actually is a reason. Scientists call it a ‘negativity bias’ which, according to Wikipedia, is a ‘psychological phenomenon by which human beings pay more attention to the negative things in their life than the positive’. Studies have proven that the brain actually shows more neural activity when it is reacting to negative input than positive!

Dr. Rick Hanson, a neuropsychologist, explains that ‘the mind is like Velcro for the negative, and Teflon for the positive.’ For instance, if someone were to give me ten compliments and one criticism for a job that I did, it would be the criticism that would stick with me, not the compliments. It seems our ancestors, in order to survive, had to be much more aware of the things that could go wrong, than the things that could go right.

I had no idea! No wonder I have to work so hard to stay positive!

But what I think I have to try to remember, and this is definitely easier said than done, is that even though I might have this ‘negativity bias’, I also have within me the incredible power to choose the way I think about something. So when I find myself spiraling out of control in a negative ‘this is the worst hotel ever’ vortex, I can reverse that spiral anytime I want. And whether it’s by putting up an imaginary stop sign, or making a shift in the way I’m looking at something, what’s important is my conscious awareness that a change is necessary.

I recently watched a video called ‘Celebrate What’s Right With The World’ about a National Geographic photographer, Dewitt Jones, who uses the lens of his camera to show how the seemingly ordinary subjects he’s had to photograph can be transformed into things of beauty simply by asking himself, “What’s right here?” Sometimes the answer doesn’t come immediately, so he has to be patient. And sometimes he might even have to shift the angle of his lens in order to see it. But his incredible photographs are definite proof that there is always something ‘right’ to be found…it’s just a matter of choosing to see it.

So from now on I am going to choose to look for what’s right in the world, too. Because, as Dr. Wayne Dyer has always said:

“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at will change.”

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WEEK 21: Be Aware and Accepting of Your Emotions

“Feelings are much like waves, we can’t stop them from coming but we can choose which one to surf” ~ Jonatan Mårtensson

One of the very first books I read after my health scare a few years ago was Dr.Wayne Dyer’s, The Power of Intention. And one of the things that really struck a chord in me was his assertion that no matter what the circumstances of our life may be, we always have the choice to feel good, rather than bad. It’s not always an easy choice, especially when the situation justifies feeling bad, but, according to Dyer, when we can make the shift, no matter how slight, from feeling bad to feeling good, we raise our vibration to a higher level and the Universe will respond in kind.

The tricky part, at least for me, is remembering to notice how I’m feeling at the time that I’m feeling it. Sadly, I think I spend a lot of my day on auto-pilot, not really paying attention when life’s little stresses are getting to me. And if I don’t know they’re there, then I can’t make the shift to something better.

So this week’s topic to ‘Be Aware and Accepting of Your Emotions’ seemed like the perfect opportunity to test Dr. Dyer’s theory out. If I could just discipline myself to tune in more often to how I was feeling every day, then I would be more likely to notice when I was feeling badly, and could shift my thoughts accordingly. And to help keep me on my toes to remember to do this, I tied a string around my finger as a reminder. Every time I noticed the string, I checked in with myself to see how I was feeling. I’m not sure exactly why tying a string around a finger helps, but it certainly did the trick!

Dr. Dyer suggests in his book that, in order to shift our thoughts more easily, we should choose a kind of ‘go-to’, happy thought that we always have on hand for when we catch ourselves in a negative frame of mind:

“Make a conscious choice to select a thought that will activate good feelings…Ultimately you’ll come up with one that you agree makes you feel good, if only temporarily. Your choice might be the thought of a beautiful sunset, the expression on the face of someone you love, or a thrilling experience. It’s only important that it resonate with you emotionally and physically as a good feeling. In the moment of experiencing an anxious or stressful thought, change to the thought you chose, which makes you feel good.”

Ok, so it was really easy to choose my happy thought (i.e. sitting on knoll in Maine, looking out on river). And it was even easy to make the shift to that thought when I was totally stressed about being late to a class because I’d left my purse at home and had to go back for it. I could actually feel my body relax for a second as I thought about sitting on the knoll in Maine rather than about how I late I was. And who knows…maybe making that shift was the reason I ended up getting to my class in time after all.

But I have to admit that it wasn’t so easy to make a similar shift when I found myself really upset by something someone said to me on the phone. I was mad, really mad (which, honestly, doesn’t happen that often!) and no matter how hard I tried to switch from my very angry thoughts to my happy Maine thought, I just couldn’t make it stick long enough to calm me down. I was so sure I was right, and the other person wrong, that my anger felt totally justified. I deserved to be that mad.

But, according to Dr. Dyer, that was really just my pesky ego trying to confuse me and take control. Egos have a way of always wanting to be right, even if it makes us feel bad in the process. To overcome this need to be right, Dyer suggests that we try not to take ourselves so seriously, something he calls ‘Rule Number 6′. He writes:

“When you have the choice to be right or to be kind, pick kind, and push the ego’s demand out of the way. Kindness is what you emanated from, and by practicing it, rather than being right, you eliminate the possibility of stress in your moment of kindness. When you find yourself being impatient with anyone, simply say to yourself: “Rule Number 6,” and you’ll immediately laugh at the piddly little ego that wants you to be first, faster, number one, and to be treated better than the other guy.”

Well, I wish I could say that I practiced ‘Rule Number 6’ and took the high road by calling the person to apologize for my part in the argument, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. And even though I knew such a call would make me feel a whole lot better than I was feeling as I stewed in my self-righteous anger, my ego won out. I chose to feel bad.

So much for raising my consciousness!

Fortunately, though, when I woke up the next day and realized that I was still feeling terrible, I took a deep breath and picked up the phone. And lo and behold, after I fumbled through an apology, the other person apologized too. In fact, she took the blame for the whole sorry mess. I hung up feeling like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders, and realized that I could have saved myself a lot of angst if I had just picked up the phone a little sooner.

Anyway, I guess what’s really important in life is not necessarily feeling good every single minute. There are always going to be times when we feel stress, or fear, or are just really, really mad because, well, we’re human. But because we’re human, we have the remarkable ability to consciously shift those negative emotions to something more positive – we just have to be aware of how we’re feeling. Because it’s in that awareness that a shift becomes possible.

And the more I am able to make the shift from feeling bad to feeling good, the more the Universe will reflect that good right back to me.

Or, as Dr. Dyer puts it:

“You feel good not because the world is right, but your world is right because you feel good. “