Overcoming Your Negative Addiction

2011/10/12 Gayle 0

Yesterday we talked about why it sometimes feels so good to be negative. We learned about how negative emotions can feed the pleasure center as much as truly pleasurable things. As it turns out, pain and negative emotions (e.g. self-pity, anger, guilt) also activate the beta-endorphin and dopamine pathways. So negative is addicting, now what? Today let’s talk about how to change our negative thinking. Your addiction to the negative is serving a need. What is that need? The first step is to discover the perceived deficit in you that creates your need to diminish someone else. Perhaps you look at others and are negative about their appearance because you are unhappy with your own image. Perhaps you are targeting yourself with your negative thoughts. Again, The rest of the story

Are you addicted to the negative?

2011/10/11 Gayle 1

I barely know who Miley Cyrus is but a few days again I encountered this quote from her ‘You can’t live a positive life with a negative mind’. A mind becomes negative because we feed it negative. From the daily news to our personal encounters, we focus on the negative. I attended a street fair over the weekend. Like any public event, people watching opportunities abound. After several hours of being entertained by my people watching adventure, I realized that it was those people where I had a negative comment that attracted most of my attention. It often seems that we are genetically predisposed to be negative toward others and to crave negative from others. What I have learned in my research is that pain and negative The rest of the story

Action v Reaction

2011/10/10 Gayle 0

Yesterday morning it was early, I was tired. I didn’t want to be awake much less up and moving. Sitting at a red light I was engrossed in listening to my spouse relate a story about something, or another. Suddenly the car next to me started to go, and I, naturally, also started. Only after I had released my break and hit the gas did I realize that my light was still red and only the ‘leading green’ turn light had turned green.  I reacted to a perception (that my light was green) rather than taking informed action (confirming that my light was green BEFORE hitting the gas). How often in our lives and careers, do we react without all the necessary information? We go The rest of the story

Time is limited – Don’t waste it

2011/10/06 Gayle 0

How often do you think, ‘I’ll do that when…..’ We have ever intention of practicing a musical instrument, or reading a book, or going for a run or even walking the dog but we end up waiting for some magical burst of motivation to make it happen. Perhaps, we are just so confident that there will be more time in our lives soon. Maybe we just live in perpetual procrastination. How do we snap out of it? How do we do the things we want to do? I was pondering these questions yesterday when I received my breaking news text informing the world that Steve Jobs had died. I don’t think this news was particularly surprising to most people but it was somewhat disconcerting. You The rest of the story

Just Do It

2011/10/04 Gayle 0

I am a part of the ‘Just Do It’ generation. In 1988, when Nike came out with the famous slogan, I was a young adult struggling to transition from the world of academia to the ‘real world’.  Just do it seemed a fitting mantra for those times. Except do we ever just do something? What exactly do we mean when we say ‘Just Do It”? We must remember that thoughts precede actions, which precede change. I know of not one person who ever set out to reach a goal and just did it. First they thought of the goal. Then they planned how to reach the goal. Lastly they put themselves where the rubber meets the road and they just did it. Are you trying The rest of the story

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