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When I worked in the publishing business, I shared office space with my friend Rich.
Every morning, Rich would come in to the office, grab a sheet of paper from the printer, ball it up and shoot it towards a round wastebasket that we had in the office.
If the ball went in, he’d say, “It’s going to be a good day!”
And if he missed? He’d look down and say, “Oh, no, bad day.”
I was then – as I am now – somewhat superstitious.
And I have to admit if Rich missed a shot and something bad happened later that day, I would equate those two things. It was almost as if it a missed basket set me up to look for certain bad things.
That brings up two concepts: One is expectancy confirmation. You have probably heard of that by another name –the “self-fulfilling prophecy effect.”
It’s the idea that we tend to get what we look for. That means if we look for good things, we tend to find them … and, correspondingly, if we look for bad things, we tend to find those, too.
The second concept is that we have the power to choose what to think no matter what is happening around us. And there is good and bad swirling in the world around us all the time.
If a bad thing happens, we have the power to understand that that’s part of the natural world. We can realize it’s a fact of life, that the bad situation is not going to be permanent, and that it’s limited to that specific thing that happened. We can move on from that and have a better day.
Fortunately for me, Rich made more shots than he missed and we tended to have more good days than bad ones.
Fortunately for you, you possess these two powers – to look for the good things, and put the bad things in perspective. And they are very good powers to have.
When I worked in the publishing business, I shared office space with my friend Rich.
Every morning, Rich would come in to the office, grab a sheet of paper from the printer, ball it up and shoot it towards a round wastebasket that we had in the office.
If the ball went in, he’d say, “It’s going to be a good day!”
And if he missed? He’d look down and say, “Oh, no, bad day.”
I was then – as I am now – somewhat superstitious.
And I have to admit if Rich missed a shot and something bad happened later that day, I would equate those two things. It was almost as if it a missed basket set me up to look for certain bad things.
That brings up two concepts: One is expectancy confirmation. You have probably heard of that by another name –the “self-fulfilling prophecy effect.”
It’s the idea that we tend to get what we look for. That means if we look for good things, we tend to find them … and, correspondingly, if we look for bad things, we tend to find those, too.
The second concept is that we have the power to choose what to think no matter what is happening around us. And there is good and bad swirling in the world around us all the time.
If a bad thing happens, we have the power to understand that that’s part of the natural world. We can realize it’s a fact of life, that the bad situation is not going to be permanent, and that it’s limited to that specific thing that happened. We can move on from that and have a better day.
Fortunately for me, Rich made more shots than he missed and we tended to have more good days than bad ones.
Fortunately for you, you possess these two powers – to look for the good things, and put the bad things in perspective. And they are very good powers to have.
