Strategies for a lovely Thanksgiving...

Thanksgiving is upon us and I wanted to share with you some of my favorite tips for sailing through it with as little stress as possible.

As much as we love our families, time spent together in the holiday rush can have its share of stressful problems.  We know our relatives so well. They know what buttons to push to make us crazy, just as we know theirs.  So how best to get through the day?

1. Remember not to be looking for reasons to be offended.  Often a comment made off the cuff hits a little too close to home.  Most likely the person was not looking to offend us.  Even if they were, taking offense raises our blood pressure and leaves them untouched.  Unless we choose to escalate the whole situation.  Is that really how we want to remember the holiday?

2. Focus on what's good about the day, what you're grateful for.  Stress and negativity cannot live in your brain at the same time as gratitude.  Anytime something begins to make you unhappy, find
something, anything that you're grateful for.  And with all that happened with Superstorm Sandy
this past month, so many of us have much to be grateful for.  Remember my favorite Wayne Dyer
quote, "When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change."  Works with cranky relatives too!

3. We humans tend to imagine things either much worse or much better than they actually turn out
to be. Decide in advance it's going to be fine regard less of what it may have been like in previous years. 

Whatever your Thanksgiving is like, remember it's only a day or maybe even a few hours.  We can get through it...if we do our part to bring the best of us to the table...   If all else fails, just breathe and wait it out.  The day will be over before you know it!

Marianne

PS... If you'd like a few more strategies to get through the holidays, join me at my next Power of Positivity seminar Wednesday November 28 at 6 pm at the Crowne Plaza in Warwick.  Go to www.SecretsofSuccess101.com for details and to register. 

How to Leave a Great Vacation/House/Job

I’m sure I’m like most of you when I say I hate to leave my favorite vacation spot. I started this article on the plane as it was ready to take off for Rhode Island. I had a great time this trip and really wish I could stay another month. But I must leave. I have no choice because someone else is checking in and it’s no longer mine to have until next Week 16 in April 2013.

I’m sure it’s not an earth shaking revelation that I don’t want to leave. I mean who wouldn’t want to stay on vacation longer? So how to tear myself away? First of all, stop thinking about what I’m missing and start tuning in to what’s going on around me in the present. I love hearing some Rhode Island accents on the plane, seeing a few Red Sox baseball caps, and hearing people talk about familiar locations. I’m focused on those things right now with a smile on my face despite leaving behind great friends, beautiful warm weather, and a simple little place on the beach. It’s part of my strategy for how to leave – a vacation, a home, a job, even a person.

So using my vacation as the model, I’d like to share Leaving Strategy. It has two parts and they’re based on these ideas that have reappeared many times in my research:
• our feelings are based on our thoughts

• we can choose our thoughts if we decide to become conscious of them

• we tend to get more of what we focus on

Part 1: What didn’t I like about my vacation?
As my time there was coming to a close, I began to deliberately ‘notice’ the things that I wasn’t crazy about - things like stop lights that lasted 5 minutes, a long distance to even the simplest errand, no dishwasher, no DVR for catching my favorite shows and the fact that the weather was starting to become humid, not my favorite. Granted these are all minor things. I can’t even call them inconveniences because I’m incredibly lucky to be able to go there but it’s part of the strategy, so bear with me please.

Part 2: What did I miss from home?

Along with the amenities listed above, I missed my family and friends, the spring that was about to blossom, my comfortable bed, laundry in my house rather than having to ‘fight’ to get the shared washers and dryers, having everything at my fingertips. I wasn’t homesick yet but by thinking of what I missed made home seem more appealing.

The closer the time to leave came, the greater the focus on the two parts. Goodbye humidity, goodbye to the swarm of love-bugs that I knew were coming the next week, goodbye Florida traffic….hello home!

I recommended this same strategy to my cousin a few years ago when she was leaving a house that she brought her children up in to go to a wonderful new one on a lake. She knew the new house was much better than the old monstrosity she lived in but it deserved a send off. I suggested that she make of list of all the reasons she was glad to leave – the horrible stairs, the kitchen from another century (not the 20th even), the single bathroom. I also suggested that she gather her family members on a farewell tour of each room where they could share memories of what transpired there over the years and say a final goodbye.

When they moved into the new house, I suggested they have a welcoming ceremony where they got to focus on all the great new features this house had and where everyone could dream out loud about what their new life would be like.

We can follow the same strategy as we leave a job or leave a relationship that’s not really right for us. It’s all about what we choose to think about. If I sit here and watch it rain outside, I can let my thoughts go back to that sunny beach with regret or I can look at the beautiful flowers blooming outside my window that only show up this time of year with the color of spring green that Florida never has.

And while leaving isn’t easy, it’s something we all have to do at some time. With a strategy at hand, at least the leaving becomes more manageable for all involved giving us the tools to embrace whatever comes next.

Should we (and can we?) be optimistic?

Is having a positive attitude worth it or is it all just new-age touchy feely nonsense?  Is optimism a waste of time in the world we’re living in because so much is going wrong in so many areas? 

 As someone who teaches positive strategies to people, you can guess what my opinion is.  My belief is that choosing to be positive can make a huge difference - in personal relationships, home life, work and mostly with ourselves.  I recently set out to find out if this was just an unsubstantiated belief that we Pollyanna types think or if there was research to support my quest for more positivity in our world. 

I started with the seminars I attend for my business.  I’ve been lucky to study with some of the best and brightest success coaches and motivational speakers in the world and they are strong advocates of consciously choosing a positive attitude.  After a couple of days with them and other like-minded attendees, we leave believing pretty much anything is possible – jobs, relationships, happiness, abundance.  Admittedly it’s not easy to sustain that kind of enthusiasm when we get back into the flow of regular life with all its challenges and uncertainties, cranky relatives, and parade of tragedies on the news, but it seems easier with that strengthened positive outlook.

I do know that many people are seeking ways to be more positive.  Check out the latest Alex and Ani bracelets which everyone is sporting and you’ll see that they state “our products are infused with positive energy technology”.  Log on to Pinterest.com and see all the positive and inspirational signs people (me included) have pinned up on their boards.  It seems we are looking for a better way.

Here’s the good news.   I have found that there is indeed research to back up why being positive matters.  According to Jean Chatzky’s book “The Difference”, people who are positive are more resilient, can handle stress better, are better problem solvers, can think more clearly, and have more energy.  Not too bad for just choosing to look at the bright side.  And people who are more resilient have a better ability to overcome the innate negativity we humans seem to carry around.  We’re better able to see the world as it is rather than worse than it is which is how many of us currently see it.

So how to become more positive?

1.       Minimize the amount of time you spend on the news.  With all due respect to the hard work reporters and journalists do, the news tends to be the list of the ten worse things that happened yesterday.  Find your favorite news source, keep informed but don’t believe that what you see on the news is all there is going on in the world.  With seven billion of us on the planet, there’s also a lot of exciting, touching, heart-warming, positive and miraculous things happening too.  In fact, I read that for every negative thing that happens, ten positive ones do.  We just have to take the time to notice them.

2.       Read, listen to, watch some up-lifting material.  I’m a big fan of Oprah Winfrey’s new network OWN. 

3.       Take some of those positive seminars I mentioned.  There are a lot of us out there presenting them.  Find someone you like, go to their seminars, follow them on social media.

4.       Limit the time you spend with negative people and find more positive people to hang around with.  So many great leaders say we become who we spend time with.  If your life is pretty negative, look at who you hang around with. Even more, check out what mindset you’re putting out there.

5.       Start to become more aware of what you’re thinking and saying.  We used to have a ‘Positivity Jar’ in my Strategies for Success classes to help keep negativity in check.  We made an agreement in the beginning of the semester that every time a student said something negative, they had to put a penny in the jar.  Anytime I said something negative, I had to put in a quarter.  With 10 classes each year, we collected enough to donate to the Rhode Island Food Bank.  The result?  A much more positive environment that we all benefited from.

If any of this makes the least bit of sense to you, make a decision right now to up the level of positivity in your life.  Notice the good, the beautiful, the kind.  Wonder about the possibilities, the discoveries, the miracles.  Load up that mental positivity jar and you’ll be more able to handle whatever life throws your way.