Reducing Conflict 65 Paradise Mindset

October 31, 2022

I used to do a lot of teaching online. A student who lived in Detroit was lamenting another dreary winter day. He had reached the breaking point.  His comment to a student in Hawaii was, “Well, I have to take responsibility for my own misery. After all, I chose not to live in paradise.”  I wrote to the student that “paradise” is a state of mind not a state of the Union.  

Human beings have the power to live in reasonable happiness most of the time. They need to choose to exercise that power.  That is true regardless of where they are located or what the conditions are. It all has to do with our attitude. Please understand, I am not being frivolous here. I am talking about true peace and contentment being possible, even when circumstances are far from pleasant. 

Finding paradise in a POW Camp

There are stories of POWs who have achieved a state of joy, even as they were being starved.  One such individual was Viktor Frankel during WWII in the Auschwitz Concentration Camp.  Viktor was a psychologist in Vienna living a comfortable life when he was nabbed by the Nazis. Like most prisoners of war, He was treated with disdain, starved, and beaten.  

The mindset to survive

Frankel was curious about why some people survived, while most others quickly died.  He described the survival instinct as the realization that there was something significant to live for. The survivors had a mindset of “something significant yet to do in their life.” Once they were reminded of their purpose for living, they had the ability to survive.

The paradise mindset in action

Viktor used the power of visualization to rise above the incredible conditions of the moment and feel joy. After the war, he wrote a book on his observations entitled Man’s Search for Meaning.  

Some people feel they are in prison today

What prison do you live in?  Does it sometimes feel like you are suffering needlessly at work? Are the managers in your organization kind of reminiscent of prison guards, or at least schoolyard bullies? Do you feel there is little hope to be happy or content with the conditions that exist around you? 

If that describes you, then realize you are making a choice. You are choosing to not live in paradise when the opportunity is there for you to do so. At least you can improve your frame of mind significantly.

You may say “This guy is crazy; he has no clue about my miserable existence here in this dungeon.”  That accusation is correct. I don’t know your condition, but I do know the person most in control of your happiness is you.  Choose to be happy or ignore this advice and remain miserable.  I am not saying this is easy, because if it was, everyone would do it.

Focus on a positive mindset

If you choose to change conditions for the better, get some material on mental imaging and change your life. The more depressed you are, the more you have to gain. Most of the time you cannot change the conditions you face. You can control your attitude or reactions so that your state of mind is much more enjoyable.

This philosophy is not that profound, and we have all heard some form of it numerous times before. Some people call it “mind over matter.” Norman Vincent Peale called it “The Power of Positive Thinking.” Earl Nightingale made the observation that “We become what we think about.”   

One helpful book is the classic, Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz (1960).  Maltz became fascinated with the process of setting goals for his plastic surgery patients. He learned the power of self-affirmation was enabled by the connection between the mind and the body.

He taught how developing a positive inner vision was a means of developing a positive outer vision. This led to the idea that a person’s outer success almost never rises above the one visualized internally. More recent philosophers such as Brene Brown, Stephen M.R. Covey, and Lou Holtz enhance the theory. They have based much of their work on the ideas originally developed by Maltz.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, when we are miserable, it is hard to remember that we are in control.  We just need to assume that control. When you get depressed, try visualization techniques. They can make a big difference in your life. Paradise is not as far away as it may seem.

Bob Whipple, MBA, CPTD, is a consultant, trainer, speaker, and author in the areas of leadership and trust.  He is the author of The Trust Factor: Advanced Leadership for Professionals, Understanding E-Body Language: Building Trust Online, and Leading with Trust is Like Sailing Downwind.  Bob has many years as a senior executive with a Fortune 500 Company and with non-profit organizations. 


Paradise is a State of Mind

February 27, 2016

I do a lot of online teaching of leadership and business courses. My students live all over the globe and have interesting backgrounds.

I have had a student write his assignments while on bombing runs in Iraq and another individual participate in class while fleeing a hurricane bearing down on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

In one of my classes, there was a student living in Hawaii, so many of the other students were jealous of this individual, since we were having a rough winter on the United States mainland.

At one point, a student who lived in Detroit was lamenting another dreary day, and he reached the breaking point. His comment to the student in Hawaii was, “Well, I have to take responsibility for my own misery. After all, I chose not to live in paradise.”

I immediately wrote to the complaining student reminding him that:

“paradise” is a state of mind rather than a state of the Union.

I believe human beings have the power to live in reasonable happiness most of the time, regardless of where they are located or what the conditions are. It all has to do with our attitude.

Please understand, I am not being frivolous here, I am talking about true peace and contentment being possible even when circumstances are far from pleasant.

There are stories galore of POWs who have achieved a state of joy and gratitude for life even as they were being starved and tortured.

One such individual was Viktor Frankl during WWII in the Auschwitz Concentration Camp. Viktor was a psychologist in Vienna living a comfortable life when he was nabbed by the Nazis and brought to the camp.

He was treated with disdain and was starved and beaten, like most POWs. He was curious about why some people survived, while most others quickly died.

He described the survival instinct as the realization that there was something significant to live for, or something yet to do in their life. Once they were reminded of their purpose for living, they had the ability to endure their hopeless situation and survive.

In Viktor’s own situation, he was able to use the power of visualization to rise above the incredible conditions of the moment and feel peace and joy, even among the dying and hopeless people. After the war, he wrote a book on his observations entitled “Man’s Search for Meaning.”

What prison do you live in? Does it sometimes feel like you are suffering needlessly at work? Are the managers in your organization reminiscent of prison guards, or at least schoolyard bullies?

Do you feel there is little hope to be happy or content with the conditions that exist around you? If that describes you, then realize you are making a choice. You are choosing to not live in paradise when the opportunity is there for you to do so, or at least to improve your frame of mind significantly.

I am sure many of you are saying, “This author is crazy; he has no clue about the miserable existence I live here in this dungeon.” Well, that is correct, I do not know your condition, but I do know the person most in control of your happiness is you.

Choose to be happy or ignore this advice and remain miserable. I am not saying this is easy, because if it was, everyone would do it. The fact remains, dissatisfaction can be a powerful motivator for change.

Do what you can to change the external circumstances, but the real work starts within. Get clear on what you really want. Use visualization to vividly imagine what it would be like to have it.

Have the courage to face the difficult issues you have been resisting, forgive others and yourself, make decisions that you have been putting off. While you are making your changes, support yourself with positive self-talk and mental imaging. Seek the help of a coach or other professional when you need it. As you make progress, celebrate it!

The more depressed you are, the more you have to gain. Even when you cannot change the conditions being presented to you by the world, usually you can control your attitude or reactions so that your state of mind is much more enjoyable.

This philosophy is not that profound, and we have all heard some form of it numerous times before. Some people call it “mind over matter.” Norman Vincent Peale called it “The Power of Positive Thinking,” while Earl Nightingale made the observation that “We become what we think about.” Henry Ford quipped, “If you think you can, or if you think you can’t, you are right.”

One helpful book is the classic, “Psycho-Cybernetics” by Maxwell Maltz (1960). Maltz became fascinated with the process of setting goals for his plastic surgery patients. He learned that the power of self-affirmation and mental visualization techniques were enabled by the connection between the mind and the body.

Maltz taught how developing a positive inner vision was a means of developing a positive outer vision. This led to the idea that a person’s outer success almost never rises above the one visualized internally. Many contemporary philosophers such as Zig Ziglar, Tony Robbins, and Brian Tracy have based much of their work on the theories developed by Maltz.

When you are miserable, it is hard to remember that you can be in control if you want to assume that control. When you get depressed, try visualization techniques. They can make a big difference in your life. If you get into that habit, it really is possible in most situations to make significant movement in the right direction.

The key understanding to enable this skill is how to control your thinking. Paradise is not as far away as it seems.

Video #4 – We Keep Discovering the Same Vein of Gold

Visualization

There have been many books and programs written about visualization and many different techniques you can use. Here are a few resources that I have found helpful in my life.
“Lead the Field” Earl Nightingale, Nightingale Conant Inc.
“The Science of Personal Achievement: The 17 Universal Principles of Success” Napoleon Hill, Nightingale Conant Inc.
“How To Master Your Time” Brian Tracy, Nightingale Conant Inc.
“Goals” Zig Zigler, Nightingale Conant Inc.
“Theatre of the Mind” Maxwell Maltz, Nightingale Conant Inc.
“Unleash the Power Within” Tony Robbins, Nightingale Conant Inc.

To get you started on visualizing your own personal paradise, here is a sample process that many find helpful.

• Relax in a quiet place and focus on the end result. Don’t worry on how you will get there.
• Imagine vividly what it will look like and feel like when the goal is achieved. Use every sense. In what condition are your body, mind, emotions, and spirit? Zoom in on the details. Flesh it out.
• Feel the joy of gratitude for everyone and everything that helped you get to this place. Feel the excitement of achievement.
• Accept that you are able and worthy to achieve this goal.
• Affirm that the Universe is conspiring to assist you.
• Be open to inspired ideas for what the most important steps to take next.
• Trust the process. Experience will show you it is an effective one.
• Write down your goals, including the all important “What’s in it for me.”
• Act on your inspired ideas.

Having visualized the outcome, you have activated the Reticular Activating System, part of your brain which will help you notice things that can be helpful to your quest. Every time you visualize, it gets easier to see yourself succeeding and you can add more detail and get more ideas. Regular visualization can help with your motivation because your goals no longer seem out of reach.

Key Concepts in this article:
1. Paradise is a state of mind, not a state of the Union.
2. We live in a world of our own creation and have much more power than we realize to control the quality of our lives.
3. Many philosophers have discovered the simple but most powerful concept of positive thinking.

Exercises for you:
1. Think of a time when you were miserable. How did you finally pull out of it? That process is one clue to how you can control your emotions in the future.
2. In what ways do you help other people out of their depressions? Are you effective at this, or do you merely annoy people who are already down?
3. Think of three ways to feel more paradise today. What is holding you back from doing these things?

Bob Whipple is CEO of Leadergrow, Inc. an organization dedicated to growing leaders. He can be reached at bwhipple@leadergrow.com  585-392-7763. Website www.leadergrow.com   BLOG www.thetrustambassador.com He is author of the following books: The Trust Factor: Advanced Leadership for Professionals, Understanding E-Body Language: Building Trust Online, Leading with Trust is Like Sailing Downwind, and Trust in Transition: Navigating Organizational Change.


Enjoy Your Wiggle

March 2, 2013

Wiggle croppedHow do you feel about being you? Be truthful with yourself, and think about how much you like yourself right this moment. This article, hopefully, will shock you into a different frame of mind relative to your happiness and the quality of your life.

I teach many online courses, and deal with students from all over the world. I recall one interchange between a student living in a frigid part of the USA and another student in Hawaii.

At one point, the student who lived in Detroit was lamenting another dreary day, and he had reached the breaking point. His comment to the student in Hawaii was, “Well, I have to take responsibility for my own misery. After all, I chose not to live in paradise.” I immediately wrote to the complaining student reminding him that “paradise” is a state of mind rather than a state of the Union.

There are numerous things that gauge the level of satisfaction and happiness we milk out of living. This article focuses on one’s perception of self. Most of us are in the middle of a long progression of the days of our lives. It feels like we have been around forever, and we have a long way to go before somebody puts us in a pine box. We live each day reacting to the forces and challenges that hit us. Some days are good, and others are bad.

We are what we are because that is what we have chosen to be. Many people go through life being unhappy with themselves and blaming others or circumstances (like if I only had a smaller nose). We have such a short time on this planet, and it would be smart to be happy with ourselves first and foremost.

Nobody else has to wake up with you and be with you 100% of the time, so if you are not happy with yourself, the quality of your precious life is diminished. Who would be to blame for that? Hmmm…let me think.

My observation of our lives in the grand scheme of the universe and the ages is that human beings are all like little worms. You have to go up only a few miles and look down through a telescope, and you can observe us all wiggling around all over the world as we move through our day.

We show up and wiggle around for a fleeting 80 or so years, and then we are gone. Eighty years in celestial time is hardly a blink. Better make sure you are enjoying your wiggle. Our possessions that we covet, our money that we lust after make very little difference in the end. All that matters is how much of an impact we have managed to have on others, how much love we have generated, and how much we have enjoyed our wiggle.

What are some of the things that contribute to enjoying your wiggle? Here are a few examples. (Note, this list is not exhaustive.)

Making a contribution: We all make contributions, both good and bad. If you have provided one shred of thought that has been recorded and provided value to other people, you have made a contribution. Two shreds counts for double that value, so provide many shreds of value to the advancement of society.

Finding honest love: If we feel deeply in our soul that we have loved the people in our lives, then we go to our grave reflecting on a life well lived. This, of course, includes family, but it also includes heroes, mentors, classmates, pets, friends, grocers, ducks, lamps, books, and any other person or thing that we truly love.

Believing in an Infinite Power: Many people think of this as religion, but it really covers the entire realm of spiritual awareness. I do not know about you, but I really do believe that something is guiding my steps at times, and it is not just me. There have been too many remarkable surprises handed to me in life for me to take credit for thinking them up or for them to be just random coincidences. You can call it what you wish, but there is an Infinite Presence there somehow.

Helping others: Whenever you give of yourself to help another, you feel great about yourself. That effort is a really good wiggle in your daily routine. The help can come in any form, and the only criterion is that at that time you were thinking more about the other person’s situation than your own. The help could be financial, physical, emotional, or even comical.

Making something: To create a thing of beauty, or even ugliness since beauty is subject to interpretation, is a good wiggle. Some people are really good at this, like my father, who painted over 2000 fine watercolor paintings after the age of 55. Some people create great food or fine woodwork. To shape the elements into a new configuration that has never been done is intrinsically rewarding. Most creations are not marketable, but they are physical evidence that we were around and wiggling happily.

Teaching or mentoring: As we seek to impart some of our wisdom onto other people, we give the gift of knowledge. It is a subset of helping others, but this one is special, because we target the help on an individual who benefits from it. For a person with great insight and knowledge to keep it to himself really wastes his wiggle time. I think it is really difficult to mentor from the grave, although some people do believe strongly in doing it or receiving it, which is part of their own wiggle.

Appreciating what you experience: This attitude is all about not being numb to the beauty all around us every day. Seeing the small acts of kindness of one person toward another brings us joy. Marveling at the beauty of a flower, the taste of raspberry Jello, or the Bach B Minor Mass provides deep joy, but only if you are awake and paying attention.

Loving what you do: The ability to look at each day as an adventure into the possible instead of a drudgery of our current agony is what lifts us up. Hope is there when you enjoy your work and your play. There is a choice you make every day as you wiggle through it.

Those are just eight examples from the top of my head of how to make the most out of your 80-year wiggle. Who knows, you might beat the odds and wiggle until you are older than 100, or you might check out in your 20s. You will notice the absence of wealth or possessions on my list, because I think those things dry up and blow away very quickly after we stop wiggling. In the grand scheme of the world and the eons of time, the only thing that really matters is what you did with your opportunity to wiggle, not how big a pile of clutter you were able to generate.


Paradise is a State of Mind

February 20, 2011

I do a lot of online teaching of leadership and business courses. My students live all over the globe and have interesting backgrounds. I have had a student write his assignments while on bombing runs in Iraq, and another individual participate in class while fleeing a hurricane bearing down on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. In one of my classes, there was a student living in Hawaii, so many of the other students were jealous of this individual, since we were having a rough winter on the United States Mainland.

At one point, a student who lived in Detroit was lamenting another dreary day, and he reached the breaking point. His comment to the student in Hawaii was, “Well, I have to take responsibility for my own misery. After all, I chose not to live in paradise.” I immediately wrote to the complaining student reminding him that “paradise” is a state of mind rather than a state of the Union.

I believe human beings have the power to live in reasonable happiness most of the time, regardless of where they are located or what the conditions are. It all has to do with our attitude. Please understand, I am not being frivolous here, I am talking about true peace and contentment being possible even when circumstances are far from pleasant.

There are stories galore of POWs who have achieved a state of joy and gratitude for life even as they were being starved and tortured. One such individual was Viktor Frankel during WWII in the Auschwitz Concentration Camp. Viktor was a psychologist in Vienna living a comfortable life when he was nabbed by the Nazis and brought to the camp. He was treated with disdain and was starved and beaten, like most POWs. He was curious about why some people survived, while most others quickly died. He described the survival instinct as the realization that there was something significant to live for, or something yet to do in their life. Once they were reminded of their purpose for living, they had the ability to endure their hopeless situation and survive.

In Viktor’s own situation, he was able to use the power of visualization to rise above the incredible conditions of the moment and feel peace and joy, even among the dying and hopeless people. After the war, he wrote a book on his observations entitled Man’s Search for Meaning.

What prison do you live in? Does it sometimes feel like you are suffering needlessly at work? Are the managers in your organization kind of reminiscent of prison guards, or at least schoolyard bullies? Do you feel there is little hope to be happy or content with the conditions that exist around you? If that describes you, then realize you are making a choice. You are choosing to not live in paradise when the opportunity is there for you to do so, or at least to improve your frame of mind significantly.

I am sure many of you are saying, “This author is crazy; he has no clue about the miserable existence I live here in this dungeon.” Well, that is correct, I do not know your condition, but I do know the person most in control of your happiness is you. Choose to be happy or ignore this advice and remain miserable. I am not saying this is easy, because if it was, everyone would do it.

If you choose to change conditions for the better, get some material on mental imaging and start changing your life. The more depressed you are, the more you have to gain. Most of the time you cannot change the conditions being presented to you by the world, but most of the time you can control your attitude or reactions so that your state of mind is much more enjoyable.

This philosophy is not that profound, and we have all heard some form of it numerous times before. Some people call it “mind over matter.” Norman Vincent Peale called it “The Power of Positive Thinking,” while Earl Nightingale made the observation that “We become what we think about.”

One helpful book is the classic, Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz (1960). Maltz became fascinated with the process of setting goals for his plastic surgery patients. He learned that the power of self-affirmation and mental visualization techniques were enabled by the connection between the mind and the body. He taught how developing a positive inner vision was a means of developing a positive outer vision. This led to the idea that a person’s outer success almost never rises above the one visualized internally. Many contemporary philosophers such as Zig Zigler, Tony Robbins, and Brian Tracy have based much of their work on the theories developed by Maltz.

Unfortunately, when we are miserable, it is hard to remember that we can be in control if we want to assume that control. When you get depressed, try the visualization techniques. They can make a big difference in your life. Paradise is not as far away as it seems.