It's Never As Bad As You Expect

By David Bohl

Dr. Daniel Gilbert, a Harvard professor of psychology, has done some ground-breaking and very intriguing research into the science of happiness. Dr. Gilbert has discovered, for instance, that we don't enjoy things as much as we expect.

This research has an interesting opposite side, which is that things are never as bad as we expect. Dr. Gilbert gives an example of Democrats who thought they would be "devastated" if George W. Bush won re-election. Gilbert's research showed that the Democrats involved in the study were not nearly as devastated, the day after the election, as they expected to be. Their reports of their feelings were more positive than they expected. However, several weeks later, they remembered being as devastated as they had expected. Clearly there is a disconnect between what we expect and what we actually get, and another disconnect between what we actually get and what we later think we got. This disconnect can be used to help us deal with difficult situations, in two ways.

First, when anticipating something unpleasant, we can remember that there is scientific proof that things are not as bad, when experienced, as they are when imagined beforehand. We can use this knowledge to calm ourselves and remind ourselves that we're not really going to experience as much pain, sadness, or other negative feelings as we expect.

We can also record our feelings immediately after the experience, so that we can later look back and remember that it was not as bad as we expected, even if, later, we remember it being extremely hard or very painful.

Our minds play tricks on us, and one of the tricks they play is imagining that something will be absolutely horrible. This turns out to be a useful trick, because in fact things are rarely, if ever, as bad as we expect, and we are always able to deal with them more easily because of that. But the trick our memory plays of remembering things as being exactly that horrible is a trick we could do without, and which we can do without by making notes, or writing in a journal, what really happened and what it really felt like.

Dr. Gilbert's research suggests that, when it comes to happiness, we don't know our own minds, and this is equally true of less pleasant experiences, from a trip to the dentist to being fired. Humans are remarkably resilient individuals. We can cope with things we never believed we were capable of surviving, and we can come through these experiences feeling stronger than before we went through them.

But we don't think that's true, because of the tricks our minds play.

This week, try these tips to experience your life more authentically.

• Before a dreaded meeting or other event, write down your expectations.

• Spend some time thinking about how you can change those expectations to more positive ones.

• Write down your exact reaction after the event; compare it to your expectations and note how things were better than expected.

Lifestyle Mentor, Personal Coach, Author, Educator, and Entrepreneur, David B. Bohl is the creator of Slow Down FAST. To learn more about this step-by-step strategy for Living YOUR Life YOUR way, and to sign up for his 9 FREE Tips for Finding Happiness in a Fast-Paced World, free teleseminars, free Special Report, free bi-monthly ezine and more, go to: http://www.SlowDownFAST.com

Discover Your Reason Why if You Want to Achieve Success

If you're struggling to achieve success then it may be because you haven't identified the reason why you want to achieve success, why you want to achieve a particular goal. When you discover this it will become a compelling motive that drives you forward and gives you the energy to attract the people, resources and opportunities you need in your life to achieve your desired goal.

Let me give you an example. I was recently listening to Graham White interview, Noah St John of The Success Clinic, Inc. on the topic of "Permission to Succeed". Now Graham White is the former head coach of North America's largest training company and during this candid interview he said something quite shocking. He said there was a time in his life that he had been close to committing suicide but one thing prevented him from taking his own life. When he remembered that he had a new baby daughter he realised that taking his own life was no longer an option.

Let take another example. You may desperately want to get back into shape but instead of exercising and eating healthily you scoff junk food, or eat cakes, biscuits, ice cream and the like in excess and you flake out in front of the television for hours on end every day. Then you develop a life-threatening illness and the doctor says to you that if you want to live you have to lose weight and improve your fitness. You now have your reason why. It's a matter of life or death and you do what it takes to regain your health.

Perhaps your company is floundering and if you don't do something drastic it will fold. The truth is that you love the work that you are doing. You just haven't found a way to make it profitable because you have been deluding yourself. You have forgotten that no matter how much you love doing something a business must be profitable if it is to survive. You have been neglecting critical aspects of finance. You have not been addressing the issue of marketing and you know that some of your employees are not pulling their weight and yet you have procrastinated in effectively dealing with this issue. It may even be that you have too many employees for your current operations. Whatever the reasons for the demise of your business, when you recognise that if you let your business run into the ground you will not have a vehicle to express what you love doing, you will have a compelling reason to knock your business into shape.

In each case I have described here it isn't that you don't know what to do or how to do it. By the latter, I don't mean that you necessarily know all the minute details of what you have to do to achieve the results that you desire, but if you don't, you can surely find someone who does know. In each case, it seemed easier initially to simply drift along, ignoring your true calling and shying away from stepping up to the plate and being the person you were meant to be in this world. When you found a compelling enough reason why to change you were galvanised into action.

However, there's another piece to the puzzle. You see what I have described are external motivating factors and while they can help you overcome obstacles you may be experiencing, to make those significant changes in your life, you will still be working to correct symptoms. You will not be addressing the underlying factor that resulted in you being in your current situation in the first place.

White also said that while acting as a business consultant that he would assist business owners who were on the brink of declaring bankruptcy and get them back on their feet again only to find that 6-18 months later some owners had run their company back into the ground again. St John explained this by saying that he had shown the business owners what to do but he hadn't helped them uncover their why.

To be truly effective you have to get at the root cause which is an internal factor. This is also another "why" and it is the biggest why of all. It answers the question of the purpose of your existence on this earth. When you can correlate external motivating factors such as the love for your family, your desire for life, the love for the work you are doing with why you are here on this earth then you become unstoppable.

"Most people do not know why they are here on earth. When you don't know why you're here on earth that can cause feelings that can range from anywhere from just mild frustration to a general sense of hopelessness to feelings of suicide, to actually taking your own life."
Noah St John, The Success Clinic, Inc.

Just look at what you are able to achieve when you have a strong external motivating factor. Even if you have only experienced this for a brief time, notice how differently people respond to you when you are on purpose. They either scramble to help you or they move clear out of your way. Yet cognitive scientists have proven that only 5% of our decisions are on a conscious level. This means that a whooping 95% of our decisions are made on the subconscious level. Can you now see what awesome firepower you have at your disposal when you can align your internal with your external "why tos"?

"You can have all the 'how tos' of success but if you have more 'why not tos', even if those 'why not tos' exist on the subconscious level, you simply won't allow yourself to succeed to your full capacity no matter how many 'how tos' of success you know."
Noah St John, The Success Clinic, Inc.

It may be a challenge to discover what your purpose is in life or it may be very simple. You see the answer to that particular question is also inside. The real question is:

"Are you willing to go inside to unlock the secret to your success - your reason why?"

Nickolove Lovemore is a Life Coach, a Certified LifeSuccess Consultant and a Certified NLP Practitioner who will work with you to develop your personal success strategy for achieving your goals. Visit Achieve Life Success for gifts, special offers and news about upcoming events. Email your name to Purpose Vision Goals for free report that will help you to discover your true purpose in life.