I recently interviewed a motel housekeeper in Miami for a project I’m working on to support our New York Times bestselling book, Getting Back to Happy. “Do you like your job?” I asked her. To my surprise, she smiled from ear to ear and was breathless for a couple moments. She finally collected herself and said, “I can’t believe how much I love my job! I get to make dozens of our guests happy every day and feed my two beautiful children at the same time…”
Then, at that same motel 30 minutes later, I met a family of six in the lobby. They were just hanging out, sharing stories, laughing and taking turns reading excerpts from a book. Their joyous presence caught my attention, so I asked them where they were from. “Oh, we’re from here,” the father said. “Our house burned down last night, but miraculously all of us got out safely. And that makes this a pretty darn good day.”
Let these people’s stories be your wake-up call today.
Let them remind you that, to a great extent, we make our own life stories by our thoughts. The reality we ultimately create is a process of our daily thinking. And when we think better about our lives, we live better in spite of the obvious challenges we face along the way.
Thus, the goal isn’t to get rid of all our negative thoughts, feelings and life situations. That’s impossible. The goal is to change our perspective, so we can respond more effectively to them.
And that’s exactly what I want to discuss with you today: three perspective shifts that aren’t exactly easy to make, but worth every bit of effort and practice you can muster. Because, when we think better about our circumstances, we live better in spite of them
1. See your fantasies for what they are.
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