The Power of Positive Thinking

It's cliched, trite and overused, this phrase. It's been the title of a popular book by Norman Vincent Peale. And it's true.

(Thoughtful, by Mel B.)

In the June 2011 newsletter from the Center for Creative Leadership, there's an article entitled, "You Are What You Think You Are."It does a great job of reinforcing this truism and clearly pointing out ways to combat negative thoughts.

One thing this article reminded me about was the need to have a mantra, to literally tell yourself over and over and over and over again one particular thing that is essential for you believe about yourself. For me, that mantra is "Strong. Intelligent. Beautiful." I've tried to make it a part of my personal brand.

Personal branding, I think, comes straight from understanding the concept of positive self-talk. Personal branding, in it's most basic form, is perhaps the intersection of the best understanding of yourself and how you want to be perceived by others. It's the place where self-esteem is permitted, nay, encouraged to grow.

At the beginning of personal branding, you have your benchmark. Continually participating in positive self-talk can and will help move you from your benchmark and in the direction of your ultimate personal brand.

How do you practice the power of positive thinking? Have you considered how this can work for you in relation to your personal brand?

And Don't Forget to Be Happy

For a number of years, I've struggled with understanding happiness: how to be happy, specifically; that while you can be very happy, there's a definite difference between passive and active happiness; and, understanding that happiness is not just innate and automatic most of the time.


That's a hard realization, I've discovered: finding out that once things are "set" (whatever "set" may be for you), happiness isn't automatically included. Happiness, it turns out, is not part of the "set" package. It's a value-add that you actually have to decide on "purchasing." It's like some insurance; the insurance can be a great idea and is sometimes a life-saver, but is not automatically included.

And you do have to "purchase" happiness, in a sense. You have to want it, and in wanting it, you have to work towards it. Since happiness isn't automatic and won't just happen, you have to learn, through trial, what really makes you happy.

And then, you have to Do. Those. Things.

You're essentially "purchasing" your happiness: putting time and energy into things that you know will pay off handsomely when it comes to your mental and physical health. Life will be better if you try to be happy, even if it seems to be terrible right now.

Happiness, it turns out, is a lot like relationships. Or plants. Or pets. Or, I imagine, kids. You have to nurture happiness to have enough of it or . . . realize one day that you miss it. At least that void is fixed easily enough. (One caveat: mental illness is a completely different beast; thus and such, the rules for returning to true happiness are completely different--and this blog post will not address those.)

And so, I'm going to revisit a tried and true list of things that make me happy and enjoy my evening with the wonderful man in my life, another glass of wine, a book and a great little, purring fuzzball. And remember to "purchase" my happy.

The Blessings of Those Gone Before

When I started this blog years ago, one of the ways that I found to generate content was to share emails that my Grandma Tawanka had written me while I was in college. Yes, I was in college a good number of years ago--about 13 years to be exact. And 13+ years ago, the Internet was still in it's infancy. Email, while I was in undergrad at UNC-CH, was still checked with a dial-up Unix program. The idea of a user-friendly interface was a strange and evolving idea, but had to be done, because not everyone could remember that ^X was Cut and ^V was Paste. But, I digress.

Realizing that I had some blog momentum that I'd started building last week, I needed to post something to keep it going. And I thought I'd return to that old crutch: sharing my Grandmother's wisdom. Now, it's not that I took that wisdom for granted; in fact, many people have told me over the years how wonderful and what a blessing it was that I shared those thoughts. It's just that it became awfully easy for me to pull out one of Grandma's thoughts, instead of thinking up my own topic.

So, as I navigated to the files where I keep Grandma's emails, I began to realize something had happened. That something was that I had effectively posted all of Grandma's emails before my blog fell off a cliff into utter oblivion.

And . . . well, that's just tearing me apart. Although I loved re-reading and sharing her emails, not having them to read and savor as I format them and get them ready for you to read means that she's gone once again. And though we were never terribly close (we lived on different coasts of this great country, you see), I LOVED getting those emails from her. Really, at that time, no one else I knew had a Grandma who would email them. It made me realize how special I was to her.

So, though I'm sad that I don't have any more words of wisdom to share with you from my Grandma, I hope you'll look through the blog for the posts tagged with "Grandma's Thoughts" and find one that you like.

Because they're all there. And I hope you, too, will take a blessing from those who have gone before us.

Has Facebook Lost Its Finesse?

In Toastmasters this evening, a very interesting theory was postulated in one of the speeches: Facebook has lost it's finesse for those long-term, bleeding edge adopters.

Those who were once permitted Facebook use because they had the use of a .edu email address in bygone years may have grown weary of Facebook and its uses. Those who once posted their class schedules and their one measly photo, now may have lost interest in the social media platform that has become so ubiquitous, so popular, so prevalent, so . . . bourgeois.

(Source: Lucius Beebe Memorial Library's Photostream)

True enough that Facebook has no exclusivity any longer. Where one once had to be a student or a professor at an educational institution--which insinuates that you were intelligent and computer savvy in the days when computer savvy was still rare--Facebook is now a veritable mall of social networking. Anyone, from age 13 up, is "permitted" to have a Facebook account. Anyone. The quiet nerd. The outgoing socialite. The popular and unpopular alike. The rich and the poor and everyone in between. (I have it on good authority that the most visited website at our public library is Facebook.)

This theory is definitely one that has given me pause. I still find value in Facebook. Heck, my family seems to only know how to communicate through Facebook (but hey, it works . . .). And it still can share the richness of life: because of Facebook's immediacy and users seeming lack of inhibition in posting (even me - because we forget about the extra 250 people we friended, thinking only of maybe even 10), we get genuine, raw emotion. We get videos of our far away friends doing . . . whatever they may be doing. We get photos of their significant life events, the ones they're so excited about that they want *almost* everyone to know about.

Perhaps for those original Facebookers, something is lost. IMHO, I think that loss has been a great boon to everyone else, however.

Tell me: what do you think? Has Facebook lost its finesse for you?

Happy Brithday, America!

For me, the fourth of July is a time to reflect on where this country has been and how far we've come--also known as understanding and appreciating the history of this great country.

Now, I'm not much of a history buff. In fact, I don't think anyone would ever use the word "buff" in a sentence with the word "history" and a reference to me. I will say that history has become more interesting and more important to me as I've grown, although I don't think I'll ever actively seek out more history to read or watch.

Well, let me take that back. Perhaps I will. History is, after all, a story. And I do like a good story, be it nonfiction or fiction. Indeed, I realize that I've been seeking out increasing amounts of history in my life: my husband and I went to Washington, D.C. for vacation this year, where you simply cannot escape the history of this great nation. I've found that I like to read well-written biographies or autobiographies, and film really conveys the intense emotions found in history much better than other mediums.

Most recently, we watched Gettysburg. Or, more correctly, we finished Gettysburg (it is quite a lengthy movie). As Jeffrey points out, the director is and was a neophyte when he made this film, but what makes it great is the director's love of Civil War history.

You get to see that the soliders had no time to grieve; they had to fight to stay alive. You don't feel the hunger of the soldiers, but you hear their commander ask over and over again for rations for his troops, so you know they're probably starving. You see the anguish and stress that General Lee was under in trying to plan an attack, as well as the hope in his face as he watches his troops advance on the field of battle. You see the myriad of troops march across the field, ultimately to their deaths . . . and you feel the fear, but you also feel their strong resolve.

And, at the end of the battle, you get to see the pain and torment of war. You understand that those who survived, those very brave men on both sides, will never be able to banish from their minds what they had seen that day, much less any of what they'd seen in the days, weeks, months and years before.

And for those men and women (who did participate in the Civil War and were essential to the fight on both sides), as well as those before and all those after: Thank you. Thank you for our freedom and fighting to help preserve it. I pray that we may never take your sacrifice for granted.