How to Choose Optimism #1 Cultivate Positive Thinking

It’s better for our health to seek positive emotions – affection, joy, satisfaction. The links between the heart and brain are well established. A single positive thought can trigger beneficial neurotransmitters and hormones. Oxytocin is the hormone of love, pleasure and orgasm. Serotonin regulates our mood positively. Dopamine stimulates and encourages us. A thought, look or smile is enough to bring down our blood pressure, and make us feel better.

Test these scientific principles. When you wake up, dwell a moment on a dream, or something pleasant. When you arrive at work, forget your dreadful journey or the bad weather. Share something positive. When a friend or college look at you, smile and say hi or wave. In these moments, you’ll feel your face relax and a good mood take hold.

Lord, Give Us Today Our Daily Idea(s)

Change Your Life: Don't Rush, Savour Life

“The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us and we see nothing but sand;

the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone”

(George Eliot)

The guiding axiom of modern life is that more is better. But we pay a heavy price for placing quantity above quality. Activities, no matter how potentially enjoyable they are, bring us no pleasure if we are constantly on the run, racing from one thing to the next. Even the most delicious food in the world can give me no enjoyment if I devour it as fast as I can. To be a good wine drinker, for example, I cannot sip the entire glass in one gulp; to fully enjoy the richness of the drink, I smell, I taste, I savour, I take my time. To become good at life, to enjoy the richness that life has to offer, I sometimes need to slow down, to take my time.

The first step to truly see the potential of my vocations and ministries, the richness in the world and the beauty in our life, to love and appreciate people around me, is to – slow down. Can you slow down just a little and, rather than rush through life, savour its treasures and gifts? (Life is hard you know, don’t make it harder. Speeding is not necessary winning. Slow down).

Don’t rush through life,
Savour life

Lord, Give Us Today Our Daily Idea(s)

 References:

1. Choose the Life You Want: 101 Ways to Create You Own Road to Happiness by Tal Ben-Shahar, PhD (New York: The Experiment, 2012) Buy this book!

2. In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed by C. Honore (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2005)

Change Your Life: Experience Your Work as a Calling

Don't like your job?
1) Find work that is meaningful, or
2) Find something meaningful in your work

“This is the true joy in life –
being used for a purpose, recognized by yourself as a mighty one”

(George Bernard Shaw)

We spend a good part of our working hours at work, and yet many people derive little meaning from what occupies them for several thousand hours each year. If we do not experience a sense of purpose in our work, we can choose to do one of two things (aside from resigning ourselves to being unhappy): find work that is meaningful or find something meaningful in our work.

We don’t all have the luxury of having the perfect job – the one that reflects our values, where we work only with people we like, and whose atmosphere precisely suits our temperament. But even if we do not find ourselves in that ideal setting, we have a great deal of choice as to how we experience our daily work. Whether as a CEO or a salesman, an investment banker or a community organizer, a minister or a manager, a janitor or a cleaner – not complete control, perhaps, but some – over what elements of our work we focus on, and consequently, on how we experience our working life.

We can, for example, remind ourselves how our work is making a difference in other people’s lives; we can focus on the elements that we find exciting and interesting, the meaningful interactions that we have with colleagues and customers; or we can appreciate the opportunity our work gives us to develop or expand our professional skills. If we can find no inherent value in our current occupation, we can tell ourselves that our work is our current occupation, we can tell ourselves that our work provides for us and for those we care about, or that it enables us to engage in meaningful activities after hours.

Researchers have found that those who made the choice, conscious or not, to see their work as merely a job, were less happy, were less satisfied with their life, than were their colleagues who viewed what they did a calling. “Even in the most restricted and routine jobs,” the study concluded, “employees can exert some influence on what is the essence of their work.”

Don’t treat the work you do as a job,

Experience your work as a calling.

Lord, Give Us Today Our Daily Idea(s)

 References:

1. Choose the Life You Want: 101 Ways to Create You Own Road to Happiness by Tal Ben-Shahar, PhD (New York: The Experiment, 2012) Buy this book!

2. The Path to Purpose: How Young People Find Their Calling in Life by D. William (New York: Free Press, 2009).

Creativity is an Expression of Mental Health

Vincent Ryan Ruggiero in his book The Art of Thinking writes that one common image of the creative person is reinforced by a number of low-budget horror films. That image depicts a wild-eyed mad scientist, shuffling nervously around a laboratory (pronounced lab-or-a-try in an ominous tone of voice), rubbing hands together evilly and drooling. Many people really believe the image: They view creative person and lunatic as near synonyms.  Vincent says that they are – wrong!

In the following passage, Harold H. Anderson summaries a leading psychological view concerning the relative sanity of creative people. (Endorsers include such respected thinkers as Erick Fromm, Rollo May, Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow, P.J. Guilford, and Ernest Hilgard).

“The consensus of these authors is that creativity is an expression of a mentally or psychologically healthy person, that creativity is associated with wholeness, unity, honesty, integrity, personal involvement, enthusiasm, high motivation, and action.

There is also agreement that neurosis either accompanies or causes a degraded quality of one’s creativity. For neurotic persons and persons with other forms of mental disease [who are, at the same time, creative] such assumptions as the following are offered: that these persons are creative in spite of their disease; that they are producing below the achievements they would show without the disease; that they are on the downgrade, or that they are pseudo creative, that is, they may have brilliant original ideas which, because of the neurosis, they do not communicate.”

In summary: Creativity is the expression of mental health. Rejoices!

Lord, Give Us Today Our Daily Idea(s)

The Art of Touching, Tasting and Smelling Creatively

Average human “looks without seeing, listens without hearing,

touches without feeling, eats without tasting, moves without physical awareness,

inhales without awareness of odour or fragrance, and talks without thinking”

(Leonardo da Vinci)

Creativity also can be enhance and increase through our senses of touch, taste and smell. All these senses – including visual and sound – will bring impact on our creativity. When you touch, don’t forget to feel it. When you eat, try to taste it. When you breathe, aware of smell around you. “If we use all five senses – scent, sight, sound, touch, and taste – to stimulate our minds while working,” explain Jane Porter, writer for Fast Company website, “then this may spark more creativity.” Remember, idea is all around you.

Touch

I cannot work in a very cool environment. When I go to the state library, I will take a walk every half an hour for 3-5 minutes to get myself warm. In my office, if nobody is around I prefer to use fan. At home, open windows is good enough. Temperature surround our environment impacts our focus and work performance. Keep our office too cold or too hot may cause errors and inefficiency in the workplace. Sense of touch really can affect us. Another example, if you wear your watch on the other hand for a day or switching your wallet from your right pocket to your left, these adjustments of daily routines can stimulate creativity too. Learn to touch creatively and really feeling it.

Taste

Jane Porter writes, “The connection between food and your mood has been demonstrated across studies over the years. Incorporating fruits, green vegetables, and complex carbohydrates into your diet helps with energy and focus. Fill your body with junk, and your mind likely won't be running on the best fuel.” For me, coffee (not a junk!) is my idea-mood booster. Some suggest a wee bit of alcohol can boost creativity because it helps block out the rational left brain. But when we are at the office, coffee or tea, is preferable. And powerful too. Try this also, eat a fruit – for example, apple. Look at it in your hand and then slowly put it in your mouth and close your eyes. Notice everything as it hits your tongue. Don't chew it yet. See how long you can go just tasting it. Your mouth should water with anticipation as you continue to roll it on your tongue, sucking and tasting the sweetness of that apple. When you start to chew it be aware of everything that you taste. Do you realize how good apple is? Learn to taste and really tasting it.

Smell

I like to go to Starbuck and order my favourite thick-black coffee. Even if I don’t buy, I sometime pretend to look around the shop but secretly I sniff for that amazing aromatic strong smell of coffee brewing. Oh so nice! (I’m not an addict-er, mind you, I’m simply a passionate coffee lover). Often when I need to refocus and attract inspiration, I just smell the coffee, which I find very helpful for me to stimulate my thoughts. Books also can create such stimulation for me. Maybe you like the smell of tea or flower or fresh oceanic air or perfume candle, use it to stimulate your focus and creativity. Put it somewhere close to you. Creativity must smell good! Find your stimulus and really smelling it. Enjoy!

Utilizing the sense of touching, tasting and smelling (hearing and seeing too) are the easiest way to instantly tap into our own creative potential. By experiencing and experimenting with different sensations, we open ourselves up to new ideas. Like what Leonardo da Vinci like to say it: “The five senses are the ministers of the soul.”

Idea is all around you

Lord, Give Us Today Our Daily Idea(s)

Creative People are Dynamic

Unlike most people, creative people do not allow their minds to become passive, accepting, unquestioning. They manage to keep their curiosity burning, or at least to rekindle it. One aspect of this intellectual dynamism is playfulness. Like little children with building blocks, creative people love to toy with ideas, arranging them in new combinations, looking at them from different perspectives.

It was such activity that Isaac Newton was referring to when he wrote,

“I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding… a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”

Albert Einstein was willing to speculate further. He saw such playfulness as “the essential feature in productive thought.” But whatever the place of playfulness among the characteristics of creative people, one thing is certain: it provides those people a richer and more varied assortment of ideas than the average person enjoys.

Lord, Give Us Today Our Daily Idea(s)

Taken from Vincent Ryan Ruggiero’s The Art of Thinking: A Guide to Critical and Creative Thought (8^th Edition), (United States: Pearson Education, Inc., 2007) pg. 90