Dave Favor writes for clients' newsletters in the areas of self-mastery and technology. If you wish Dave to write for your in-house newsletter he will be glad to do so. We do not charge practices or business for this service for any in-house newsletters. Contact dwfavor@catalystgroupinc.com for more information. 

Life does not have to be so Difficult 
By 
Dave Favor 
Catalyst Group, Inc.

We tend to beat ourselves up much more than we need to or should. Have you ever thought that you could have done something better and than started all that negative self talk. 

• I am an idiot, I am about to get fired, I should have stayed in bed, etc. 

Why waste all that energy. I have enough people telling me I did something wrong without adding to it myself. Look at it this way, everything is an opportunity to contribute and improve. 

If you fill your head with all that self talk at least make it positive. Congratulate yourself for what you accomplished and seek improvement for next time. If you are not blaming yourself, maybe you are the type that is blaming everyone else - again a waste of time and energy. 

Or maybe, you can't understand what the heck they are talking about and can't blame or congratulate anyone. Now you waste you time trying to guess what was meant. Sometimes I make sure that my interpretation is negative and then waste time with the blame game. If I am really in a mood I can work up a good headache and be totally miserable for hours. Now that should teach everyone a lesson. 

This is how you get out of this negative trap. Next time someone says something to you assume it was positive. Even if it sounded negative, assume they made a mistake and really were trying to thank you for your contribution. 

Just the other day I had to humbly accept thanks from a user for destroying their file and losing hours of work. It was a stretch, but I managed. Then I went in for the positive improvement asking how I could do better in the future. Something about rolling up my procedure real tight and stuffing it somewhere - well I am sure I misunderstood. I just smiled and passed on my thanks for their positive contribution. See what a wonderful place this could be.