jump to navigation

Problems, solutions, focus, and the limits of positive thinking in personal development March 16, 2012

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Solving Problems.
Tags: , , , , , , ,
add a comment

There are times in most of our lives when we feel overwhelmed by problems, when the mere thought of starting or continuing with a life-changing personal growth or personal development seems beyond our capabilities.  And so, in these circumstances, we may tend to turn to an over-simplified type of positive thinking, often in the form of affirmations as a hoped-for way out of our dilemma.

And indeed, positive thinking is important as a starting point, but thoughts alone will not solve our problems. Tony Robbins emphasizes this point in his book Notes From a Friend: A quick and Simple Guide to taking Charge of Your Life.”

At slightly over 100 pages, this personal growth book is much smaller, more concise, and speaking personally, I found it easier to digest and implement than Robbins’ other books, such as Unlimited Power and Awaken the Giant Within,  which number in the hundreds of pages and which are very detailed in terms of step-by-step programs to follow.

Robbins comments, “…positive thinking alone is not enough to turn your life around. You must have some strategies, some step by step plans for changing how you think, how you feel, and what you do every single day that you’re alive.”

He points out that our thinking and our belief systems ( including positive thinking) although not a cure-all, can play an important role, however, in getting us in a proper mindset for moving forward and achieving success in our personal growth efforts. He gives us this advice: “The only thing that’s necessary to make this work for you right now is to begin to believe that it is possible to change. The past doesn’t matter. Whatever hasn’t worked in the past has nothing to do with what you’ll do today. What you do right now is what will shape your destiny…You can’t ‘beat yourself up’ about what’s happened; instead you must immediately focus on solutions instead of problems.”

I could have used this advice about concentrating on solutions instead of problems, a number of years ago, when as a freelance consultant, I was at a low point in my finances. I had just left a business I had helped personally start and develop for five-plus years. I had been working full days every day on it, but revenues were not enough to live on, and so I had used up most of my savings trying to keep the thing going. Finally, I had to recognize that it was not going to work, and cut myself loose.

For some time, however, instead of making an effort at developing a program of goals for finding a solution to my financial problems, I spent a lot of time just worrying about the situation. Needless to say, this was not productive, as the time spent in fretting about the financial difficulties did nothing to relive the situation regarding the need for money. I was really focusing on the past and what had gone wrong (problems) instead of looking towards the future (solutions).

Eventually however, I started looking for new opportunities for consulting and began contacting people I knew in various industries and began to contribute to some small projects and then landed a one-year contract heading-up a significant project.  After that some new opportunities arose including several long-term profitable assignments.

From a personal development or personal growth perspective, I had been concentrating my energy on my problems and not on working on developing solutions. As soon as I changed my focus, positive things started to happen.  If you want to look at this scenario from the perspective of intentions and manifesting, you could say that when I was focusing on the problems and their circumstances, I was in a negative intention state and the result was negative manifestation, or a continuation of the problems.  When I focussed on solutions or positive intentions, positive results began to manifest.

Essentially, I was setting a goal when I started focusing on solutions; a goal of doing something tangible towards solving the problem of difficult financial circumstances. As a result of being in this “action mode” I was able to recognize and capitalize on opportunities when they manifested.  If I had stayed in the state of worrying and fretting about my “financial problem” it probably would have got worse.

Of course, when you focus on finding solutions, you do have to spend some time looking at the problem(s), but you will be doing so in a more analytical way, and you are taking action instead of stewing about whatever is causing you difficulty. Concentrating on the problem without investigating possible solutions sets in play negative thought patterns which can eventually result in significant frustration and possibly lead also to low self-esteem.

Intention, Manifestation and The Law of Attraction January 7, 2007

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Intention and Manifestation.
Tags: , , , , ,
comments closed

Modern concepts of personal development might have more followers benefitting from the ideas if some of the writers on the topic would present a number of their thoughts in a more practical manner. An example is one of the more popular aspects of personal growth these days — intention and manifestation, and the Law of Attraction, sometimes described with the older and lesser used phrase “cause and effect.”

Anyone following writings on this concept knows the basic principles. You focus on what you want, rather than on what you don’t want. The idea being that whatever you focus on is more likely to manifest itself in your life. In other words, with the Law of Attraction, or intention and manifestation, you become your thoughts, or you are your thoughts. Focus on what you have to be grateful for in the present and focus on success and abundance in your future, and these positives will appear in your life. Alternatively, focus on what’s presently wrong with your life and envisage the future in terms of scarcity or more problems and negativity and that’s likely what you’re going to get.

However, some writers in this genre over-emphasize the idea that absolutely everything in your life has been manifested or made real through your thoughts or intentions. I am not saying that this is not true, I just think people like you and me would find it more productive, if the focus was instead on positive scenarios. One example I read, for example, proposes the idea that a person is in debt because essentially, they want to be a debtor. They have manifested the debt through their conscious or subconscious intentions. While this may be true in terms of the actions or lack of actions that the person took, it is difficult for many people to fathom the idea that they are the authors of all of their misfortunes, including illnesses and personal tragedies. I’m not saying that the concept of intention and manifestation or the law of attraction is wrong, but I am saying that some writers are driving people away from valid personal development processes by explaining the idea of intention and manifestation in a way that many people cannot relate to.

For example, you and I may be facing some financial difficulties and we know why we are in this position. If we were to take some writings on intention and manifestation literally, it would be hard for us to believe that we intentionally created this situation. We may indeed have created the circumstances, but some literature on intention and manifesting tends to give readers the idea that we deliberately or consciously chose financial difficulty as opposed to financial abundance, and that stretches credibility. What we may have done was to have made some key decisions that did not work out well from a financial perspective. We consider them a result, not an intention.

A better way to present the concept of intention and manifestation would be to concentrate more on the positive aspects of the technique. Instead of trying to explain the principles by emphasizing that the negatives in our lives have been essentially self-directed through intention resulting in bad outcomes. It would be more effective to show us how intention and manifestation can build a better present life as well as a favourable and dynamic future. In trying to build a better financial future for ourselves, for example, one technique I read about and have found useful is realizing that whereas we can visualize and write out positive intentions about a secure financial future, it is difficult to avoid thinking about the negative aspect of our current financial situation and thereby inadvertently intending and manifesting a continuing negative financial status. The answer is to always think of negative situations as being improvable in some way.

You can preface your thinking or written intentions about a negative situation you want to change to a positive scenario by reinforcing the idea in your mind that the situation is, in fact, improvable. You may not yet know “how” to improve the negatives, but the outlook of believing the situation is fixable will give you an overall more positive outlook and gradually build the confidence to take the appropriate actions to improve the situation.

There should also be a strong emphasis on the need for concrete actions towards the positive outcomes we want. Intending and manifesting and the Law of Attraction, are simply intellectual exercises in “wishful thinking” if they are not coupled with actions. Even though we may not know the necessary actions, we must have at least a recognition of the need for action and a commitment to develop a plan towards achieving the desired goals. Personal development presupposes activity and actions being taken towards either self-improvement or to the improvement of situations.

One of the techniques often used in intention, manifestation, and Law of Attraction effort is the concept of visualization – we couple our intentions with visualizing positive outcomes to achieve the manifestation of what we want. In fact, I used this technique in a primitive way to achieve many of the earlier desires in my life. In other words, until I became interested in the Law of Attraction as an intellectual concept I did it intuitively. My method was essentially daydreaming about things I wanted, particularly in the area of specific goals I was setting my sights on. One example is being successful in getting a particular job.

My career has been entirely in communications, particularly the written word and publishing. I am currently an independent communications consultant and have been so since the late 1980’s and tackle pretty well any communications project or contract that involves writing in any way.

One of my earliest ambitions was to be an editor of one of the specialty magazines in the publishing company I was working for at the time. So, not being familiar with formal visualization techniques, I simply daydreamed about being an editor and imagined what it would be like, while at the same time, through my work as an editorial assistant, I was developing the skill package I would need as an editor.

After a few years, I achieved my ambition, and then started daydreaming about being a publisher, which in turn happened a number of years later. I followed the same pattern for years. Wanting something, daydreaming about what it would be like having it, and then getting it. It was a somewhat primitive approach, but essentially without realizing it I was applying some of the basic principles of intention, manifestation, and visualization, each one of the concepts being key to success with the Law of Attraction. If I had concentrated and visualized on all of the negative reasons standing in the way of becoming an editor or publisher, I doubt that I would have made the progress that I did.

I’ll close this with a comment from Claude M. Bristol, author of The Magic of Believing: “Happiness is wholly independent of position, wealth, or materials possessions. It is a state of mind which we ourselves have the power to control – and that control lies with our thinking.”