Have you noticed that when you’re thinking about choosing a particular brand of car, you keep noticing that brand everywhere you go? Or if you are expecting a baby, you seem to see more pregnant women than you did before? Brian says in his seminars that you are a “living magnet”, you invariably attract the right people, ideas and opportunities into your life that are harmonious with your goals.

Focus boosts positive coincidences

When you focus on a goal, the reticular activating system [RAS] a part of your brain that functions as a filter to process over four hundred billion bits of information per second that you are exposed to every single day, searches for people, places and circumstances to support what you are thinking about. Simply put, if you have well-defined goals, RAS will direct your attention towards people, events and opportunities that can help achieve your aspirations.

David Letterman, the late-night funny man, started his career with a flop. After a string of guest appearances on comedy shows, sitcoms and game shows, Letterman finally landed a hosting gig for a TV pilot called The Riddlers.

The series was a bust. But Letterman got noticed by the producers of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. He soon became a regular guest, and eventually a TV talk show host who earned $40 million a year.

Jazz musician James Morrison and his brother were trying to make it big in New York, but ended up playing music on the streets. They made enough money to get a burger from Burger Boy, and within hours of eating his burger, James was flying business class, eating smoked salmon on his way to Europe for a major jazz tour. It turned out that a waiter at Burger Boy spotted his trumpet and put the Morrisons in touch with an agent who urgently needed a replacement for a sick soloist.

Examples of coincidences often appear to be simply accidents. However, as Albert Einstein said: “Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.”

Have you never experienced positive coincidences?

If you have faith that the Universe is there to help you, you will find this concept easier to accept. But if you have never experienced positive coincidences, you may be wondering why. Here are a few reasons:

• You have goals but no burning desire. You do not make enough effort to succeed, giving the Universe mixed signals and confusing the outcome
• Your desire is not consistent
• Your actions and desires are not aligned
• You are not grateful for the good things that happen to you
• You accomplish many things but don’t acknowledge or are shy to acknowledge your successes or are too self-critical, leading to weakening of morale and enthusiasm
• You have poor awareness. You fail to see the connection between your desires, actions and results, eventually leading to missed results
• You do not affirm and visualise your goals regularly.

Problems are stepping stones

Many of us avoid uncertainty because we fear negative outcomes. However, even a negative outcome can lead us in the right direction. An unhappy experience in your life, like losing your job, can open new career avenues for you. But if you ignore the learning and instead just focus on the negative experience, you will invite more of the same. On the other hand, if you treat them as another chapter in the narrative of success, you’ll find it easier to draw positive solutions.

The important thing to remember is that problems affect everyone.

Steve Jobs could have felt victimised after he was fired from Apple. He chose to react differently. After his dismissal, he saw opportunity where others couldn’t. He went on to lead a small animation company and turned it into the juggernaut that is now Pixar. When The Walt Disney Company bought Pixar in 2006, Jobs became the largest shareholder in Disney. Moral of the story: when unwanted changes happen, look beyond them and see the opportunity they might contain.

Learn to recognise coincidences

Challenge yourself with the following “How to” exercises

1. Become aware of what is going on in your life and start actively looking for the coincidences. You strengthen what you focus on.
2. Record all the coincidences you observe in a week and analyse them to see how they brought you closer to your goals.
3. Express gratitude for every event that brings you closer to your goals.
4. Set clear goals—yearly, quarterly, monthly, weekly and visualise them twice every day. The clearer your goals, the more you invite positive coincidences.
5. Align your goals with a larger selfless purpose. When you want to help others, the Universe wants to help you.
6. Trust that all coincidences are there to help you, even though you may not think so at the time.
7. During each encounter, ask yourself: How does this incident bring greater awareness into my life?
8. When you face obstacles, view them as learning opportunities.

What is important is that you learn to recognise coincidences, and use them to help you reach your goals. You then begin to look at every setback as a stepping-stone to success.

The post How to create positive coincidences in your life appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Published by: Berrett-Koehler Publishers; 3^rd edition
ASIN: B01KIYAEXU
Pages: 288
Price: INR 967
Format: Kindle Edition

Viktor Frankl’s classic Man’s Search for Meaning has inspired, and continues to inspire, people around the world with his fascinating insights into human behaviour under intense duress. As an inmate of one of Hitler’s concentration camps, Frankl experienced the extreme torture of the holocaust firsthand. Being a neurologist and a psychiatrist, he felt inclined to study the behaviour of his fellow inmates suffering with him. In the three years that Frankl spent inside the horrendous camps, he concluded that no matter what challenges you face, you have the ultimate freedom to choose your attitude and your response to what is happening to you.

This, at heart, is the foundation of Prisoners of Our Thoughts.

That Viktor Frankl himself encouraged Dr Pattakos to write this book makes it all the more fascinating. And once you go through it, you realise that the insights this book contains are exactly what the doctor has ordered for humanity, which ails from a serious lack of meaning. But, it’s not the meaning of life that we need to find, say the authors. “It is the search for meaning in your own life that is important. Meaning is different for everyone—there is no one right answer; there is only the answer that is right for you. However, the search for meaning in our own lives often seems like such a large undertaking,” they write.

Do you want to find your own “right answer”? This book tells you how to look for it. The seven core principles that Alex and Elaine introduce in the book contain the essence of Viktor Frankl’s entire teachings and wisdom, with the added bonus of having a contemporary context.

What makes this book immensely readable is that throughout it, the authors use reflections from their own lives as well as examples of real people to drive home the message of each principle. Plus, the many exercises scattered across the book will make it easier for you to bring about the necessary shift as you go about looking for meaning in your own life.

Towards the end of each chapter, you will find a Meaning Moment Exercise followed by a few questions—both designed to bring greater clarity of the meaning principles to your unique life situation. Finally, every chapter has a Meaning Affirmation that will help reinforce the key message of that chapter. To strengthen your understanding, you can keep coming back to the exercise, questions and affirmations much after you’ve finished reading the book.

Prisoners of Our Thoughts is not a self-help book. Think of it as a friend, philosopher and guide who helps you look beyond the limits of your ordinary, everyday conditioned patterns while gently nudging you towards what really matters to you. To get the most out of this book, don’t approach it casually; read it earnestly. That’s because it carries within it the seeds of authentic transformation.

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Sometimes this habit works in your favour. More often it does not, and the result can be very sad, even traumatic. It is probably the single most important factor in the estrangement between parents and children and between spouses. It has an equally powerful effect on business relationships with subordinates, peers, and bosses.

Are you curious about what this habit is? I thought you might be!

How we see the world

We all think we see the world as it is. We’re wrong.
We see the world as we are. Let me repeat that: We never see the world as it is. We always see it as we are.

Poonam woke up early, as was her wont, and went to the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea. She relished this first cup in the solitude of the early morning. She noticed that there was a plate, as well as a knife and fork, in the sink. Her husband had had a late-night snack. “Why doesn’t he rinse them off and put them in the dishwasher?” she thought angrily. “He knows how much I hate a dirty sink. He just doesn’t care.” All of her husband’s manifest faults, from failing to sort his laundry to watching all the cricket games, flooded into her head, and she picked up the plate with such force that it struck the faucet and broke. “He just doesn’t care,” she muttered to herself, and her morning tea did not bring any comfort.

We never see the world as it is. We always see it as we are

There were still anger lines on her face when she went to work, and she noticed that her assistant had left the draft of a new proposal on her desk. Pages two and three were transposed. She pried the staple loose, rearranged the disordered pages, and stapled it again.

“Why don’t people care?”

“Why doesn’t he care enough to do a good job?” she fumed, and called him in to berate him. He was sullen and left work early. When she needed an explanation of an intricate calculation, he was not there, and her boss tartly told her to find out and report back. She worked late and was just turning into her driveway when she noticed that her neighbour was leaving her front door. He was walking across the lawn to his house, and she scowled. She did not like people walking on the grass, especially not now when the yard was freshly seeded. “Why don’t people care?” she seethed. Poonam was a good worker and very diligent, but so many of her colleagues were complaining about her that her boss made her sit down with an executive coach he engaged for her. It was either that or a pink slip.

She accepted with ill humour. “There’s nothing wrong with me,” she stated flatly. “It’s just that I really care about things and they don’t.” She looked at the coach defiantly. He took detailed notes and said little.

She did not like people walking on the grass, especially not now when the yard was freshly seeded

When they met again, the coach had done his homework. “Did you know that your husband has taken on another job?” he queried. “He has a consulting gig with a start-up and hopes to save enough so you can take the Antarctic cruise you always wanted this December. He didn’t have time for dinner, so he just grabbed what he found in the fridge and went right off to sleep.”

She hadn’t known it. She also hadn’t known that her assistant had put in an all-nighter so that she would have something in writing before her meeting with her boss or that her neighbour had called to drop off fresh tomatoes from the first batch that ripened in his backyard.

“You are too wedded to the idea that you care and they don’t,” the coach told her gently. “What you really mean is that they don’t always do exactly what you want them to do, and you misinterpret this. If you don’t work with me to change your attitude, you may not be with this company much longer.” He debated whether to tell her that she might not be married either but decided against it.

Poonam thought her finicky demands were a sign of her caring and drive for perfection

Context is important

Poonam thought her finicky demands were a sign of her caring and drive for perfection and saw everyone around her through that narrow lens.

So does this mean that she has to let go of her standards and accept work she considers shoddy? Should she reconcile herself to stacks of dirty dishes in the sink, sloppily put-together pre- presentations, and well-worn paths across her front lawn?

Not at all. It does mean that she has to see each occurrence in context. It emphatically means that she cannot label people based on her limited views. It means that she cannot let others’ noncompliance with her demands affect her emotional equanimity. And finally it means that she has to work at achieving a satisfactory compromise with the important people in her life-at home and at work.

The funny thing about life is that the more you expect the best of people and give them room to be themselves without suffocating them with your expectations, the more they will surprise you. The late Carnegie Mellon University professor Randy Pausch got it exactly right when he admonished listeners of his “Last Lecture” to never give up on people because, sooner or later, they will astonish you. Just try this and see for yourself.

You see the world as you are, not as it is.

The more you expect the best of people ad give them room to be themselves, the more they will surprise you

What are you noticing?

You observe things about people all the time. Just start recording exactly what you observe. For example, it’s Sunday and your son comes down bleary-eyed after breakfast is over. Do you notice the eagerness in his voice as he tells you about the super movie he saw last night, or do you observe that, once again, he has not made his bed and has come down without brushing his teeth?

You meet a stranger at an office party. Do you try to figure out his ‘importance’ and the strength of his relationships with your boss, or do you notice the genuine twinkle in his eye and his obvious good nature? Do you notice that his shoes are scuffed or that he graciously compliments the waitress and makes her smile? Does your nose turn up because the table settings don’t match, or do you acknowledge the effort your hostess is making to welcome you?

In short, with people and situations, do you focus on their weaknesses and what is ‘wrong,’ or do you appreciate their strengths and what is ‘right’? Most people, including you, do both. What is important is to find out in which direction you are tilting.

Now try this. Pick any person with whom you have an ongoing relationship and do not particularly like. It could be an in-law or a disagreeable co-worker or a pompous parent in the PTA. Look for at least two traits in that person that you like and admire. Persist until you find them. Compliment that person on these traits and be sincere. If you cannot be sincere, don’t do it.

Repeat this with other offensive people in your life.

See what happens to your life and your relationships with these individuals.

Excerpted with permission from Happiness at Work by Srikumar S Rao. Published by Tata McGraw Hill

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The splendour of a spotlight lies in its ability to highlight a single person, object or a group on stage while keeping the rest more or less dark and therefore out of focus.

Each of us has a built-in spotlight in our conscious minds. It is called attention. The trouble is we almost always train our spotlight on what’s wrong in our life, while keeping everything that’s OK [not wrong] “in the dark”.

Problem mindset

We inherit this deep-rooted problem mindset from our problem-oriented society. Everywhere you look, the spotlight is on all that is not right—the newspapers are predominantly filled with stories on inflation, corruption, crime and terrorism; there are serious discussions on prime-time television about the troubled conditions in various parts of the world.

On a personal level too, we are preoccupied with those aspects of our life that are not going well for us at the moment. Students are worried about their academics. Young men and women are worried about their careers, their relationships, or their finances. And older people are bothered about their health.

There’s one thing common though: whatever your problem area, it is a good bet that your attention is on the ‘gravest’ problem you are currently facing.

It is also a good bet that if a bigger or graver problem surfaces, you will turn your attention to it. So what happened to the ‘grave’ problem you were struggling with earlier?

Your attention holds the key

You might think that giving our problems all the attention is natural…how else would we solve them? But no problem has ever been solved by giving it all the attention.

What works is to understand the problem and then turn your attention away from it so that you can create space in your mind [and in your life] to receive the solution.

There are so many things that are going well for you. How about turning your mental spotlight on those happy occurrences or joyful events?

Let’s take an example. Let’s say you are feeling troubled with chronic diabetes. You must stop dwelling on it or discussing it with everyone. By all means, give it the attention it deserves—but stop at that. Visit your doctor, take that dose of medicine on time, exercise and do whatever you can…Then, wait for the healing to take place. After that, if diabetes calls for any more of your attention, don’t entertain it. Instead, aim your spotlight at your properly functioning heart, kidneys, bones and other body parts that are healthy and kicking.

Problems will call for your attention from time to time. The trick is to know when to turn the spotlight away from them—and onto something good. As they say, “Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.” There is merit in the old adage, after all.

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