Let us start of with another bold claim: Feeling bad is not down to emotions at all. As David D. Burns, M.D. puts it in ‘Feeling Good‘: “A change in how you feel is of no more causal relevance [to depression or feeling bad itself] than a runny nose is when you have a cold.”
Feeling bad is a symptom – a consequence – of bad thinking! Distorted negative thoughts underlie every stressful feeling we’ve ever experienced. Have you ever felt sad and cried during a movie, or felt triumphant when the hero finally beats the bad guy at the end of a good book? You were sad or happy then – but did it ever make you feel bad? Did you feel stressed or pained?
You see, positive emotions can accompany negative events, and vice versa. But every painful or stressful emotion is always and necessarily accompanied by negative thoughts. Most of them are completely involuntary and automatic, and usually hidden from us by our subconscious!
Let’s start looking at emotions in a new light: There are no good or bad emotions, only positive or negative experiences. Emotions are neither positive nor negative until they either cause us or relieve us of stress or pain.
Any emotions that are traditionally seen as either good (like excitement, or the feeling of being in love) or bad (like anger and sadness) can also be both positive and negative, depending on… Our attitudes, thoughts and perceptions!
We need only look at the friend who laments falling in love again, making another one of those “mistakes,” and hates herself for it! Or look at someone like Nick Vujicic, who thinks a life without limbs can actually be a blessing in disguise!
There are no such things as good or bad emotions, good or bad thoughts, or good or bad events. The only question that you should ever want to ask yourself:
“What I feel, what I think, what I believe over what is happening: Is it helping me, or not?”
Are your thoughts helping you? Is your anger doing something useful, or just causing you more pain? If it is helpful, it’s worth keeping. If not, it’s stress you don’t need. Whether or not something is helpful is the only question worth asking.
Negative thoughts are destructive. Negativity causes your mood to become gloomy, your self-image to crumble, your body and willpower to become exhausted, and your actions and emotions to defeat you. Nothing breeds negativity like negativity, and this negativity is due to a lifelong cycle of negative thoughts that we were never taught to strip of their power, because we have never taken the time to convince ourselves that they aren’t helpful in the slightest.
So, our goal is to trade in our automatic and start switching the gears manually! Change your thoughts, change your reality. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, if it were all so easy as thinking positively, then people’s often well-intended encouragement to “cheer up” or “look on the bright side” would actually be a pleasant experience, and not the unnerving and often counterproductive guilt-trip it can be. Furthermore, if it were that easy, why can people be stuck with their negative thoughts for sometimes an entire lifetime?
Well, there’s a wrong and right way for doing anything, and practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice does. Even the best of intentions don’t always give the best results, so together we will learn a method that allows you to do things right.
But before we get started with that, let’s get rid of one more seemingly intuitive, but completely inaccurate lies we’ve learned and maintained over the course of our lifetime: the persistent untruth of having ‘real problems.’
Let’s talk about The Problem With ‘Real’ Problems.
Brian Ahearn, CMCT® Chief Influence Officer influencePEOPLE Helping You Learn to Hear “Yes”. A Short Course in Human RelationsA past participant of the Principles of Persuasion Workshop sent me the important message below. His name is Peter, and he pointed out “There’s plenty of ‘POP’ in this.” Of course he was right.
Let’s break it down one line at a time and let me show you why there is so much of Dr. Robert Cialdini’s Principles of Persuasion in this short piece.The six most important words – I admit that I was wrong.In the Principles of Persuasion Workshop we teach the Principle of Authority which says we look to those with extra knowledge or wisdom on a topic to guide our thinking when we are not sure what we should do. As part of being an Authority you must be seen as credible and one of the most important elements to being credible is being trustworthy. If I was to try to take advantage of you, I would never admit a mistake, let you know I got something wrong or was lacking in some area of my product or service. But an Authority never hides from weaknesses. They admit when they are wrong. Why? Because they know how to make it better. So remember, it’s a mistake to hide a mistake. Admit it, and admit it quickly, then set about explaining how you intend to make it right. If you don’t, one of your competitors will highlight it and then your credibility is gone.The Five most important words – You did a great job.Everybody likes to be told they have done a great job. These five simple words go a long way to triggering the Principle of Liking. Praise is something that when given genuinely and selectively is a truly valuable tool in building, repairing and maintaining relationships with others. Therefore don’t throw praise around all of the time so it becomes common and of little substance. Give your praise when it is deserved, make it specific and give it genuinely. If at work delivering praise directly is inappropriate consider influencing the influencers and deliver the praise indirectly to the person’s boss, colleague or friends and allow them to deliver the message for you.The four most important words – What do you think?On the face of it you may ask, how does this question relate to persuasion? The answer is, all too often people make statements but they don’t ask questions. Firstly this is poor form because it is more aligned to ordering rather than engaging and, secondly, when you make statements you remove one very important element from the interaction – the ability of someone to commit to something. The Principle of Consistency says we encounter personal and interpersonal pressure to remain consistent with previous commitments or decisions we have made. If you ask me a question and allow me to answer, it provides me the opportunity to make a commitment; publicly voicing my ideas and actively committing toward a course of action. In your next meeting, think about the questions you ask. Craft well-constructed questions and give others the opportunity to answer them. Telling someone what to do or making statements does nothing to engage their intrinsic motivators to drive the situation forward.The three most important words – Could you please…This line is an interesting one, firstly because the Principle of Reciprocity says we are obliged to give back to those who have given to us first. A nuance to the principle is, if you are struggling to build a relationship with someone, ask him or her to do you a favor. In doing so they need to have a shift in thinking because we don’t do things for people we don’t like. Therefore by asking them to do you a favor moves them in your direction ever so slightly and allows for a relationship to commence. The second point I would make is to refine the statement. “Could you” and “Can you” are permission statements. They seek to gain permission or acknowledgement. The problem is if I say to my eight-year-old son, “Could you clean up your room?” and he says, “Yes,” is he actually committing to clean his room or is he just saying, “Yes I can, but no I won’t.”?Therefore in seeking to gain a commitment to trigger the Principle of Consistency. ask people active questions that gain a commitment such as “Will you…” then wait for the answer.The two most important words – Thank you.Thanking someone is not only polite, it’s an important element in building and maintaining healthy relationships. Therefore when someone does something that you appreciate be sure to tell them and acknowledge their contributions. Doing so invests in the relationship and can trigger the Principle of Reciprocity.The other thing is when someone thanks you for something you have done you must learn to accept genuine thanks differently. If someone delivers a heartfelt thank you and you say “no problem” or “I would have done it for anyone” you are devaluing the relationship. You are in effect saying, “You are not that important to me and neither is this relationship.”Therefore, from now on listen for genuine thanks from others and recognise it as an opportunity to acknowledge the relationship you have and highlight that it is not over. Anything you say will be better than “no problem,” but you must do a better job of accepting thanks when it is genuinely given.The most important word – We.The fastest and easiest way to describe a relationship is through the pronoun “we.” It highlights you are working together and you have things in common. Listen to when people use “we” in a conversation and they may just tell you when they start to see you are in a functional, working relationship with them, all through the use of the word “we.”One word of warning though; don’t use “we” too early in a relationship or with someone you have just met to describe the two of you – it can come off as not genuine and a tactic rather than a true reflection of your relationship with the person. Let the relationship build and use “we” when appropriate to do so.The least important word – I.The biggest mistake I see when reviewing emails, copy and websites for clients is the text is all about the persuader and not about the person or group they are seeking to persuade. A very simple test is to do a word search and see how many times you use “I” as opposed to the other person’s name or even the words you, your or yours. If you talk about yourself more than the other person or group of people you have missed the mark.The other thing is they should always appear in your email before you do. I am not talking about their name in the greeting but in the first line. If you start off with,Hi Brian, I want to write you about the new product I am bringing to the market….This is wrong – it’s all about you. Instead put them and their needs first. Such as:Hi Brian, It was great to have met you at the conference and to listen to your thoughts on the new policy change impacting our organisation. You may be interested in a new product we are launching. Based on your comments I think it will help you…..Therefore for a bunch of short sentences I will paraphrase my friend Peter and say, “There is a lot of POP in them!” 
Anthony McLean, CMCT