Belief – Page 5 – Mobiusman

POll: How are you feeling today?

by David

“How the heck are you doing?”

I asked an acquaintance whom I hadn’t seen in a while.

He appeared outwardly optimistic but in a fatalist kind of way. Further discussion revealed that he was indeed somewhat worried about his job security with the local newspaper.

“They say it’s the worst economic downturn this generation has ever seen” he said, confirming my impression that he was preoccupied about something.

But this reaction was the exception. Often times if I meet someone and I introduce the subject of the current economic troubles they tend to clam up. It becomes obvious that they’d rather talk about something else.

Anything else. It’s making it difficult to get a good grasp on how people are coping.

Last week GM in Oshawa Ontario permanently closed its truck plant after 60 continuous years of operation. 2,500 workers
lost their jobs. Chrysler is set to axe a raft of dealerships in the US and GM will soon follow that action here in Canada.

Are You Immune Enough?

by David

When I talk to people about mindset immunity they look at me funny, like I’m suggesting that they should be numb to everything.

Zoned out like some kind of zombie.

That’s not what I mean at all. I mean that your thinking should react to stress like your body reacts to disease. As if your thinking mind had its own immune system because I believe it does.

In the body when a pathogen comes in to do damage it’s met head-on by the active agents in the blood that are there especially to defend their territory from the invader.
They work to neutralize the effects of the virus on the rest of the body. They’re smart too; they remember things for the next time it happens. If you get a particular strain of cold virus, for example, they will fight it off then after it’s gone the system ‘remembers’ what it did to overcome the attacker. Next time that same virus comes along and tries to get a foot-hold the system will recognize it and quickly mobilize to eliminate it with greater efficiency than before.

Computers have immune systems

This is what our computer virus protection is modeled after. Would you turn off your your anti-virus protection, drop your firewall, and then go surfing on the internet?

Probably not.

Then why would you take your thinking, unprotected as it is, out into the world every day? If we can design a machine to have a type of immune system then why can’t our human thinking have one as well?

Why Real Achievers Don’t Practice Positive Thinking.

by David

Charcter is talking positive but does this change things?

Are you trying to change your life by thinking positive?

If you are you could be in for a big downer. In a post on his website the very successful entrepreneur Michael Masterson cites a new book by Julie Norem entitled “The Power of Negative Thinking”. He comments that his long held belief about the in-effectiveness of positive thinking is yet again confirmed. “My belief that, though positive thinking may work for people who already have an optimistic way of looking at their abilities, it doesn’t work for people who are pessimists”.

The book has a reference to a study that was done where researchers divided their subjects (all identified as pessimists) into two groups. They told one group that, based on their past performance, they were going to do well on a standardized test they were about to be given. All these subjects indicated on a pretest survey that they did, indeed, feel optimistic about their results. The second group was not given any encouragement. The results? The first group, the temporarily optimistic pessimists, actually performed worse on the test.

I agree with Mr. Masterson.

For the past thirty years I have been telling anyone who would listen that the practice of positive thinking is a bit of a ball and chain. One shackle that already optimistic and successful people refuse to wear. Here’s the danger. If you get yourself on a big high about something that hasn’t happened yet you could be setting yourself up for serious disappointment. Creating a mindset bolstered only by the practice of positive thinking is like a high rise built on quicksand. It’s unauthentic and downright deadly to your success in the long term.

Belief Thief

by David

I got to thinking about the mindset of all these people, many of whom are ordinary career employees, who are struggling to make sense out of the economic rubble around them. Seems like every time I look into one of those on-line forums the complaints pour out like a torrent out of a ruptured dam.

I hear a lot of them center their complaints around the lack of belief they now have in themselves because of the bind they find themselves in. They seem to feel that, as economic downturn victimitis sets in, their sense of control over their family’s future is weakening. They sound rather helpless like they’re all on the verge of falling into the chasm of despair and hopelessness.

Closeup of young and old men's eyeballs

A good example of this was an interview on TV one night with a news reporter and some autoworkers from Oshawa Ontario. This particular family had two generations who had followed the heard and went to work at the same GM plant every day collectively for several decades. One was a retired worker and the other was his son. Both looked like deer caught in the headlights of the new reality.