Tuesday, January 31, 2012

The think it method


I used to have so many accidents as a child.  I was always the kid who spilled her hot chocolate at the lodge when I was a Brownie, or tripped playing jump rope when it was my turn to run out.

It wasn’t a whole lot better as a teenager.  I was terrified I would make some mistake in my solo at concerts and I can’t tell you how many times that happened.

I was pretty much full-grown before I realized that all those things I thought about tended to be the thing that happened.  It was almost like I was hexing myself.  As soon as that thought occurred to me I decided to try the opposite. 

Instead of, “I hope I don’t have an accident on this ice.”  I thought, “I am going to drive straight to school and it will be both safe and easy.”

It helped when I had children too.  Instead of picturing them lying beside a road somewhere I always tried to picture them driving carefully home.

It’s almost second nature now, but sometimes I still have to work at it.  It’s plain old-fashioned positive thinking, but you know what?  It really seems to work most of the time.

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