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Negative Mind Chatter and Harry Potter

By Joyce Shafer

In “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,” Harry discovers Dumbledore’s Pensieve. Here’s what he tells Harry about it.

“This? It is called a Pensieve,” said Dumbledore. “I sometimes find, and I am sure you know the feeling, that I simply have too many thoughts and memories crammed into my mind.” He continues after a line from Harry, “At these times,” said Dumbledore, indicating the stone basin, “I use the Pensieve. One simply siphons the excess thoughts from one’s mind, pours them into the basin, and examines them at one’s leisure. It becomes easier to spot patterns and links, you understand, when they are in this form.”

I’ve been paying attention to how often my mind uses up time and energy on negative memories and mind chatter. And, I decided to do something about each. Note: I’m not talking about larger matters that require a different approach (I use different tools for those), I mean that portion of the around sixty thousand thoughts each day that doesn’t lead to desired experiences or doesn’t help me feel the way I want to feel.

When memories sneak in and start to occupy my thoughts, I thank that part of my brain for working so well and ask myself if there’s something I need to learn from the memory. If not, I let it go. There’s plenty to give my mental energy to in present-time. If it’s something I need to look at, I plan time to do that, especially as the moment this occurs is not usually the ideal one for this activity.

Negative mind chatter has been showing up on a regular basis throughout my life. Based on my formative patterns and beliefs infusion, it’s understandable why negative feelings crop up first; but I’ve learned how to shift them into positive ones, as soon as it feels appropriate to do so. Though, that’s not always so simple a task. Maybe you know what I mean. This chatter more readily occurs if you spent or spend a lot of time around people who complain or worry about a lot of things (or everything) and do so often (or what seems like all the time). This behavior never accomplishes what’s hoped and perpetuates “what is.” And it’s contagious, whether anyone does it aloud or in the mind.

Astonished at how often this was taking place for me, I decided it was time to do something constructive about it. I borrowed from Dumbledore and aversion therapy. If you’re not familiar with aversion therapy, a negative stimulus is used to break a habit, like snapping a rubber band worn on the wrist whenever you think about doing what you’re aiming to stop doing.

I decided to count how many times a negative thought about a particular matter occurs and extract it from my mind by writing it down. So far, I have three primary categories that have been asking for my attention. Every time a thought happens, I stop what I’m doing and make a mark on the paper I created for this purpose.

One morning I woke, felt and stated my appreciation for the miracle everything is (which lasted almost to the kitchen, which is a short walk); and while I got coffee going and did a few things, I counted twelve negative thoughts in ten minutes. All twelve thoughts were variations on the same issue. If you consider that some time is needed to play with the thought and some time is needed to recognize what’s going on, you see it was a packed ten minutes.

My intent is not to eliminate such thoughts; and I honor they may have a purpose. However, I don’t want to give them as much of my energy anymore. My intent is to become so irked by interrupting myself or with the number of hatch marks on the page, I create the habit to immediately shift my thinking to either something I appreciate or some thought or action that will create a desired feeling experience, until thinking positive, creative thoughts becomes more the norm. When I say “irked,” I don’t mean I get agitated or beat up on myself. In fact, I’m allowing this to be playful, and focus more on my process and progress than anything else.

The fact that I’m doing this caused such thinking to lessen within the first day. Now when such a thought flitters into my mind, I’m more inclined to notice it and let it go. If it needs my attention, I give it. I assist myself by stating, “I appreciate the miracle everything is.”

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Glen Luckman and Harry Potter

3 Stress Reducing Tactics to Help You Get Your Life Back

By Kim Cooper

Stress can be a dangerous thing when you are dealing with a high amount of it on a daily basis. Our lives are full of stress from dealing with family, friends, and work. My biggest stress area was my former job. I literally worried myself sick at times dealing with the stress and pressures of work. I understand what it feels like when stress eats away at you, draining you mentally and physically.

I would go to work each morning and when I walked into the building my mood did an immediate 360. My family life was suffering. I was too afraid to take vacations because I would stress about my workload upon returning. It was an endless cycle and I became depressed.

Constant stress also takes a toll on your body. I dealt with constant headaches and tension in my neck and shoulders. I’m sure you are dealing with similar stress related symptoms. There are better ways to cope and reduce stress enough to live a happier life.

1. Learn not to worry - Worrying is a negative way of using our imagination. We generate scenarios that do not exist, yet we use these scenarios to stress ourselves out. Cutting out worry can greatly reduce stress.

2. Take things slow - We live in a fast-paced world. Almost everyone is impatient. A hectic lifestyle is a stressful lifestyle. Learn to pause, slow your pace, and you will begin to feel better.

3. Find the positive - It is easy to think negatively and put ourselves down in any situation. Start training your brain to find the positive in all situations. A positive attitude will not allow stress to overcome you.

For more articles by Glen Luckman follow the links undermentioned:

Glen Luckman Blog
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Glen Luckman Information

Glen Luckman Stress Reduction

How to Manage Work-Life Stress

By Peter Nicholls

Recent studies have shown that ‘work life balance’ is the number one want of workers - even higher in priority than salary. And it’s not just younger people. It applies also to ageing workers, especially those who are starting to look to a second adulthood, one in which passion takes over from pay.

What I read into this however is that people are saying they want to enjoy life and ‘work/life balance’ is the in-phrase that comes nearest to expressing that want. But the fact is that work/life balance is an unrealistic time management concept:

* based on conflicting demands of employer and employee for a share of the 24/7 day. There simply isn’t enough time to achieve everything.
* suggesting people are living two lives - one at work and one away from work. But people don’t ‘work’ for five days (or more) and ‘live’ for two days (or less). It’s not about work/life, it’s about life
* ignoring the fact that work is just one of many roles people perform in their 24/7 week. Separation of work and personal life roles has become an almost seamless blur.

The financial downturn has made it worse. Job losses are putting new pressures on people who still have their jobs. They keep nervously looking over their shoulder. They work harder, for longer hours and feel greater stress in their extended efforts to ensure they keep their job and keep the business afloat.

The problem has evolved into one of managing sustained excessive stress of work and personal life. Not just in times of peak demand, but over the weeks and months ahead. More than just the family-friendly needs of parents and carers, it’s an issue for every working person, from the junior assistant to the chief executive.

People want quality of life, in a sense a reversal of work/life balance - life/work balance, where life is the central focus and work is one (important) resource.

Rather than the ‘time-poor’ approach of work/life balance, people are looking to become ‘life-rich’. Instead of energy-draining stress that slides into mental exhaustion, illness, burnout and depression, people want positive energy that generates creativity, resilience and intelligent productivity.

The more realistic aim is to develop a harmonious, mutually-energising mix of work and personal life interests/responsibilities. A good flow of energy-burning and energy-generating pursuits sustains and expands our potential to enjoy building a flourishing life.

While you can’t deficit-budget time, it’s possible to deficit-budget mental energy. A few minutes a day can sustain energy for long periods of time, so long as those minutes are spent doing something that enjoyably expresses the inner person, the authentic self, simply because it makes you feel good about yourself.

What sort of interests might these be? Each person will have unique answers. As a broad rule of thumb, energising interests:

* are those enjoyed for their intrinsic pleasure, giving a sense of temporary escape from problems, losing track of time for a while (achieving a state of flow) and resulting in some sense of achievement
* don’t have to be physical. They can be intellectual, passive, social, manual, or spiritual. I get my buzz from singing in a choir
* are of individual choosing, including the venue, time, level of skill, alone or with others.
* can be done at any time of the week, day or night, that fits one’s particular situation. Nor does it have to be in a club. Increasingly people are preferring what I call impulse leisure.

There are things managers can do. First and foremost though, the chief executive has to support the concept, not only formally but also emotionally in relation to his/her own personal life. Without this, a realistic change in workplace culture is pretty much dead in the water.

Assuming this test has been passed, here are some basic guiding thoughts:

* make staff aware that management recognizes that personal passionate interests away from work can and do improve work productivity (a powerful message in itself)
* management is supportive of staff efforts to inject more enjoyment into their lives away from work
* the organisation is prepared to take steps to help and encourage this process
* emphasise that the organisation rightly has no interest in knowing what people do for enjoyment away from work; it’s just encouraging staff to have strong outside interests

A corporate energy management plan process needs to have strong involvement of staff from all levels of the organisation (all staff in the case of small businesses). A good method is to convene round-table discussions between (representative) groups of people from all levels of the organization. There are powerful corporate benefits, including improved communication, in group discussions on:

* Passionate interests that each person has outside of work
* How each person finds such interests help them in their work and personal growth
* Identification of issues that would inhibit the formulation of a policy that encourages staff to enjoy outside interests. These discussions should be aimed at achieving group recommendations towards a strategy that sets out actions in the following priorities:
- issues that can be most readily resolved with minimal effort/cost,
- more difficult issues that require time, effort and cost, to be scheduled for attention in an agreed order and over a period of time up to, say, three years.

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