There is a counterculture to positive thinking, a kind of hidden in plain sight non-movement slowly gaining momentum. At first I thought the negative thinking advocates were simply a backlash, a kind of sour grapes movement against the sucrose sweet teachings of positive thinking. But not at all, and you are going to love this. They have been around since the sandaled feet of the ancient Greeks beat a dusty path to the Parthenon. I am talking about the school...
A New Direction – the Negative Side of Positive Thinking (Part 3)
In her book The Willpower Instinct, Stanford University psychologist Dr. Kelly McGonigal, who has one of the most popular classes in Stanford history, tells us that making a resolution or affirmation makes us feel good at the moment, but creates an unrealistic or optimistic expectation of the future. It creates a kind of satisfaction or relaxation that does not allow us to have a realistic idea of the present and the future. They actually make us far less motivated to...
A New Direction – The Negative Side of Positive Thinking (Part 2)
(Excerpt from When Nothing Works Try Doing Nothing) If positive thinking were benign, a useless dalliance of the mind, then it would be nothing more than a frivolous waste of time. But positive thinking is not benign. Ironically, positive thinking can have negative psychological backlash. You may be surprised at this revelation, but when you understand the mechanism you will know it to be true from your own experience. Let’s take a few minutes to explore these negative effects and...
Of Chimps and Chocolate Chips
Are you one of those people who always pick the slowest line to stand in? I do, every time. In fact, I think all of us choose the slowest line. I have never heard anyone brag about always finding the fastest line, have you? If that were me, I’d surely let the rest of you “slow-liners” hear about it. In the grocery store checkout, I will stand aloof from the other indiscriminant line-standers and watch to see which checker looks...
Humble Pie
I once met a woman who was a hairdresser from Colombia. She had been in the U.S. for several months and spoke almost no English. She smoked cigarettes and drank strong Colombian coffee from morning till night. She worked long hours, ate little and poorly and had a host of physical complaints related to her lifestyle. When I went to get my hair cut we would nod and smile and I would show off my snappy command of the Spanish...
The Blue Jay Way
“A great silent space holds all of nature in its embrace. It also holds you.” ~ Eckhart Tolle “Not one sparrow falls from the sky that our heavenly Father does not know about – so much does he love the creation he made.” ~ Matt 10:29 This may seem an obvious question but have you ever noticed how nature makes you feel good? Did you ever ask yourself why? We love to watch billowing clouds slowly transform into lions or gnomes...
Grumbling Your Way to Enlightenment
Let me take a moment here and refresh your memory as this hierarchy is helpful in understanding where you may be and what you are capable of. It’s comforting and even helpful to know where you are going but the “how” of fulfilling your greatest potential is paramount. That is why you are reading this blog. The Quantum Entrainment technique is the bridge between theory and practical application. Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (from lowest to highest): Physiological: breathing, food,...
Oh What a Tangled Web We Weave…
All life in an ocean is directly dependent on the conditions of the water. A cold water fish cannot thrive in tropical waters just as a positive thought cannot thrive in a negative environment. It does not matter how many friends the cold water fish takes along with him into tropical waters he still will not prosper. Now, if the cold water fish were practicing positive thinking he would try and convince himself that the warm water was actually cold....
Most People Don’t Even Know They Have Pure Awareness
Everything we experience is through pure awareness. Most people don’t even know they have pure awareness much less that it is their essential nature. It is more intimate to us than our families, our jobs, and even our health for without pure awareness we would have none of these things. It is pure awareness that makes it possible for us to feel, to think, to perceive, and to experience life in all its vibrant beauty. Pure awareness is our very...
What You Want May Not Be What You Need (Part II)
On the Newtonian cause-and-effect level we would say that I did QE for her autistic son. From a quantum mechanical point of view I offered her son the probability of healing. Healing occurred in the best way possible after all other possibilities had been eliminated. You see, when we think in a linear, cause-and-effect way healing appears to be a simple, single line ending in the result we want. But life is not that simple. Every action and reaction has...