Not Away From What You Don’t Want
One thought leads to another. Negative thoughts about people or events I cannot control are two common traps. Reframing thoughts to move “toward what I want” creates improvement in quality of life at work and at home
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Motivation is an inner drive, a dissatisfaction with the status quo, a desire for change. Motivation is movement or action toward a currently dominant motive. And everyone is self-motivated a little or a lot. Motivation takes place in two prominent emotions:
- Fear in the negative.
- Desire in the affirmative.
Fear is the greatest motivator of all, and the greatest stop light in the world. Telling you that you have to… That you can’t… Which is inhibition.
Desire is 180 degrees apart. Telling you that you want to… That you can… That you have the potential… It is the greatest propeller.
It depends upon which way you want to sit in life. Both cause great stress One stress is good which is desire stress called eustress which is useful. The other is called ‘hold back’ or ‘have to’ stress which is distress or bad stress.
Priming
The limited capacity of our attention creates the illusion of awareness. While we think we are aware of all that is happening around us, in reality we are aware only of a small amount in our environment and we are missing lots of other things without even realizing it. It is similar to the experience you have when you watch TV. There are way more channels than you could ever watch at one time. Because you aren’t watching all of them doesn’t mean they aren’t there.

To maximize the attention we have, our brains generate selective filters through a process called priming. It increases the brain’s sensitivity to detecting certain things in our environment. Priming can occur intentionally or unintentionally. In either case it tells the brain what to pay attention to. You can think of the process of priming as a mechanism, similar to that of a TV, that allows you to selectively “tune in” to what you want to see.
Practice Plan
Define a situation where you are experiencing frustration (Drama & Emotional Waste).
Reframe your thoughts by “priming” with some of these questions:
- What I can do? / What could you do right now to help?
- What would great look like?
- What do you know for sure?
- Would you rather be right or happy? / What is helpful in this situation—your expertise or your opinion?
Reflect on what happened.
Onward and Upward,
Steve