by Michael Griffin
Jan 23rd 2009 Podcast
What Is Bad?
About 20 years ago I visited one of California’s redwood forests for the first time. The park ranger was describing the natural cycle of fires that had existed in the forests for thousands of years before man had taken over the care of the trees.
The fires killed the insects that would destroy the trees while hardening the tree’s bark to protect the tree from the insects and from fire, it killed the undergrowth that might sap the nutrients away from the tree while the burning turned the undergrowth into a nitrogen rich fertilizer. The fire was an essential part to creating a healthy forest.
Now man has kept the fire out of those forests for a hundred years. Are the trees as healthy?
It seems that nature has a similar story about everything we run up against; a little struggle makes us stronger. The fires, the problems of life need not necessarily be bad. “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” – Shakespeare
Can The Recession Be An Opportunity?
Take the recession as an opportunity and think a little differently about it. David Schwartz says in “The Magic of Thinking Big”: “action cures fear. Indecision, postponement, on the other hand, fertilize fear…” Get moving, take action. What do you want to happen in the next few months? What is your outcome? Can you see it, can you hold the vision and allow it to seep into your unconscious where it will activate the law of attraction?
If you are a business owner and business is off ask yourself how can I market better? What approach should we take in sales? Chances are the answers you get will have you asking yourself: “Why didn’t I think of this before?” The things you learn now will serve your business even better when the economy improves again.
If you are an individual and have lost a job or if your income is from commission and that part is down ask yourself what else you could do to generate income? What do you love, is there a way to work with that?
It has been said that the problem is never lack of money but a lack of ideas. Can you believe that and ask yourself a better question? Instead of what am I going to do, ask what is the opportunity that is hiding here?
Emerson – Compensation – Natures Law Is Growth! – The Dangerous Wind – Questions We Ask Ourselves
Emerson wrote an essay called “Compensation.” He talks of darkness and light, that in nature is the concept of dualism. Where there is sweet there is sour. When you have one you can find the other, thus life compensates you. Check out these quotes from “Compensation”:
“A great man is always willing to be little. Whilst he sits on the cushion of advantages, he goes to sleep. When he is punished, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something; he has been put on his wits, on his manhood; he has gained facts…”
“Such, also, is the natural history of calamity. The changes which break up at short intervals the prosperity of men are advertisements of a nature whose law is growth.”
Chinese Yin/Yang is the same idea – light/dark. Denis Waitley calls it “Opportunity riding a dangerous wind.”
What questions are you asking yourself? What is the good that rides beside the dangerous wind? Do you know that your mind will find answers and move toward the object of the questions you ask yourself? Can you ask yourself a better question?
Ask the better question and turn on the law of attraction.
Good Thoughts
God says: “fear not.”
An old Spanish proverb says, “A life lived in fear is only half lived.”
David Schwartz says: A good idea if not acted upon produces terrible psychological pain. But a good idea acted upon brings enormous mental satisfaction. Got a good idea? Then do something about it. Use action to cure fear and gain confidence. Here’s something to remember: Actions feed and strengthen confidence; inaction in all forms feeds fear. To fight fear, act. To increase fear—wait, put off, postpone.”
Franklin Roosevelt said of the great depression, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
Henry Ford said, “One of the great discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn’t do.
Emerson said, “we are prisoners of our ideas.”
Shakespeare said, “Make not your thoughts your prisons.”
Washington Irving said, “Little minds attain and are subdued by misfortunes; but great minds rise above them.
Neitzche: “That Which Does Not Kill Us Makes Us Stronger.” As seen on the opening credits of Conan The Barbarian.
Churchill said, “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. ”
Let’s come down on the side of God and of Churchill and Roosevelt and of those who have succeeded greatly in history.
