Book Recommendation - Bright Sided

[pm4hire]

Bright-Sided cuts through all the BS pop psychology
our culture has subjected all of us to.

Click here to listen to an interview with the author.

[Dennis Nedry]

She says most Americans try to project a cheery positive outlook.  My observation is that nothing if further from the truth.  Most Americans cling to the negative.  They hate their jobs, the focus on the *bad* economy (when many are getting rich now)....just look at the news...somebody is absorbing that information.

I personally think controlling ones persistant thoughts, and state of consciousness is one of the most important things we can do.  There are always positive alternate outcomes to every perceived event, and to be happy, they require our intentional focus.  This does not mean we bury our fears and ignore potential threats.  What it means is we acknowledge them, but maintain our focus on the adjacent possibility of a desired outcome.   Everything we think is filtered through our own experiences, cultural training, habits of thought, etc.   I think our job remains to try and create habitual thoughts that serve us.  If that is labeled as "positive thinking" then so be it.....

[Aussie]

"I personally think controlling ones persistant thoughts, and state of consciousness is one of the most important things we can do."

I don't want to give the moderators heartburn or anything.....Lord knows I've done that before for some folks.....but what the heck does that mean?  Eat something, fix something, go to the cricket or football with your mates. go throw a stick for the dog.  Anything rather than sit around 'controlling your persistant thoughts and state of consciousness'.

If I'm outa line here, please, someone crack the whip and I'll suck my scone in.  But this is getting like some Kum-ba-yah naked drumming festival out in the woods or something.  What is needed is less consciouness-raising and more harden-the-f***-up.  Or am I wrong?

Rather than wait for one of the moderators to sin-bin me, I think I better take a sabbatical for a while.  Catch ya later.

[Dennis Nedry]

I think that I may be in the wrong place also.  I know once you get into this stuff, most people turn away.  

It's easy to find a pub where you can have a beer and commiserate on how life is tough, the economy is awful, etc. but you just have to man up.  Then going back to a sh!t job in the morning that, in your heart of hearts, you know you hate.  And living below what you know is your potential.   If that's what you want, have at it.  There are plenty of tough guys working in steel mills, factories, and other such jobs that decided the best way was to just deal with it (another false persistant thought, state of consciousness), and give their lives to making the factory owner rich.  When a simple adjustment of their own belief system would have them taking an entirely more enjoyable path.

Personally, I'll keep doing what I'm doing, because I'm on the right track, and I know it.  My message is not changing.

[DG9]

Well, I guess that is a bit of an aggressive way to put it.  Let's see, in a more kindly way life is what we make it and others will see us as we see ourselves.  This is a fact.

Dennis, kudos to you, you continue to grow and evolve.  Stay on track, on message and "On Your Feet"...

And thanks for the many insightful contributions!

[Dennis Nedry]

In Australia, that is the mentality, to man up.  And there are some tough characters there.  And all the navel gazing probably doesn't fit into that overall mindset.  My posts must have hit a critical mass for Aussie and he wigged out.

This is a job/career board, correct?

I'm viewing this board as a career board for me.  And I'm making a transition from cubicle bound FTE, to contractor, then to business owner, and sort of blogging the process.  I'm now making the transition from small business owner, to (hopefully) a much more successful business owner.    And that particular jump, I'm finding, necessitates changing my entire person, beliefs, activities, network.  You simply cannot become something different by staying the same way.  And I'm finding, for me, the path also necessitates studying the thought process.   There is where we get into the *koom-bay-ah* and woo woo.  But it's not, you are always thinking.  And if you keep thinking the same way, you keep getting the same result.  So if you really want to change, you have to look at what and how you are thinking.  But the truth is, most don't want to change.  The goal is to be comfortable.  I personally don't see the goal in life as being comfortable.  It's the be as much as you can be in the time given.  For some, this comes easily and naturally.  For me, not so much, I need to deconstruct the process.

Why do I post all this here?    Because I get a lot of feedback that makes me think, and because maybe somebody will get some ideas, and it will help them.  I do some idle chit chat stuff also, but I enjoy a more intellectual conversation.

[The Gorn]

Random thoughts:

I looked over the blurb on Amazon that pm4hire posted. I think that the idea of this book is correct. People I have met from other countries say the same thing, that Americans are obsessed with the idea of always seeing a positive side to things and thinking of limitless boundaries. Compared, that is, to almost all other countries.

We have "Horatio Alger" and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps ingrained in the national character. I think it came from the Protestant work ethic and the Calvinist idea of self justification through hard work and achievement. Today it's "Oprah" and being "aspirational."

but what the heck does that mean? Eat something, fix something, go to the cricket or football with your mates. go throw a stick for the dog.   Anything rather than sit around 'controlling your persistant thoughts and state of consciousness'.

I posit that going and doing something is controlling your thoughts. Sitting and doing nothing is letting your thoughts overrun you.

Aussie, man up and stay the f*ck right where you are. How's that?

"I personally think controlling ones persistant thoughts, and state of consciousness is one of the most important things we can do."

I couldn't agree more. People who make "I can't" their "battle cry" never accomplish anything. It's easily demonstrable.

"life is what we make it and others will see us as we see ourselves. This is a fact."

A different way of saying the same thing.

Barbara Ehrenreich's persistent message is that there is a stratum of the US  economy that has no ability to pull itself up by its bootstraps, because it is locked into minimum wage jobs. To that I can only offer the Christian imperative to help the poor. That's exactly why we have Medicaid, food stamps, subsidized housing, child and adult protective services, etc.

However, for almost anyone who can work and who has the ability to make and act on conscious choices, she's dead wrong. The real problem of poverty is that people are stuck in a negative thinking "victim" mode. The reverse of the state that Dennis is describing.

[John Masterson]

"I personally think controlling ones persistant thoughts, and state of consciousness is one of the most important things we can do."  
 
  I don't want to give the moderators heartburn or anything.....Lord knows I've done that before for some folks.....but what the heck does that   mean? Eat something, fix something, go to the cricket or football with your mates. go throw a stick for the dog. Anything rather than sit around   'controlling your persistant thoughts and state of consciousness'.  
 
  If I'm outa line here, please, someone crack the whip and I'll suck my scone in. But this is getting like some Kum-ba-yah naked drumming festival out   in the woods or something. What is needed is less consciouness-raising and more harden-the-f***-up. Or am I wrong?  
 
  Rather than wait for one of the moderators to sin-bin me, I think I better take a sabbatical for a while. Catch ya later.

Aussie,

It just means how you see the world, how you judge your chances of succeeding if you set a goal.

Dennis is just talking about our beliefs.  We all have them. Deciding "It's all shit so why try?"

That's a believe for many.

Try to be optimistic. Expect good things to happen, and they tend to happen. Why? Because YOU try harder and take action when you believe it will make a difference.

[Origisaurus]

Ozzie with Down Under subtlety, kinda like Crocodile Dundee rappelling Oz-style-face-down down the side of a high-rise and smashing into somebody's apartment!

Dennis with politically correct circumlocution, if not obfuscation.

• Keep your eye upon the donut, and not upon the hole.  - W. C. Fields
• Just Do It(tm)  - Nike
• In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.  - Bill Cosby
• If you must obsess, obsess on your goals, not your fears.  - Origisaurus

[Dennis Nedry]

I just want to make some dough so I can worry about something else besides money.

Like fishing in the Keys, or typing posts like this from a pub in Munich, drinking a Weihenstephaner.

[I D Shukhov]

Barbara Ehrenreich's persistent message is that there is a stratum of the US economy that has no ability to pull itself up   by its bootstraps, because it is locked into minimum wage jobs.

Right.  She constantly writes about how bad it is to be an exploited worker, whether blue collar or white collar.  Okay, we get it.  But what do you do about it?  She has a web site and a message board for people to post their "Ain't It Awful" messages.  She chimes in every so often with a "Yes, yes it really is awful..."

If she took all that energy and wrote a how-to manual to advise maids how to create their own businesses, now that would be helpful.

[DG9]

But then she has found her market, those that choose to view themselves as victims and attend her pity party.  So who is really exploiting who....