The First Theory of Relativity, according to Chloe in the movie You Can Choose Your Friends, “states that time moves more slowly when you spend it with relatives . . . And the Second Theory of Relativity is that time spent with your family and time spent in the real world move at different speeds.  So you could leave your family for decades and when you finally come home again, only a few seconds have elapsed and nothing’s changed at all.”

Family.  Unless you’ve completely cut yourself from anyone with any kind of blood connection, family is a factor in your life.  They can build you up or bring you down with a word, move you with a look, connect with you in a way that no one else can.   Your self actualization depends in part on how satisfied or dissatisfied you are with your family relationships.  Take this quiz to pinpoint problem areas:

Respond to these statements with True, False, or Sort of.

1. More often than not, when I try to express something important to my family, I feel like they’ve missed the point.
2. Holidays in my house aren’t anything at all like the ones I grew up with.
3. If I experienced a life-changing crisis, my relatives would be the last people I turned to.
4. My family members tend to keep their problems private from me.
5. No matter what they say, I always know the motives of my relatives.
6. My relatives will never change.
7. The whole idea of families sitting around talking and laughing is a fiction created by television to sell laundry soap.
8. A family vacation is the shortest route to gray hair, wrinkles, and throbbing temples of dagger-like headaches.
9. I’m a very busy person, but I can listen to my family just as well while I do other things.
10. At the end of the day, I sometimes realize that I’ve given a lot of unsolicited advice.
11. There is one person in my family that just can’t get anything right, and everyone knows it.
12. People in my family don’t respect me.
13. Big family get-togethers are a major source of anxiety for me.
14. My family is more messed up than the average family.
15. In a conflict with my relatives, I always lose.
16. In a conflict with my relatives, I always win.
17. If I have a disagreement with a relative, I insist on discussing it until we’re entirely on the same page.
18. My family is all about secrets – who knows what about whom and who isn’t supposed to know.
19. When my family gets together, I’m not sure anyone has a good time.
20. The roles in my family were assigned long ago (the pretty one, the brainiac, the loser, the rebel), and there’s no changing them now.
21. I treat my friends better than my family.

You can probably see that the ideal response to most of these statements is “false.”  You might not realize at first that the ideal response to all of them is “false.”  In a conflict with your family, the goal isn’t to attain victory, or even necessarily to have a perfect meeting of the minds.  The goal is to communicate, to deepen our understanding of each other and live in  harmony and mutual support.  Tomorrow we’ll talk about how you can move your family relationships closer to the ideals (the opposite of the statements above).

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• Challenge negative thinking. While you’re in the moment, try to keep one ear on your thoughts. Are you jumping to negative conclusions? Are you assuming the worst? Are you catastrophizing? Learn to replace those negative thoughts with positive thoughts.

• Keep your perspective. Not all situations deserve a high-level of intensity. Keep your sense of humor. Step back. Key moments are important, but few key moments are life and death. If you can – and you usually can – step back and regroup.

• Have a good support system. Surround yourself with people who understand how to live intentionally and will encourage – rather than sabotage, your efforts. Remember Dr. Randy Pausch, the computer science professor who gave his Last Lecture.

• Expect to feel uncomfortable. Change is uncomfortable, and stepping out of your comfort zone can make you feel raw and unprotected. Don’t automatically interpret these feelings as an indication that you’re on the wrong track.

• Leverage your motivation. In other words, think about two things: First, list all the rewards you stand to gain from making a good, positive choice during your key moment. What will it be like? What benefits will come to you? What will be the wins for you and others? Second, think about all the negative consequences of not making a good choice in this key moment. List them on paper. Some are short-term but most are long-term. Although somewhat painful, these consequences are real and you can use them to motivate yourself to make a positive choice.

You will always be confronted with challenges. Life will never be exactly as you feel it should be. You won’t be able to control relationships, the economy, others, and random occurrences. You really only have control over one thing. The more you develop your ability to exert intentional control over your life, the more fulfilled, meaningful, and full of positive thoughts every day will be.

We’ve been talking about the distinction between your life and your life situation.  To give you a quick metaphor, your life situation is the pond you swim in – your relationships, your environment, your job, your health, etc.  But your life is how you choose to swim through it.  Even if there are storms or predators or irritating water bugs, you still have the power to decide in which direction you swim, how fast, and with how much style, grace and positive thoughts.

In today’s and tomorrow’s blogs, I’ll give you some practical tips to get started on and continue in this very important life.  Let’s start with these:

• Before:  The time to decide to make intentional choices about a life situation is before you are in the midst of the  intensity of a negative life situation.   While you are at peace and able to reason calmly, you need to take the time to know your values and how you want to approach life.

• During:  The time to act on your values is right in the midst of the intense emotion.  You are in the situation, your emotions and fears may be roiling, your habitual reactions may be pressing to control you.  This is your key moment.

• After: When you’re out of the situation, take the time to reflect on how you handled yourself.  Did your action reflect your life – who you are and who you want to be?  Did your habitual reactions overtake you, or did you manage to act intentionally?  Every moment that you succeeded in acting intentionally is a success, even though you won’t be perfect.  With practice, you’ll find yourself more in your life and less overwhelmed by your life situation.

This isn’t a hard concept to understand, but it can be difficult to translate into reality, particularly in trying times.  If you’ve just been swamped by a dire circumstance, it will take you time to get your bearings.  If you’ve spent a lifetime being washed in one direction and then another, you’ll have to practice and train to learn to use positive thoughts to get your “choosing” muscles into to good swimming condition.

In my last blog, I talked about the difference between your life and your situation.  It’s very easy – human, you might even say – to define yourself by where you are and what you’re dealing with.  You’re the one-legged runner.  You’re the single mom of three.  The guy in line in unemployment.  The blind guy.   The woman watching her beloved mother die.

Reality can be beautiful, it can be calm and predictable, but it can also be harsh.   I’m not suggesting that you deny reality or refuse to share your story; your story is important, and often, as in the case of Dr. Randy Pausch in my last blog, is a gift to others, showing them how positive thought can change the impact of reality.   In his Last Lecture, Dr. Pausch put it this way:  “We can’t change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.  If I’m not as depressed as you think I should be, I’m sorry to disappoint you.”  Later, he said, “It is not about achieving your dreams but living your life.”

What does this mean?  Something different for each of us, because we are each unique.

• For Corrie ten Boom, her life situation was frightening.  In 1940, the Nazis invaded her homeland, the Netherlands, bringing with them their intention to exterminate the Jews.  But Corrie’s life was built on her faith and compassion.  In 1942, at the age of 50, the mild watchmaker became very active in the Dutch underground, hiding and rescuing countless Jews.
• Prudence Mabhena was born severely disabled into a society where disabilities area associated with witchcraft.  Her life situation was one of abandonment and abuse, but her life was her passion and love, which was expressed through music.

• Last April, Vail Resorts in Colorado and Lake Tahoe was feeling the strain of the downturned economy, and CEO Rob Katz was prepared for more hard times.  This life situation made Vail Resorts, and, by extension, Rob Katz, victims of global economic fluctuations that were well beyond their control.  But Rob Katz’s life was that of a steward, overseeing the company and protecting the interests of its members, so he made hard decisions.  Most employees were asked to take pay cuts, ranging from 2.5% for seasonal employees to 10% for executives.  And Rob Katz, whose salary was $840,000, gave himself the largest pay cut of all:  100%.  “If I was going to ask someone making $8 an hour to take a pay cut,” he said, “they needed to know I was doing something that would really affect me.”

I intentionally selected three widely different examples, so you can see how universal the life/life situation distinction is and what a difference positive thought makes in the outcome.  I don’t know what you’re dealing with, but whatever it is, your life is more than your situation.   You may not be able to choose your situation.  Corrie ten Boom wouldn’t have chosen to have the Nazis invade her country, and she certainly wouldn’t have chosen to have ended up in a concentration camp where she watched her beloved sister weaken and die.  But she chose how to respond to the reality.

What’s bigger – your realities?  Or your power to choose?  If you understand this, you have the key to make major changes in your life, regardless of your life situation.  Learn more about how positive thought can free you from binding realities by joining me for the LIVE BIG seminar next month.

We are surrounded by negativity.  These days, in fact, we are completely encased in it.  The fear-mongering in every corner, our developing culture of intolerance and irritability, and the constant flood of sensationalist mass media.  Just today in a quick browse of the internet I found these stories:

• From CNN:  “America the Miserable?” . . . Have Americans had their optimism “beaten out” of them by the lagging economy, terrorism fears and two wars?
• From Fox News:  Alabama Professor Charged in Shooting
• From ABC News:  Was this the beginning?  IRS Agents Face Mounting Threats
• From NBC News:  Woman Pleads Guilty To Swapping Kids For Bird and, in celebrity news, one is addicted, one is in rehab, and one is divorced.

Is your life defined by the circumstances around you?  Maybe the headlines seem more distant to you, but other, closer external circumstances can be very compelling and disturbing.  Maybe you have a family member with mental illness, or you have a disability.  Maybe your spouse is depressed, or your teen keeps getting into trouble.

Maybe, Like Dr. Randy Pausch, you’ve been diagnosed with a terminal illness.  Dr. Pausch was a computer science professor Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  He was happily married with three young children when he received the news that he had terminal pancreatic cancer.

Pause a minute before reading on, and imagine how you’d react to this kind of news.  Probably the same way the Pausch’s did – with shock, denial, and tears.  But then what?   How would you spend your remaining months or weeks?

Your life situation is not the same as your life.

Your life situation, your disability, diagnosis, the people around you . . . those are your life situation.  But your life – how you live, your ability to make choices, how you love – those are your life.  Randy’s life wasn’t pancreatic cancer.  His life was his ability to decide how to face his cancer, his love for his wife, his children, his excitement over computers and learning and teaching, his laughter, joy, and his positive thoughts about humanity.  By focusing on his life, instead of his circumstances, he was able to live every one of his last days fully, and, in his “Last Lecture” to students and colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University, he managed to inadvertently inspire millions to do the same.

I’m preparing to speak to some young people about this topic – to hopefully teach them to intentionally define their lives rather than be defined by their circumstances.  This is sacred work to my mind — our young people are at risk.  They are flooded with the same messages that affect us so deeply, and they are even less equipped to process it into positive thoughts effectively.

In my next few blogs, I’d like to address the distinction between life and life circumstance, and to give you the tools to break free from the negativity.  In the meantime, if you’d like a better understanding of how to claim your life with intentional choices and positive thoughts, join me next month for the LIVE BIG Seminar.

Is There Something Positive Inside of You?

They had to go in. It wasn’t a question or a decision, although they were frightened, and rightfully so. Even with three of them, they had to struggle mightily to pull the nearly unconscious man against the force of the current. But they had to go in.

It’s easy to become discouraged about human nature, isn’t it? The headlines are all about crime and the failing economy and our rapid, relentless destruction of the environment. But at the Human Development Institute, we believe that there is good reason to have great hope and trust in humankind.

• Three days after Katrina ravaged New Orleans, Catrina Williams was relieved to see a rescue helicopter touch down at her apartment complex. But when the pilot said he could only take a handful of children, she put her 6 year old son and other young relatives on board and waved a tearful goodbye. It was several days before officials, guided by the careful recitation of addresses and other identifying information by the 6 year old boy, were able to reunite all of the children with their parents.

• When their small, working-class town was hit hard by the recession, Dr. Dan Bell and his wife Suzie have devoted themselves to creating something positive by helping the community, including starting a health clinic.

• Diane John-Smith was living on welfare and food stamps and had given up on changing her own life, let alone anyone else’s. Then, inspired by a speaker about advocacy, she got fired up. Since then, she had dedicated herself to fighting for legislation that will make a difference for people living in poverty and hunger.

The nature of human beings is infused with something positive. Even a toddler will reach out to another crying child with instinctive compassion. Something inside of you was born knowing right from wrong and good from bad. It’s only when that innate knowledge is corrupted by fear or distorted perceptions that we lose our way.

The three college girls at Sarasota Bay were in tune with that higher part of themselves, so much so that they thought the rescue was nothing special. “It seemed like something anyone would have done,” Cameron said. They met with McClure several days after the rescue, though, and got a new point of view as he laid pictures of his wife, kids, and grandkids on a table. “That’s when I realized we’d done something amazing.”

Maybe you’ll never have the opportunity to rescue a drowning fisherman, but as you work to unearth your higher purpose, you’ll discover something positive inside of you that you may not have suspected.

Positive Attitude: Can Holidays Become a Key Moment?

Let’s take a look at the Christmas cards you’ve gotten this year.  The greeting cards companies spend a lot of time and resources figuring out exactly what will attract people to buy.  And what have they learned to sell?  Pictures of little families snuggled together, listening to a reading of T’was the Night Before Christmas. A single, snow-blanketed tree in a quiet woods.  A gold embossed ribbon around a simple verse on cream card-stock.  Simplicity.  Peace.   This is what we envision when we dream of Christmas.

Now look around at your life.  Does your Christmas reflect your dream?  Is your Christmas all about Deck the Halls and Silent Night?  Or is it more like Bob Rivers Twelve Pains of Christmas?

At the Human Development Institute, we’re all about empowering you by giving you practical tools and strategies to elevate your life and your relationships to a whole new level.  And, yes!  This applies to being empowered through the holidays as well.  Where do we start?

• If you decide to cut back on the scale of your giving, entertaining, or decorating, expect to feel some internal resistance.    Look past the “should” and ask yourself, “what am I really trying to accomplish here?”

If your true goal is to connect with family, you can cut back on entertaining and meet loved ones for an ice skating party at the community rink.  If your true goal is to keep the magic of Christmas alive for the little ones, think about incorporating more traditions – caroling, storytimes, baking parties, build a snowman – and fewer gifts.  If your true goal is to impress your neighbors . . . Well, consider revising that goal to “reaching out to the neighbors” instead.    Hang a strand of lights across the front of your house, then go around delivering goodies, hot chocolate and some friendly company.

• Delegate.  One woman I know makes a customized photo calendar every year for all the relatives.   It’s time consuming to sort through all the photos and make sure every page is perfect.  She finally delegated the task to her middle-school daughter.  It wasn’t exactly what she would have chosen – it was what her child would have chosen.  And that was part of the charm.

• Talk it out.  Are you terrified that people will be disappointed by your Christmas giving?  Even kids can understand if you explain that Christmas is about more than gifts.  Help them – and let them help you – shift the focus to family time, traditions and the reason for the season.  As for the grown-ups, many will be relieved to cut back on mutual gift-giving.  And those who don’t understand will adjust and hopefully develop a more positive attitude themselves.

You do have the choice to turn the chaos of Christmas into a key moment of LIVING BIG – taking control of what seemed like an uncontrollable external force.  You have choices.  If you are overwhelmed by the holidays, acknowledge that you have chosen to allow that.  And then, change it.  So that you can finally truly celebrate the warmth, simplicity and peace of the day.

If you’re ready to develop the positive attitude that will help you create your own “vision of sugarplum” in your life, join me for the LIVE BIG seminar.

Roger K. Allen, Ph.D. is an expert in personal and organizational change. The tools and methods Dr. Allen offers have helped tens of thousands of people transform the ways they work and live.  To learn more about him and his services, visit http://www.abouthdi.com. To learn more about his new book The Hero’s Choice: Living from the Inside Out, go to www.theheroschoice.com. Its also available on amazon.com or any local bookstore.