Strengths “Super Sleuth”

By Dr. William K. Larkin on May 26, 2009

You are a great detective in life. Can you read the signs? The clues lie in what appear to be problems or a "closed door" in your life. This sleuthing is sometimes very easy; other times, much more difficult. If your problems cause you to go into a DownSpiral, the task is much more difficult, because your perception is narrowed. So the first clue is to stay in an UpSpiral, especially in the face of problems. Easier said than done? In an UpSpiral, you have a greater ability to access your strengths. And that's the first thing you do with a problem. You never deny the problem is there, even though after you get really good at this, you will stop seeing it as a problem and you will know it's an opportunity for growth and creation.

Using your strengths, coming from your strengths, thinking from your strengths, you simply ask these strengths of yours to tell you what is the good that can come from any difficulty.

It is clearly a task of "mind" over "what's the matter!" Mind is larger than your brain. Your brain is in the service of your larger consciousness and that is your "mind." Your mind can tell your brain to find what is good. Sound "Pollyanna"? If it does, GOOD!

Long-suffering is far over-rated as a guide and teacher.

It was not "Pollyanna" to the mother who founded MADD, "Mothers Against Drunk Driving." It was the only way she could make sense and find sanity out of her son's death. From not just a problem, but a real tragedy, she rose above being a victim of the experience and started a movement that has changed the face of drinking and driving in this country.

Wherever one door closes, another door opens. Always. ALWAYS. Except one. And that is when you choose to experience yourself as a victim.

If you are a soldier home from war and you see yourself as a victim for too long, you give away your power to victimhood. If you are hurt or harmed or ill, if you see yourself as a victim-past the time you needed to admit that you were, in fact, a victim-then you're headed for trouble in the long term. Sure, there is a period that a victim of a difficulty can experience the true sense of being a "victim," of being hurt, of being in pain, of dealing with loss. But whatever door has closed has to be left behind, and there has to be the knowing that another door will open.

A Strengths "Super Sleuth" is a detective on the journey of life who has learned that any problem will yield to learning and a new direction when we decide to use it as an opportunity to use our scientifically "tested" strengths to find out how problems are gifts in disguise and how, when one door closes, another door always opens.

If you have not read "StrengthSmart" in Growing the Positive Mind, I encourage you to do so.

Milk The Problem

By Dr. William K. Larkin on May 19, 2009

Problems occur for everyone. A friend of mine has fibromyalgia. It is an elusive problem that science is beginning to understand. Medical solutions have been slow in coming. But regardless, the fibromyalgia is really is a symptom of a lack of wholeness, of a lack of some inner alignment of vibration. In some way the human system is "off" its alignment.

So I asked my friend to have a conversation with her fibromyalgia. I asked her to see fibromyalgia as her friend, to befriend it rather than resist it and push it away. Rather than swimming upstream against it, I asked her to go downstream and learn from the condition. I said, "talk to it." And so she did; she asked fibromyalgia what it had to teach her. She was stunned at the answer. She said, "what I got in my head was that it was here to show me how I am loved and adored by Source."

She knew that the answer was correct and that she need to look more. She began to realize that she had been very over-controlling, worried about the future, always fretting, judging, and assessing and never just relaxing and letting go. She realized that the only time she really "let go" was when she played cards and gambled -which was also something of a problem for her.

Oftentimes, we get the messages of what is wrong with us in many ways before they manifest in our body as a physical disease. She started to change her life. She slowed down. She got massages, particularly of the head. She learned to meditate. She radically changed her life style and tried not to "over think," "overplay," and "over analyze" everything. She gave up some control.

 Problems have lessons to reveal to us. They are teachers from which we can learn. Don't let any problem get away without learning all of its lessons. Milk it for everything it has to teach you. Very often, the problem disappears when the lessons it has brought are learned.

The Thank-You Man, The Thank-You Woman

By Dr. William K. Larkin on May 12, 2009

Meister Eckhart was an extremely intellectual, mystic man of prayer. But his advice was acutely simple. He believed that if we never prayed any prayer or did any meditation, that the only practice that was really necessary, that would cover all the bases, was to say "thank-you."

I'm very interested in how important this is in the long term picture of sustaining an UpSpiral. All you really need is "thank-you." Gratitude will always keep you in the UpSpiral. But what of those times when you don't "feel" grateful, that you can't find the "thank-you?" And even if the thought is there, the feeling seems a million miles a way, never mind a state of mind that is joyful and grateful.

It really doesn't matter what you're feeling or what you're thinking. There is a magic in the Universe about this. Just start saying "thank-you" to yourself, over and over and over again. When you wake up, make up your mind to be a "thank-you Man" or "thank-you Woman" and before your feet hit the floor start the "thank-you." Let the chorus of "thank-you" grow and grow.

The amazing thing that you will find is that the Universe will meet you with this experience, this feeling, and will respond with the state of mind of thankfulness. You just have to start the chant, "thank-you, thank-you, thank-you, thank-you, thank-you."

There are times when I am driving down the highway and my brain has decided to take a detour into thinking about some unpleasant past memory, or the traffic begins to slow, or someone honks a horn and startles me. It is easy to feel like I am "nowhere," going "nowhere," with nothing happening and everything seeming flat, maybe even stale, and I go ‘thank-you, thank-you, thank-you, thank-you."

I keep it going until my frame of mind changes, which usually doesn't take very long at all.

Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you, thank-you, thank-you

I am a "thank-man."

How Should Others Be?

By Dr. William K. Larkin on May 4, 2009

Who should talk to you differently? Who should be kinder and more compassionate to you? Who should appreciate you more? Who should give you more understanding and more appreciation? Who should be more loving? Who steps on your toes? Who wounds you? Who hurts you?

Who, in your world, do you need to be different so you can be happy?

Who is the "pain in your rear" who should not be challenging and provoking you?

How should others change for you? How should they be?

Who should be different so you can be happy?
Who should be different so you can be more content?
Who should change for you?

Byron Katie leads us to ask 5 questions that are the short and far more effective "course in miracles."

First, write down how the other person should be; how should they be different?

Then ask 5 questions:

1. Is it true?
2. Is it absolutely true?
3. How do I feel when I think like this?
4. How do I feel when I don't think like this?
5. Turn it around.

Here's an example: My father should be more compassionate.
The turn around is: I should be more compassionate.
To whom? Maybe your father, maybe not.
Maybe to yourself! Usually.

Byron Katie's book is Loving What Is.

Go to her website and have some wonderfully fun self-work and download her "Judge Your Neighbor" worksheet. See what you learn that sets you free.

One last thought:

Don't ever let anyone make you think that you need to change to make them happy. When we start to dance that dance we enter into the territory of enmeshment and co-dependency. It isn't fun, it isn't healthy and it isn't what we teach here at ANI. Happiness is an inside job and your vibration depends upon your personal choice to do the work to grow in happiness.