Like most people I get copied in on viral emails making the rounds. I recently received this one:
Jerry was the kind of guy you love to hate. He was always in a good mood and always had something positive to say. When someone would ask him how he was doing, he would reply, "If I were any better, I would be twins!"
He was a unique manager because he had several waiters who had followed him around from restaurant to restaurant. The reason the waiters followed Jerry was because of his attitude. He was a natural motivator. If an employee was having a bad day, Jerry was there telling the employee how to look on the positive side of the situation.
Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up to Jerry and asked him, "I don't get it! You can't be a positive person all of the time. How do you do it?" Jerry replied, "Each morning I wake up and say to myself, Jerry, you have two choices today. You can choose to be in a good mood or you can choose to be in a bad mood.' I choose to be in a good mood. Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or I can choose to learn from it. I choose to learn from it. Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or I can point out the positive side of life. I choose the positive side of life."
"Yeah, right, it's not that easy," I protested.
"Yes it is," Jerry said. "Life is all about choices. When you cut away all the junk, every situation is a choice. You choose how you react to situations. You choose how people will affect your mood. You choose to be in a good mood or bad mood. The bottom line: It's your choice how you live life."
I reflected on what Jerry said. Soon thereafter, I left the restaurant industry to start my own business. We lost touch, but often thought about him when I made a choice about life instead of reacting to it. Several years later, I heard that Jerry did something you are never supposed to do in a restaurant business: he left the back door open one morning and was held up at gunpoint by three armed robbers. While trying to open the safe, his hand, shaking from nervousness, slipped off the combination. The robbers panicked and shot him. Luckily, Jerry was found relatively quickly and rushed to the local trauma center. After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, Jerry was released from the hospital with fragments of the bullets still in his body. I saw Jerry about six months after the accident. When I asked him how he was, he replied, "If I were any better, I'd be twins. Wanna see my scars?"
I declined to see his wounds, but did ask him what had gone through his mind as the robbery took place. "The first thing that went through my mind was that I should have locked the back door," Jerry replied. "Then, as I lay on the floor, I remembered that I had two choices: I could choose to live, or I could choose to die. I chose to live.
"Weren't you scared? Did you lose consciousness?" I asked.
Jerry continued, "The paramedics were great. They kept telling me I was going to be fine. But when they wheeled me into the emergency room and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared. In their eyes, I read, 'He's a dead man. " I knew I needed to take action."
"What did you do?" I asked.
"Well, there was a big, burly nurse shouting questions at me," said Jerry. "She asked if I was allergic to anything. 'Yes,' I replied. The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply... I took a deep breath and yelled, 'Bullets!' Over their laughter, I told them, 'I am choosing to live. Operate on me as if I am alive, not dead."
Jerry lived thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of his amazing attitude. I learned from him that every day we have the choice to live fully.
Attitude, after all, is everything.
"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Matthew 6:34
After all today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.I found support for this parable from an improbable source. I'm currently reading "The ultimate book of mind maps" by Tony Buzan. Buzan describes the human brain as a synergetic system, a system where the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts.
Thus a thought does not exist in isolation, it fits into a network of other thoughts and associations that exist only in your own brain. This network is a kind of internal super-mind map of your growing thoughts, ideas and memories. As you think, new connections between thoughts are forged and your internal mind map becomes more sophisticated, complex and powerful. In other words, more than just the sum of the individual thoughts.
The more you use your brain to think about something, through repetition, the more you strengthen the links between thoughts, making the mind map of these thoughts and ideas stronger. Everything you do or say or think or feel increases the probability that you will do, say, think, or feel in the same way again. If you do things well, speak and think positively, and generally feel good about yourself, others, the world and the universe, the probability continually increases that you will do better, talk and think better, and feel and be better. This is sometimes referred to as a virtuous circle.
The flip side of this is that if you do poorly, think and act negatively, practice inadequately, and regularly feel bad about yourself, others, the world, and the universe, then with every such thought and act you increase the probablity of a continuing and deepening downwards spiral.
Buzan concludes that the brain principles of synergy and repetition mean that our brains can be both infinitely creative and infinitely destructive, but the power to use you brain positively and to the greatest effect lies in your own hands.
It's your choice.
Key learning points summary:
(1) the synergy created by the ability to connect thoughts and ideas is a fundamental benefit of mind mapping tools such as MindManager
(2) that repetition is important to strengthen retention (mapping + repetition = better retention)
(3) mind mapping provides a powerful way to harness the potential of the brain
Tags:
Mind Mapping,
Mindjet,
MindManager,
Tony Buzan,
LifeHack,
Personal Productivity
