DW's Blog

Try The Opposite

by DW Green — April 22, 2021

Sometimes our habits get stuck in a bad pattern that pushes us further from our natural, healthy selves.

Viktor Frankl, the brilliant psychologist and Holocaust survivor, cured patients suffering from phobias or neurotic habits using a method he called “paradoxical intention.” Let’s say a patient couldn’t sleep. The standard therapy would have been something obvious, like relaxation techniques. Frankl instead encouraged the patient to try not to fall asleep. He found that shifting focus off the problem deflected the patient’s obsessive attention away from it and allowed them to eventually sleep normally.Fans of the TV show Seinfeld might remember an episode called the “The Opposite” where George Costanza magically improves his life by doing the opposite of whatever he’d normally do. “If every instinct you have is wrong,” Jerry says to him, “then the opposite would have to be right.” The larger point is that sometimes our instincts or habits get stuck in a bad pattern that pushes us further from our natural, healthy selves.Now you shouldn’t immediately toss out everything in your life—some stuff is working. But what if you explored opposites today? What if you broke the pattern?

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The Definition Of Insanity

by DW Green — April 14, 2021

Hope is not a strategy!

It’s been said that the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result. Yet that’s exactly what most people do. They tell themselves: Today, I won’t get angry. Today, I won’t gorge myself. But they don’t actually do anything differently. They try the same routine and hop it will work this time. Hope is not a strategy!Failure is a part of life we have little choice over. Learning from failure, on the other hand, is optional. We have to choose to learn. We must consciously opt to do things differently—to tweak and change until we actually get the result we’re after. But that’s hard.Sticking with the same unsuccessful pattern is easy. It doesn’t take any thought or any additional effort, which is probably why most people do it.

Read More – The Perfect Employee?

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by DW Green — March 17, 2021

Don’t spend much time thinking about what other people think.

How quickly we can disregard our own feelings about something and adopt someone else’s. We think a shirt looks good at the store but will view it with shame and scorn if our spouse or a coworker makes an offhand remark. We can be immensely happy with our own lives—until we find out that someone we don’t even like has more. Or worse and more precariously, we don’t feel good about our accomplishments or talents until some third party validates them.While we control our own opinion, we don’t control what other people think—about us least of all. For this reason, putting ourselves at the mercy of those opinions and trying to gain approval of others are a dangerous endeavor.Don’t spend much time thinking about what other people think. Think about what you think. Think instead about the results, about impact, about whether it is the right thing to do.

How You Do Anything Is How You Do Everything

by DW Green — February 24, 2021

Play with your full effort.

It’s fun to think about the future. It’s easy to ruminate on the past. It’s harder to put energy into what’s in front of us right at this moment—especially if it’s something we don’t want to do. We think: This is just a joke; it isn’t who I am. It doesn’t matter. But it does matter. Who knows—it might be the last thing you ever do. Here lies Dave, buried alive under a mountain of unfinished business.There is an old saying: “How you do anything is how you do everything.” It’s true. How you handle today is how you’ll handle every day. How you handle this minute is how you’ll handle every minute.