Change Your Way of Thinking

Have you ever opened a container of Talenti?  If you have, you know how hard they can be to open.  If you haven’t, you’ll have to take my word for it, or google it….the images are amusing.  After the woman licked the ice cream container in the store and the ice cream companies started putting plastic seals on the containers, people joked about the fact that Talenti did not, because those containers are too difficult to open anyhow.  I once took a container out to the garage and put in in the workbench clamp in order to get a sturdy enough hold on it.  Even after you open the containers once, they can be difficult to take the lid back off if you twist it on too tight.

Well, one day I was determined to open one without any help.  And I focused, and I thought about the lid turning in my hand…and it did.  Since that day, every time I open a new container of Talenti, rather than focus on how difficult it will be to open, I focus on it twisting open in my hand, and every time it does.  Sure, some have been more difficult than others, but it still works.

It is similar, in a sense, to striking someone/something.  In Martial Arts, you are taught to punch at a point past your target, because it will carry more force than if you just punch your target.  The slightest shift in focus, but suddenly a strike becomes more effective.

It is easy to see the struggles and focus on them, and each time we do and fail is a reinforcement that the struggles are, quite literally real.  We all do it.  Hell, my career is a constant string of failures and rejections.  Even there though, you learn to refocus the audition process to think of it as less of failure and more of the project not being a good fit.  Last night a heard someone refer to their audition as “the first two minutes are free, after that you have to pay me.”

By making a slight shift to imagine the success and what you gain from trying rather than dwelling on the struggle and failure, the results and reality shift to match.

Now I am going to go enjoy my bowl of Talenti…