Your Body Can Change Your Mind

As a follow up to last week's video, we will talk about how you can begin to shape your mind by taking action.  How profound!  Basically, "fake it 'til you make it" isn't just a cliché:  it works!

Amy Cuddy discusses what to do about boosting your confidence by controlling your posture.  Plus, she has the research to back it up.  Just watch the video if you haven't seen it yet.  Prior to really improving your confidence with her techniques, we must discuss "the beginning".  There is a first, necessary step that we can't take for granted in improving ourselves:  responsibility.

Before you can ever begin, you need the power that comes from taking responsibility for you.  Not just what you do and say, but what you think and feel.  Nobody can make you feel anything.  So if you're a nurse with an unruly patient who is purposely trying to get on your nerves, realize that how you feel is completely up to you.  You don't have to turn over control of your emotions to anyone or anything.

We can decide how to react, how to feel, how to think, about any circumstance.  There are many great books written on this subject, not the least of which is by Viktor Frankl, who was a Holocaust survivor and writes beautifully about self-responsibility.  The essential point of all the wisdom you can find on the subject is that you decide how you think and feel.  You can control yourself, making every situation, especially the negative ones, into building blocks for your spirit.  Of course, you don't get there in a day.  It takes practice, but practice is something we are all doing.  Success simply comes from going in the right direction consistently.