Seth Godin made an interesting point in a post about whining, where he wrote:

… whining is a reverse placebo. When you get good at whining, you start noticing evidence that makes your whining more true. So you amplify that and immerse yourself in it, thus creating more evidence, more stuff worth complaining about.

Indeed, that on which focus becomes our reality. If we focus on the positive in our circumstance (I prefer to view it as accepting our circumstances, rather than the ‘positive’) then our energies move in that direction. If we focus on the ‘negative’, ipso facto our energies move there.

The Buddha said something like:

All that we are is the result of what we have thought. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.

Or more simply:

With our thoughts, we make the world.

I’m not a Buddhist as such but I believe those words to be a fundamental truth.

In business and our personal lives we frequently face challenges. How we construct our view of those circumstances invariably affects our life path.

My biz, Red Hill Publishing, recently moved through a difficult phase in our growth. We sought professional assistance from outside the business (check out Shirlaws), focused on that which we could change, stopped putting energy into that which we couldn’t and the results over the past month or so have been staggering.

So, where’s your focus?

Mark Cuban blogged today about TV, particularly what/how Google and Apple should move their TV aspirations forward. He wrote something particularly interesting:

TV is the path of least resistance alternative to doing nothing. When you do nothing. Time passes too slowly. When you are doing something, even something that barely requires consciousness, like watching TV, there is the chance that time will go by more quickly. We look for the path of least resistance to passing time whenever we are bored.

TV is the best cure for boredom. That is what makes TV so popular.

I sometimes wonder how those incredibly productive people do all that they do. You know the type: multilingual actor, exhibited photographer, successful businessperson, et cetera.

I expect they fill their lives with the things that help them achieve their success. There’s also a better than even chance they don’t watch much TV, play games on the net, or spend time on Facebook; all the things that keep us from being bored but don’t actually lead to productive lives.

To most people in Western society perfection means flawlessness. Free from mistakes. Zero errors.

Do you know anyone who never makes mistakes? I don’t, myself included. So if we all make mistakes then perfection must include allowance for this.

Permit the mistakes that arise in your life. Learn from them.

Of course, try to prevent exactly the same mistake occurring in the same or similar circumstances in the future, but don’t pretend you can remove errors completely from your life.

You, your business and personal relationships will be a lot healthier for your new found perfection.

Nine years of experience is very different from one year of experience, nine times.

— Seth Godin