Integrate!

Are other people killing your joys a little at a time? When you look at the picture above, you might be someone who says, "Spring at last! What a great day!" But what if the person next to you replies, "At least it's finally sunny again. But won't it be great when it's warm too?" Look back at what I did there. Even in the example, the "but" steals away the joy in the moment. And then I layered in another "but" in the quotation. Two buts in one sentence is a lot of crossing out what came before. In NLP and hypnosis courses, people are often taught to avoid the word "but" because it creates a cognitive problem. It's complicated to understand something and then have to go back and cross it out and revise your understanding. It's not just a thinking problem. It's also a feeling problem. You don't want to be the person who crosses out someone else's joy. When you look at this picture of spring, you know...

Has someone ever asked you: "What do you want?" and left you stumped? Most of us have gone through short or long periods where we were not certain about what we wanted. We are torn between different options, or we might feel that we're not good at getting what we want (so what's the point)? It's easy to convince ourselves that life would be better if we just made the best of what we have. There are two problems with this: One is that if you don't believe the world has anything new and good to offer you, it probably won't offer you anything new and good. We find what we look for.  The other is that not wanting anything doesn't give your mind enough to do. The human mind is naturally active. If it doesn't keep busy imagining good stuff, it's likely to keep busy imagining troubles. Buy now! So how do you decide what to want? You've decided before: you made a decision to read this, for instance. Even someone who is really sure they do...