Our mental fitness determines how we respond to situations and problems in our lives. The more we can improve our mental fitness, the more we can improve our peace of mind, our relationships and our accomplishments. We can be driven to reach some goals by our saboteurs and negative stress. Our journey and the accomplishment of our goals is so much better, however, if we are driven by our positive thoughts and creative focus. The Sage is the part of all of us that pulls us with a focus on a positive outlook and it helps us to recover from negative reactions.
The Sage Perspective is to look at any outcome or circumstance and figure out what gifts or opportunities can come from it. Almost any negative occurrence can have some positive outcome if you travel on a positive course rather than continuing down a negative path with your thoughts and feelings. There may be learning in the situation that leads to future growth. You can use discernment rather than judgment so that you can understand better and gain knowledge to help you later. You can also use the situation to understand and weaken your saboteurs. You will then be better prepared to respond to future problems. You may also be inspired to commit to some actions that you may not have had the courage or knowledge to before this situation happened. Or there may simply be some good consequences you can realize once you have time to really look at the situation.
We can use the pandemic as a example of a negative unexpected circumstance. There were many easy negative pathways to follow in reaction to this. However, what gifts or opportunities may have arisen? The inability to travel altered our ability to visit friends and family. So we all switched to zooming with each other. I now see and talk to many people much more frequently than I used to. The pandemic was devastating to many restaurants. It also made people realize how important their local restaurants are and we supported them by ordering take out and dining out again when we could. What gift or opportunities can you see in a current problem? Can you think of three?
The other Sage powers are empathy, exploring, innovation, navigation and activation. These are powers that help to drive us with positive thoughts and feelings. Empathy is the ability to understand the feelings and thoughts of another person and to place yourself in their shoes. You can then use your sage rather than your saboteurs to respond in a positive way.
It starts with empathy for yourself and treating yourself with kindness and respect rather than criticizing yourself. If you struggle with this, find a photo of yourself as a child and spend a few moments looking at and thinking about that child. How would you want to comfort and be supportive of that child? That child is still inside of you and still needs your care and understanding. Now try to extend that to others in your life – your spouse, family, friends, co-workers, wait staff, grocery clerk, tech support. If you can consider how they may be feeling and do your best to show them respect and support, how much better will that interaction be? Positive attitudes usually trigger positive responses so you will benefit as well.
There are two main powers of our emotions, fear and love. The difference is between our surviving mind and our thriving mind. Which do you want to be driven by? I will discuss the other Sage powers next time.
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