A story that recently made it into pretty much every news outlet from Florida to Pakistan was how 80 year old Helen Collins remained calm as she made an emergency crash landing in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. (It skidded down the runway for 1000 feet before coming to an abrupt halt.)
The Cessna her husband had been flying.
When he suffered a heart attack.
With one operating engine.
With barely enough fuel.
Her son, Richard, a trained pilot, guided his mother down from the control tower. “She was calmer than everybody on the ground. She had it totally under control,” Richard Collins said. “The amazing thing is she landed that plane on one engine – I don’t know if there are a lot of trained pilots that could do that. I already knew I lost my dad; I didn’t want to lose my mom. It could have been both of them at once.”
Yes, you can accomplish amazing things when you put your mind to it. Don’t sell yourself short.
Pain is good. We suffer pain because we don’t understand it. And because it hurts.
Pain serves a single purpose; it is a warning. We place our hands on a hot stove and the pain makes us remove our hand before too much damage is done (hopefully). Imagine if we could feel no pain. There are some people who can’t. They often cause damage to themselves, and they have to tip-toe through life to avoid damaging themselves even more.
When a door squeaks, it is calling out for oil. When your elbow hurts, it is calling out for…a doctor?
Perhaps.
Don’t “suffer” your pain. Embrace it. Love it. Listen to it. It is giving you a valuable warning.
JOKE: If your child wants to mow the lawn, you know he is too young to do so.
REALITY: Isn’t the grass always greener on the other side of the fence? When you can’t do something yet, you long to be able to do it. As a kid, we long to be able to mow the lawn. As teenagers we can’t wait to leave home, but not long after we seem to gravitate back. Whatever our neighbor has looks great … until we get one, too, and then we notice another neighbor has something else that looks pretty good.
But we already have all the things we need, and whatever age we are is just the right age for us right now. It is great to have dreams and to work toward them, but not at the expense of missing what we have now…which quite often are the dreams we once longed for.
JOKE: Someday, all kids who can mow will want to, and all who are too young will be happy to wait.
Imagine you are driving down the road, half paying attention, half listening to the radio or reviewing the grocery list in your mind or steaming over some injustice at work or doing whatever you usually do while driving. (Yes, most people pay only half attention while driving down a familiar road.)
All of a sudden you see something happen on the road. There is a car or a truck or a bus that is spinning out of control. Or traffic has suddenly – very suddenly! – come to a screeching halt. Or you hear the sound of CRASH! right behind you. Before you even have time to react, you feel the sudden lunge of your car as it is hit or as it hits something else.
It all happens so fast, you can’t even be sure what happens. But you are in pain. The details will vary from crash to crash, but such are the stories of people filing claims for personal injury. Even in cases of whiplash, people don’t always know what happened, because it usually hits them from behind. People filing claims due to whiplash might not even remember all the details, because the pain might not kick in for a few days.
Their stories may differ, but their emotions don’t.
Crashes place stress on a person.
Injury places stress on a person.
The legal system places stress on a person.
Happiness After Personal Injury
There are ways to rebuild your happiness after the crash. Here are a few tips to recover emotionally:
Call in the troops.
Your friends and family are there to support you, so now is the time to ask for help. Let them help you consider your options. let them listen to your thoughts and feelings. let them laugh with you – yes, go out and have some fun with friends and family. Do things that are less painful, of course, but you need positive company to regain your strength.
Dive deep.
You are wonderful. Yes, I am talking to you. Whether you are hang gliding off the coast of Madagascar or sitting in pain on your sofa at home, you are wonderful. The crash is just a situation; it is not you. The pain is just a situation; it is not you. The legal process is just a situation; it is not you. What really counts is you – who you are deep inside. Focus on yourself, on who you are, on your values. These have not changed. This is your rock.
Look ahead.
In most cases, the pain will go away and the injury will heal. Or, you will learn to cope with the pain and manage your life with the injury. Sooner or later the lawyers will leave and hopefully you will have the extra money that you need to put your life back together. Imagine yourself past the trauma, part the anger – really, close your eyes an envision enjoying life when the doctors and lawyers have packed up their bags and gone.
This is sort of like a guest post, in that somebody else did all the writing. It’s a great sign about living your passion, and I thought I would share it with you.
First off I should say that my mother was never diagnosed as bipolar but looking back as an adult, lots of research, some basic education in psychology and after speaking to trained professionals I believe it’s a very accurate diagnosis. Your parents and family are meant to be there for you no matter what, they should support you and encourage you and you should always feel safe and protected by them but if you’re growing up with a family member who has any psychological or mental illness this is very rarely the case. You feel like you’re constantly walking on egg shells, you know they’ll be good days but at the same time you know they’ll be bad days too.
You can’t live your life around them
It’s not fair to live your whole life like you’re walking on egg shells but this is sometimes unavoidable. You know it can only take the smallest thing to trigger a storm but at the same time your home life needs to be somewhere you can relax. One thing I found helped was to have a kettle with some powder milk, tea, coffee and sugar in my room and a small box of snacks. Hiding away in your room shouldn’t have to be the answer but if this happens more often than not you need to make sure it’s as comfortable as possible. It’s their house too but there is a very large degree of irrationality to mental illnesses in that they’ll take it out any mood swings on the first thing they’ll see. If you’re not under their nose your life will be easier.
You need a release
No matter if it’s just a half an hour walk round your neighbourhood or you join a local club or activity group find something away from home and away from school that can take your mind off things even if it’s just for an hour or two a week. If you like listening to music really study it and learn to produce it yourself or dance to it. I was never fanatically into music but there were some songs that really had prominent lyrics to me that helped. Reading is also another good way to lose yourself for a few hours.
Look forwards not backwards
This is one I’ve learned with hindsight. Nothing is forever; you’ll grow up, move out and live your own life one day. For now it sucks and there’s a good chance tomorrow is going to suck too but next year or the year after it will get better. Find one thing you’re looking forward to that’s not too far away, going out with your friends, a holiday or even a shopping trip anything that you can concentrate on to take your mind off today. If you have nothing coming up over the next few weeks arrange something.
You can’t blame them for your life
This is one you need to learn as soon as possible and it took me a long time to learn and I’m still learning it today. You can storm around as a teenager and get away with it because ‘my mother never loved me’ but as an adult it’s quite pathetic. You are your own person, with your own personality and ultimately responsible for your own decisions and your own destiny. You might look at your friends who come from loving ‘conventional’ families but the chances are the majority of them have something they dislike about the way their parents raised them. If you want to get an education you can get an education, of course that’s easier said than done but it’s not impossible. My mother’s favourite quote was that I’d never amount to anything. I worked hard at several jobs and put myself through university. It wasn’t easy and I’m pretty sure I didn’t sleep for about three years but only a very weak forty year old says it’s their parent’s fault they never made anything of their life.
You can’t hold a grudge
This is another one I’m still leaning today. I don’t think I can ever forgive my mother for some of the things she told me growing up and I’ll have physical and mental scars from her for the rest of my life but as I’ve already mentioned only a very weak adult uses the past as an excuse for the present. There are some things that will be unforgivable but the majority of things need to be left in the past. Now I no longer live at home I have an OK relationship with my mother, it makes me sad that we couldn’t have this mother/daughter relationship when I needed it as a child but I’ll take what I can get now and leave the past in the past.
Jessica grew up to be a happy, well adjusted adult who lived happily ever after (so far) who works as an SEO for a home furniture company
A recent series I watched on TV followed a young British engineer as he traveled around the country on a longboat, celebrating Britain’s industrial heritage. One episode featured the humble tin of baked beans, and in this article I want to cover what this teaches us about goal achievement…
Guy Martin is an engineer and well known bike racer. Well known in bike racing circles that is, I confess I had never heard of him before watching his TV series.
In ‘The Boat That Guy Built’ on the BBC, he wanted to remind people of a 150 year period when British inventions and engineering helped to change the world, to drive the industrial revolution.
He traveled around on his barge, fitting it out using traditional techniques, and I was drawn in by the whole series. One episode featured him making baked beans on toast, so he went right back to the basics and history of the can, making it by hand. This is where the goal achievement lesson comes in…
The patent for the tin can was given in the early 1800s in Britain, and it wasn’t long before it had been sold on and developed, as a way of storing provisions for the army and navy. This was state of the art stuff at the time, rather like NASA inventing ideas for the space program.
Within a few years though, maybe a decade or so, the baked bean had moved from being a novelty food for the posh to a common ingredient, and the tin can had gone from being experimental to being part of everyday life.
It was taken for granted.
150 Years Later
This is all over 150 years ago now, but the lesson we can take today is still fresh…
While it’s possible that your goal may be groundbreaking, it’s more likely that it has been achieved before. Someone, somewhere, will take it for granted. Someone, somewhere, will have gone through the trial and error process and got to the end result.
Yes, it will be new for *you*, there will be learning and set backs, but you can make the journey far easier if you seek out the knowledge of others who have gone before.
You will also have an easier ride of it mentally if you imagine yourself in the position of those who take your goal for granted.
Developing an assurance that your goal will happen, helps to motivate you when you come to step that are wary or nervous about – you’ll be much more confident to take it when you know others have been there before.
So to sum up, the humble tin of baked beans can teach us about trial and error, and it can teach us about repositioning goals in our mind as taken for granted rather than experimental.
I loved Guy Martin’s show, and the next time you are struggling with a goal, open a cupboard and stare at a baked bean tin for some inspiration!
Have you seen this Facebook app to support the positive psychology exercise “Three Good Things”? Participants in this exercise record Three Good Things, and the reasons why they happen, every day. There are some other versions of this exercise out there (including an iPhone app and one on happier.com), but this is a way to make these exercises more effective using social interaction.
If you want to influence people, give them the right environment. Of this there is no question. Most recently, a study confirmed what we all knew about how they cleaned up New York City. This line from The Globe and Mail a few days ago:
Urban decay is contagious because people generally behave badly when others in their neighbourhood do, say Dutch researchers whose article was published yesterday in the online journal Science.
This principle applies in the home and in the workplace, too. If you leave things all over the house or allow employees to get sloppy in their work habits, expect more and more of the same.
On the other hand, if you want people to take pride in their work or keep the house tidy, apply yourself to the task. Pick up stuff around the house when others are not around. And when they are, solicit their help in tidying up. The tidier you keep it, the tidier they will, too. And, the more attention they will focus on cleanliness and following rules and generally responsible behavior.
By the way, this is the same psychology I have repeatedly mentioned with regard to smiling. The best way to brighten up your environment is to smile. Your smile will be contagious. And before you know it, you will notice that all those grumpy people you kept bumping into have given way to smiling, happy people.
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