It's How You Say It

It has been absolutely FREEZING in New York this week- I mean painfully cold.  Yesterday while walking to get my lunch I was so taken by the cold that I started repeating in my head Oh My G-d it's so cold...over and over and over again.  I continued to feel colder and colder.  Later on I went back outside, and for whatever reason I didn't feel the bite in the air and said to myself wow it's so much warmer outside.  I didn't secure my scarf or put my hood up- it honestly felt about 10 degrees warmer to me.  Last night when getting out of my car and walking toward my destination I remember thinking here I go back into the tundra, and what followed was that feeling of severe cold.  However, later on when I went back outside- when it would logically be colder I said to myself "hm not feeling so bad anymore" and then what followed was a normal walk to the car and not a dart as I had done just a few hours ago.  It got me thinking about the effect the words I was telling myself had on my perception of the weather.  I remember checking the thermometer in the car only to see that there was a variation of 1-2 degrees up and down within these time periods.  Certainly those degrees do not create great enough of a difference to feel more or less cold.  I decided that I had influenced my feelings on the weather with the words I said.  I was discussing this with my mom and she brought up a similar example.  She said that when my sisters and I were babies learning to walk, if we fell and she reacted with shrieks of nervousness we would automatically cry harder.  However, if we fell and she came to us with a smile we would barely cry.  The book As a Man Thinketh  discusses the idea that the direction of our thoughts influences how we feel and behave.  Certainly actually expressing ideas- by speaking them as I did in my example- has a similar impact.  So with this in mind we can essentially talk ourselves into feeling a certain way about something, both in a positive or negative direction.  We all encounter disappointing situations, if we say to ourselves, this did not work out in my favor but I still have "x" good thing going right now.  Or I didn't get the results I was hoping for with this project but now I know what changes to make which will yield a better outcome...then essentially we are putting our minds in a positive place.  When you play the poor me fiddle, a sad you emerges.  Take control of your positivity... and speak or think in that direction.  You'll be pleasantly surprised at the results.  Feeling great beats feeling awful- a both captain obvious but captain true statement.  Go for the former.