Retrain Your Brain

Retrain Your Brain dan skognes motivation blogger speaker teacher trainer coach educatorThere is a popular saying: “It is what it is,” and I hate it!  You know why? When someone says this it is NEVER good. People use it as a cop-out. They say it when they have given up, are unwilling to stick out their necks to make a hard decision, or they just want you off their back.

Next time I hear someone tell me that, I am going to stop them and correct their speech. Instead of saying “It is what it is,” let’s change it to “It is what you make it.” That will at least make them think! Quit making excuses for the way things are and start looking at what options you have. When you resign yourself to “It is what it is,” you have shut down your creative juices and possibly lost the opportunity to do something significant.

Don’t allow negative thinking to derail you. Whether it is your own brain talking to yourself, or it is someone else trying to feed you this line, stop it and correct it. If you don’t, you may never know what might have been had you just pushed the envelope a little.

I guarantee you that the first person to say, “It is what it is” was a pessimist. You will never hear an optimist make that statement. Why? Because they know that there is opportunity in every problem. They don’t see the problem as the end, only a detour. They just have to find their way around it and not give up in the process.

Don’t let negative thinking cloud your mind.  It may not happen overnight, and bad circumstances may tempt you to fall into that “stinkin’ thinkin’,” as Zig Ziglar used to call it, but it can be done.

The question we have to ask ourselves is, Will you let the obstacle in front of you hold you back from your success and happiness, or will you retrain your brain?

Shalom!

Dan Skognes

2 Responses to “Retrain Your Brain”

  1. Robert Mejia says:

    I can’t remember using that phrase. My brain has been retrained too many times. By my parents to act responsibly, by the military as a tranee and then a leader of men, in peacetime and in a war I was once in, as a student, as a teacher, and as a school administrator. I accepted it and have never to my recollection been a pessimist. My brain learned to adjust also politically and religiously.