I want to talk to you about fortune cookies. Yes, I said fortune cookies. We all know and love them. I personally love Chinese food, and open up that fortune cookie at the end and have fun sharing it with all of my friends and family around the table. Who got what fortune? What does it mean? Maybe play those fun games like reading the fortune and inserting “in between the sheets” after. The reason I bring this up is recently I got this fortune from a fortune cookie that I thought was pretty profound.
It says “Dispel Negativity Through Creativity Activities.” What does that mean? To me, what it means is really something that I have learned from one of my mentors, Tony Robbins, it’s a way of changing your focus. Changing your focus is a powerful tool to overcome negativity, to overcome suffering in your life. Usually when we have something that’s weighing on our mind, we’ve got a lot of negativity in our life, there’s a lot of things that are weighing heavily on our heart and creating some level of suffering for us, it’s because we’re focused a negative object. For example, you had an argument with somebody that you just can’t get out of your head.
One of the great ways to get that out of your head is to change your focus. Seems a little obvious and maybe it is, but if you change your focus you will change your state. Get out and go to the mall, or go to a friend’s house. Find a project to work on or like the fortune cookie says, “Find something to be creative with.” I know you have levels of creativity, I know it. As an engineer growing up, I have a master’s degree in engineering, I never thought of myself as creative. To me creative things were art and music, or movies.
What I’ve since found out is that I brought an immense amount of creativity to my engineering work. You have to be very creative, very resourceful. That’s another way to say creative. You have to be resourceful as well to be able to solve problems, to figure out why a computer is not working or why the network is not working. Any troubleshooting activities require an immense amount of creativity because you have to figure out what you’ve been told. You have to figure out what you haven’t been told and figure out from those where the problem lies. It’s a lot of detective work. Those of you that are fans of Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes was very key about figuring out what is happening and how to solve the mystery by means of the process of deduction. In troubleshooting, you are using the same techniques as Sherlock Holmes to solve the mystery.
Figure out what your fortune cookie is. Figure out what it is that can change your negative mind to a more positive viewpoint. Most of the time that’s going to mean changing your focus, changing how you talk about things. I talk to people a lot, and the way people use language really affects how they look at things. Do you get really pissed off at things, or do you just get kind of annoyed? It really does matter how you use your language in everything that you do.
And finally, is physiology. Are your shoulders up, or are they down? Is your voice up and excited? Do you have a smile on your face, or are you walking around with your head down? All of these things matter. Focus is one way to change your mindset. The other two are also very helpful, and all three, you are going to create a different person. Your entire state of mind, and body and energy are going to be completely and radically different.
