For me, May has a fresh start feeling. The evenings are brighter for longer and the temperature is getting warmer. Trees that were bare for many months are suddenly verdant with leaves. Bees and butterflies are busy in gardens.
It’s a welcome sense of renewal and I’m grateful for the hope it brings.
This month’s newsletter is about having hope and the ability to decide to bounce-back from negative circumstances.
At any time, we get to choose our response to a situation and we can decide to be optimistic and positive or we can stay stuck in negative thought.
It can be very hard to shake off “poor me” feelings. Nature gives us a helping hand at this time of year by showing us its possible to renew and grow again. I hope you enjoy this newsletter!
Sinead
Viktor Frankl was born in March 1905 to a Jewish family living in Austria. As a child he was interested in psychotherapy. At university, he focused on studying depression and his advances and theories resulted in decreased suicide rates.
In 1942, Viktor and his family were arrested and put in a concentration camp. Within a short period of time, Viktor and his loved ones were separated. He was the only one of his family to live and was one of a small number of survivors to exit Auschwitz in Spring 1945.
During the summer of 1945, Viktor wrote his most famous book, “Man’s Search for Meaning” in 9 days. He developed his form of psychotherapy which he called Logotherapy as a result of surviving the Holocaust.
Viktor’s theories centred around his belief that having meaning in our lives is what motivates us and helps us be resilient in the face of adversity. He saw meaning as having a life purpose or love or strength to cope with hardship.
Whilst in the concentration camps, he noticed that those who coped best were not necessarily the fittest physically but they were those who had hope and those that retained a sense of purpose.
He famously recounts using the power of his mind to distract him from the atrocities he faced whilst captured. He believed that whilst the soldiers could take all his material possessions and separate him from family and friends, they couldn’t take what he chose to keep in his mind.
One of his most famous quotes is: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Viktor died in 1997 but left the world with his theories which have laid the foundations for many elements of positive psychology. In total, Viktor wrote 39 books and delivered many lectures worldwide.
I mentioned at the start how happy I am to be enjoying May and the injection of renewal it brings.
I had Covid just after Easter and returned to work thinking about post Covid fatigue and how I had a pain in my hip. I was due to go to a conference and was on the point of cancelling as I felt it would be too much for me.
At the end of my first day back at work, I realised that as the day had progressed, I had stopped thinking about fatigue and pain and actually I felt ok.
Around this time, I started reading a book called “The Power of Decision” by Raymond Charles Barker. A quote from the foreword is as follows: “you’ll never know how many people decide to go to a baseball game, to the theater, or to the opera and completely forget about what ails them. As they are entertained, they make an unconscious decision, in that moment, to be healed.”
Social media posts that I saw on LinkedIn from Mel Robbins had a similar message, I paraphrase, but her message is why do we spend time thinking about our problems and why we feel defeated when we could just decide to be happy. We could choose to focus on what is good in our lives and decide we are going to be happy. She makes it sound so simple!
Whilst I haven’t finished reading “The Power of Decision”, I did skip to the back where there is an Appendix called Success Plan. I interpret the advice as follows:
1. Don’t dwell on problems or limitations, use your mind to think of creative solutions.
2. “Ideas, not facts, are the hope of your world.” By thinking differently or using new ideas, we can spark imaginative solutions to challenges.
3. Use affirmations to “impress upon your mind that you are a changed person. Have a new conversation with yourself and replace that old tired language.”
So I tried it. I didn’t cancel any arrangements. I stopped thinking and talking about post Covid fatigue and my ailments, (well at least I talked about them less!). I went to the conference and I went to other engagements I had committed to. I enjoyed myself and I feel better!
“It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.”
Chinese Proverb
“Happiness is a choice, not a result. Nothing will make you happy until you choose to be happy. No person will make you happy unless you decide to be happy. Your happiness will not come to you. It can only come from you.”
Ralph Marston
“It is inevitable that some defeat will enter even the most victorious life. The human spirit is never finished when it is defeated…it is finished when it surrenders.”
Ben Stein
“I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it.”
Groucho Marx
Sinead Huskisson 