Failure is Our Teacher

Published on by Eugene Morgan Category: Ericksonian Principles

one brief moment...
Post Written By Eugene Morgan

Failing isn’t the end of the world. If we fall and don’t get up, then it’s the end of the world. Failure teaches us about life. Failure tells us what we’re doing wrong as well as what we’re doing right.

Our ego dislikes failure. Our ego feeds on our successes. But the self needs to learn about failure. Failure has to be put into perspective of things.

Our ego needs an understanding. Our ego doesn’t have to take our failures personally. Failure is just another learning tool to help us to understand something about our selves and others around us.

Failures help us to be more self-accepting and patient with ourselves and with one another. We have two choices when failure occurs. We can either give up or get back up and try again. Rising from a fall is more important.

On Being Patient With The Self

Published on by Eugene Morgan Category: Acceptance, Ericksonian Principles, self

Duck Crossing.
Written By Eugene Morgan

We’re not going to get everything right. In fact, it’s impossible to get everything right. We can strive to be our best and accept our limits.

Sometimes we set our expectations too high that we become paralyzed and give up. If we just were patient with ourselves, then the task before us gets easier, if we give it time.

If we push ourselves too much, then our anxiety level will elevate. We are creature of habit. We love our routines and our favorite routes we take daily.

When we take on a new thing, we let it threaten or disrupt our daily routine. Making readjustment to our behavior is very important, if we want to grow.

Live First, then Make Life Better

Published on by Eugene Morgan Category: Ericksonian Principles

Nortec Collective Presents: Bostich+Fussible "Brown Bike" on Vimeo

Post Written By Eugene Morgan

It’s all right to make life better, but is more important to live. Sometimes we focus too much on how can we better our lives and we forget to live our lives.

If we just live, we then bring ourselves back into the here and now; the present.  We’re no longer focused on the future or the prize at the end of a journey, we’re focused on living, laughing and having fun with our friends and loved ones.

We stop rushing and racing around trying to get to a destination before anyone else does, instead, we can stop and pull up a chair and converse with each other and really look at things that we missed along our journeys.

Knowledge is Power When it Reduces Fear

Published on by Eugene Morgan Category: Ericksonian Principles, Frame of reference

Contrail - Beautiful blue sky
By Eugene Morgan

Anxiety can simply be induce by the unknown. Taking a test, speaking in front of an audience, and flying on a plane for the first time can easily induce anxiety.

If one simply prepares for a test by studying way before the day of the test, then one’s anxiety is greatly reduced, instead of waiting to the last minutes to cram information the night before the test

Regarding public speaking, one can reduce anxiety simply by planning ahead of time by writing an outline, learning the outline and practice speaking in front of people you know, then increase the audience from one to two and so on.

Flying is about changing one’s frame of reference. Someone who fears flying lacks an understanding and knowledge about flying.  One’s frame has no reference of the aerodynamic and aviation information; therefore, fear is induced. Unfortunately, avoidance only increases one’s anxiety.

However, when one learns about aircrafts and one is slowly exposed to more airplane trips, one’s anxiety can be reduced. It’s okay to feel fear.

The Power of One

Published on by Eugene Morgan Category: Ericksonian Principles

Ideas never run out

Post Written By Eugene Morgan

The power of one means we focus on one task at a time as oppose to focusing on multiple tasks. If we focus on doing one skill and master it, then we can learn to focus on another skill until we have a build up of skills.

When it comes to suggesting an idea, Milton Erickson would present a new idea to a subject until he or she make the idea his or her own.

The new idea will grow from within the subject. The idea will grow like a seed and will begin to connect with other ideas based on the background of the subject to help break up old rigid ideas.  The mind only needs to focus on one idea to make it a reality, that’s powerful.

Leave Your Past Uncertainties in The Past

Published on by Eugene Morgan Category: Ericksonian Principles, Uncertainty

Rear view
Post Written By Eugene Morgan

If we have uncertainties leave them in the past because they belong in the past. Our anxiety about our future is really about our uncertainties of the past.

We must reconcile our past so we can move forward into our futures. It’s all right to look at our past uncertainties to learn from them, but only to learn.

We need not focus on what happened yesterday because it’s just a memory. We don’t have to react to a negative memory but we can put a positive spin on it.

We can find a way to see the memory differently and not take what already happen so seriously. Instead we can recall our good memories to relive some of the positive experiences.

Action Always Guarantees The Possibility of Success

Published on by Eugene Morgan Category: drive, Effort, Ericksonian Principles

Man on the moon
Post Written By Eugene Morgan

It is true that our actions always guarantee the possibility of success. Our actions gives us more than what we hope for when we don’t expect something in return.

Our actions can lead us to opportunities that would have been missed if we hadn’t made any action towards our goals. Action is what built great things like the pyramids, the rocket that took humans to the moon, the Internet, and developed a vaccine for polio.

Children watch the actions of their parents and their teachers to learn and be guided. When we watch someone’s action, we’re learning how certain things are performed. Action is a very powerful tool.

Our actions can make a difference in our lives and the lives of others if we do more of it.

Mistakes Are Okay To Make

Published on by Eugene Morgan Category: Ericksonian Principles

Typo
Post Written By Eugene Morgan

When we want to learn something new, it is all right to make mistakes.  We can learn a lot from our mistakes. Mistakes can reveal something about us. Mistakes are our attempts to control how we do things, than to let things happen.

Mistakes are made too when we’re trying to rush new learnings. Mistakes facilitate learning. It’s all right to give our selves room for mistakes. It’s all right to give us permission to make mistakes.

If we don’t give ourselves permission to make mistakes, then we will be too afraid to take action.  Our goals are to learn from the experience and to move on to the next level.

Focus On One Task

Published on by Eugene Morgan Category: Ericksonian Principles

Little focus

Post Written By Eugene Morgan

If we want to get things done, we must then focus. When we focus, we lose the things that are distracting. Distraction only delays our process of completing or finishing a task.

It’s amazing how much we can get done, only if we focus on the task. Working on too many tasks or multi-tasking, will only divide our attention.

Working on too many tasks disrupts our speed because we need to put in time for each tasks. It’s a lot easier to start with one task than working on multiple tasks.

Experience is Far Better than Reward

Published on by Eugene Morgan Category: Ericksonian Principles, Experiential learning, Goal, Reward

EXPERIENCES

Post Written By Eugene Morgan

A reward is just a reinforcer for doing a service of some kind. What we learn from our journey is what’s important. Every one of us has journeys. A journey is something we experience for a certain time.The greatest journey is about experiencing life and how we want to experience it through various means. Those means are things that we dream about and care about that we want to do to make our lives better. To make our lives better requires persistence and great labor and the stick-to-it-ness to see even slightest change.  As long as we continue to move toward the direction of our goals, we will be rewarded by our efforts. And that the experience itself is the better reward because we gain more during that time of acquiring new learnings to strengthen us for the long run.

Attitude Changes Things

Published on by Eugene Morgan Category: change, Ericksonian Principles

straight attitude
Post Written By Eugene Morgan

It is necessary to make a change in our attitude or to adopt a new frame of reference if we want a change to occur. If we’re in the same place we were last year, then we must consider changing our attitude.

If we dislike the situation we put ourselves in, then we got to redirect our energies toward something else that will bring in new meanings in our lives. Laminating on what we dislike in a situation will not get us out of the situation.

This is a waste of time and energy. Instead we can focus our attention on what we’re going to do about it. That means coming up with a plan and executing it; this is a call action plan.

Some things we don’t have control over. But we do have control over what we do and what we decide to do if we want to affect change in our attitude.

Bringing Down Rigidity and Uplifting Possibilities

Published on by Eugene Morgan Category: Ericksonian Principles, Frame of reference, Rigidity

Keep your mind open to new possibilities...
Post Written By Eugene Morgan

When we bring down rigidity, we can see clearly the direction we want to go in our lives. Sometimes we frame things in a way we can’t see the alternatives.

When we exercise our minds to look for alternatives, our scope of the event enlarges.  When we enlarge our scope, then we see possibilities.

We see possibilities that we didn’t see before because of our rigid frames of reference. Possibilities were always there, we just weren’t looking for them.

Once we see what’s possible, we can never resort back to the rigid frames. Let us open our minds for new possibilities to our lives and rekindle and stimulate motivation to do what we’re meant to be.

 

Let Go Of Perfectionism

Published on by Eugene Morgan Category: Perfections

redredrose

Post Written By Eugene Morgan

When we let go of perfectionism, we see and accept the world as it is. Imposing perfectionism only creates anger and keeps other emotions down.

If we see things as they are that’s where perfectionism lies. A rose with thorns is perfect the way it is. Thorns protect the rose from getting eaten by animals.

Therefore the beauty of the rose will live out its days because of its thorns. Perfectionism only sees what’s wrong and not what’s unique in the situation.

Perfectionism strives to be perfect only to avoid punishment. Instead lets us strive to perfectly be ourselves without judgment or feeling of punishment.

Create Your Own Freedom

Published on by Eugene Morgan Category: Ericksonian Principles, Freedom

Freedom
Post Written By Eugene Morgan

We ultimately have to choose what direction we want to go in our lives. If we dislike our present situation we’re in, then it is up to us to change our situation.

We have to rely on ourselves to make choices. Sometimes we don’t see that we have choices. When we feel we don’t have choices, we feel like a prisoner in our situation.

We are free when we realize that we have choices. No one can take our choices away unless we let them. No one can create our freedom because we know what best for ourselves.

Freedom will always be linked with responsibility. Responsibility will always be linked with power. When we’re free to be ourselves, then we have power and the responsibility to do for ourselves.

Stop Dreaming Starting Doing

Published on by Eugene Morgan Category: Dreams, Ericksonian Principles

Aboriginal Dreams
Post Written by  Eugene Morgan

We all have dreams for a better life. We want most of our dreams to come true. But dreams alone can’t make things come true in our lives. We want to keep the dream alive.

Sometimes a dream is the only thing we can cling on to keep us going.  In fact, dreams can also make us feel good when things around us are not so good.

Eventually, we have to switch our focus from our dreams into what we can make real from our dreams.

Dreams help us lift up what’s negative about a situation place down what possible and positive in a situation.  But we do need to wake up and start making our dream comes true if we think our dreams will make us happy.

When Resistance is winning

Published on by Eugene Morgan Category: change, Ericksonian Principles, Resistance

Delaware Guardsmen pull 100,000 lbs of C-130 during Special Olympics Plane Pull

Post Written By Eugene Morgan

We can get frustrated at times, when we’re resisted to new changes; changes that we want in our life. At our work places, change is inevitable, although we express resistance a little, we do eventually readjust our behavior to the changes.

One motivating factor is that we want to keep our jobs. It is easier to resist changes in ourselves than at our employment because we don’t link consequences to the change. Consequence is one way to motivate a change.

It is good to find a reason why we want to make a change. How does the change be beneficial in the long run? Is making a certain change in our lives realistic? These are start-up questions to get us thinking about change when we can ask ourselves before we venture to make changes.

Giving us a date to start and a date to end the process if it’s something involving completing a project, can be useful.

Don’t Underestimate Your Potential

Published on by Eugene Morgan Category: Ericksonian Principles, Experiential learning, Potential

Old-Growth Forest (2)
Post Written By Eugene Morgan

Sometimes we are so quick to criticize our work. We don’t give ourselves a chance or room to grow into our potentials.  We place such high standards on ourselves that we get easily frustrated with ourselves when we don’t meet them.

When we get frustrated we lose focus on what is important. What is important is learning to experience our latent potentials. Potentials are only clues and glimpses of what we can become.

Discovering our potentials can be a surprising experience. Our potentials are made from our experiences thus help us along the way through life. And what we learned from our experiences is stored up for future uses in the guise of our potentials.

Divide it, Manage it, Complete it

Published on by Eugene Morgan Category: Ericksonian Principles

divided
Post Written By Eugene Morgan

“In truth, one step at a time is not too difficult… I know that small attempts, repeated, will complete any undertaking.” Og Mandino

The above quote is good to remember when we’re challenged by a difficult and major project. If we just do bit at a time, the task can be manageable.

And another thing is that we don’t have to complete something overnight that requires more time. We can be overwhelmed by an enormous task, if it’s required of us to complete in a short amount of time.

But if we divide the task into smaller manageable tasks, then the task is a lot easier to conquer.

 

Center First Then Act

Published on by Eugene Morgan Category: Ericksonian Principles

i saw william blake at the center of everything : dolores park, san francisco (2012)
Post Written By Eugene Morgan

“Stay centered by accepting whatever happens to you. This is the ultimate.” ~Chuang Tzu

It’s easier to react than to be proactive in a difficult situation. But before we can be proactive, we must be centered to be effective. When we’re in control of ourselves, we can better assess the situation effectively and discern quickly what we can do in a difficult situation.

When we react, we make things worse. Reaction to a situation is only our attempt to find control. Because we think if we can control what is making us react, then we have solved the problem.

If we can take a step back then we can see better the scope of the event. If we take a deep breath, then we can think quickly, since more oxygen is send to the brain.

Blind Spots

Published on by Eugene Morgan Category: Doubt, Ericksonian Principles, Objectivity

Ford Focus review 3 of 7
Post Written By Eugene Morgan

It’s very important to listen to friends and family sometimes when we’re in the state of self-doubt. We need a push from friends and family when we believe we can’t do something.

It’s all right to listen to them when they believe in us. When they see the qualities of what it takes to carry out something within us, believe them. They have more objectivity than we do because they see what we’ve done over the years.

Not only we have blind spots of our weaknesses but we also have blind spots of our strengths, and that’s what they see in us.  We don’t know what qualities we have until someone points them out to us.