Finding the Jobs

What’s the only diet you really need?

It’s a “changing your thought diet,” according to author, columnist and coach Martha Beck. How we explain what happens to us is crucial to the way we feel and has a critically important effect on the way we behave.

So, want to transform your life, your business, your relationships, the world?

The change required is mental, says Beck. That’s because once you change your internal conversation, you change the way you feel about your life.  And that’s where transformation begins.

For example, if you tend to have a pessimistic, glass half-empty sort of outlook, incorporating the “changing your thought diet” would include conscientiously practicing the art of paying attention to the way you feel when something bad or disappointing happens.  This means when destructive, negative thoughts cross your mind, go ahead and label them as negative and let the thoughts pass by.

Allowing them to pass through your mind performs an important task.  It allows you to reflect on whether your initial (negative) assessment was correct, or whether there’s another, more optimistic explanation.  Why is optimism a good thing?  If you want to live a long, healthy life, science has proven that an optimistic outlook trumps a pessimistic one.

The way the “changing your thought” diet works is simple–and brilliant–because it requires only that we stop and really pay attention.  Especially when we tell overly negative stories to ourselves about things that happen to us. Once we practice optimism routinely (not to be confused with being a Pollyanna), the paying attention exercise becomes habit-forming.

Without so much negativity, we can begin to feel better about ourselves and transform our lives.

And what about dieting to lose weight?  It turns out that it depends alot more on mind than matter.

Want to figure out where you land on the pessimism-optimism spectrum?  Check out Martha Beck’s What’s Your Explanatory Style?  A Quiz in the August 2004 issue of O, The Magazine.

What do you think of Martha Beck’s approach to personal transformation?  Try it and let us know.  In the meantime, please leave your comments below.