Reality Repair Rx 4 Normal Folks

A big challenge in life is to fix the broken realities you don’t like and to create newer and better ones you want. Unfortunately this is much easier thought about in our heads than done with our hands. Most of us are still stuck trying to deal with undesirable realities that are getting in the way of dreaming about how to go from surviving to thriving instantaneously. Here is a sensible reality repair guide for normal folks who are trying to move forward in the reality repair business.

1. Develop 360-degree rubberband-like flexibility. Most problems and situations today require extreme flexibility to find the right solution or reaction. What worked well before often doesn’t cut it today. Plus the best skill anyone can learn and practice today is the art of adapting to change quickly. The days when you could list some sensible solutions and expect that they would lead to the desired outcomes are gone, nada. Now you have to be creative, without getting bogged down with over-anticipated expectations of your preferred outcomes. A good way to increase flexibility is to decrease judgment.

2. Know what to quit and what to hang tough with. We often get this flip-flopped in quitting some things too quickly (when success is inches or moments away), and perseverating in doing the wrong thing over and over again and expecting to get the right results. When you keep on failing to repair a certain broken reality like unemployment, an unhappy marriage, physical illness, pain, financial stress or some addiction, then refer back to #1 above. All you have to do is quit your wrong approach, try something different and hang tough when you are clearer on your purpose and flexible enough with your method and expectations.

3. Fit in first and then change things from inside-out. This is probably the hardest lesso
I ever had to learn in life. In my very first job as a prison psychologist, I was surely going to rehabilitate all the 1000+ inmates on my caseload and change the whole prison system ove
ight. I actually believed I was going to do this for nearly a year, until I realized I had my priorities in the wrong order. When I learned how to fit in better at work and in personal relationships, I found that a lot of realities I though needed fixing didn’t, and with the few left over, I understood them well enough to see the easiest and best solutions. Lots of wasted time saved.

4. You get what you want when you want what you have. A difficult part of the reality repair business is our seemingly insatiable habit of wanting what we don’t have. Learning that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side of the fence and that it can even be a darker shade of brown, can be a very painful and disruptive experience that seems to repeat itself with vengeance until we get the message behind the lesson. But then again, the wisdom in # 3 above in undeniable. Effective Reality Repair Rx starts with acceptance and appreciation. And when we begin seeing past what we are looking at, we usually learn that even the worst realities are serving a positive purpose. Aha!

5. Thinking dissolves and creates realities. Most of us today are becoming much more aware of the power of our thoughts. In fact, when you can force yourself to slow down long enough to start noticing the connection between what you are thinking and the results you are getting, something strange happens. When you don’t like the results you are getting, you start questioning the thoughts you are having enough to begin rearranging them, usually from less negative to more positive. Oddly the power of thought affects both dissolving unwanted realities and creating desirable new ones. Admittedly though, slowing our thinking down long enough to become more aware of it and then trying to go from negative to positive thoughts may be the most difficult challenge we have.

6. Common sense and reality are very close. And that is exactly why common sense isn’t so common anymore. There is too much artificial lawyers of language between the real objects in reality and how we know, think and talk about them. As Mark Twain aptly said, “common sense is the knack of merely seeing something the way it is and doing it the way it should be done.” And so effective reality repair and new reality creation is mainly a matter of common sense that we often just have to remember to remember. Common sense can be greatly increased by asking good questions, avoiding the lazy habit of assuming and watching and learning from the common sense pros who have already figured out how to repair broken realities and create wonderful new ones.

7. When all else fails, prayer works. Effective praying doesn’t have to be a kneeling-down, formal fundamentalist-flavored religious event in a church; it can be mediating in nature in a yoga position or lying down, stretched out on a comfortable sofa. Effective praying just involves an expression of appreciation for what you do have and asking for the right help in the right way at the right time. Broken realities only linger past their purpose when they are somehow reinforced and kept from dissolving. The trick is to take ownership for maintaining an undesirable reality you may not have even gotten yourself into, because no one else will help you out of it until you can see your own way. And then help from others will suddenly appear. nnnnnn