2456: Never Have "Bad Luck" Again by Nia Shanks on Personal Development and Growth Mindset

[00:00:00] Ein Feierabendbier, perfekt zum Abschalten. Ein Glas Wein, gut fürs Herz. Aber was, wenn das nur Mythen sind? Die Wahrheit, Alkohol ist die gefährlichste Droge der Welt. Und wir feiern sie täglich. Warum ist Alkohol für Frauen so verlockend und so gefährlich? Wie beeinflusst die Alkoholindustrie unser Leben? Höchste Zeit, darüber zu sprechen. Dirty Little Secrets – Warum wir immer weiter trinken. Die Dokuserie jetzt exklusiv streamen in der ARD Mediathek.

[00:00:31] Hello everybody and welcome to our weekly bonus episode of ORD. I'm your host Greg Audino, here with you once again on a Sunday to feature an extra episode for you, an episode originally aired on another one of our shows, Optimal Health Daily. So the goal in these bonus episodes is to share posts for you that we think highlight a couple of different themes. So even though it originally aired on OHD, we feel this post speaks a lot to relationships as well.

[00:00:58] So without further ado, I'm going to pass it over to Dr. Neil who's going to narrate this article for you and optimize your life. Never have bad luck again by Nia Shanks of niashanks.com

[00:01:15] We interrupt your regularly scheduled article filled with practical strength training and nutrition information to help you build a healthier body without resorting to miserable dieting tactics or grueling workouts to bring you this important message about bad luck, soggy hiking boots, and a bit of optometry. Imagine for a moment, you and I are going on a hike together on a midsummer afternoon. We choose a trail that cuts through a thick forest. As we begin, I comment on the remnants of trash littering the entrance of the trail.

[00:01:42] Stupid people who are too lazy to throw away their garbage, I grumble. Minutes later, I point out the poison ivy that edges the trail and then the venomous snake sunbathing a few yards past that and say, Ugh, I hate snakes and poison ivy. Those could ruin this day quickly. An hour into the hike, the trail winds through the pine needle covered forest floor and I remark on the suffocating humidity, scorching sun, the thorns that tear into my shins,

[00:02:10] the blister forming on my left heel and the fatigue setting in. We approach a swollen stream and cautiously tiptoe across on the exposed rocks. Despite our efforts, we both slit and have a foot submerge into the water. What else could go wrong? I fuss as I shake the excess water out of my soggy boot. I am apparently miserable. But not you. A smile has been glued to your face since the hike began.

[00:02:36] When I saw garbage littering the trailhead, you spotted flowers blooming in the sunshine, squeezing between the trees. When I whined about the poison ivy and snake, you filled your lungs with fresh air and watched a hawk soar above the treetops. When I belly ached about the oppressive humidity and heat, you soaked in Midsummer's beauty and her bounty. While I complained about getting tired and my blister collection and scrapes, you welcomed the invigorating challenge.

[00:03:03] When I was cursing my soggy boot, you kept walking and laughed with each squish of your saturated foot. And there we were. Two people on the same trail in the same situation. Yet each of us had two remarkably different experiences. It's almost like we hiked two different trails. We've all known someone, maybe we are that someone, who claims to be the recipient of never-ending bad luck.

[00:03:27] It's like the world singled them out because terrible things always happen to them, so they boldly claim. They get sick. Their car breaks down. The air conditioner goes out in the middle of summer on a holiday weekend. Their team lost the big game. Someone took the last piece of cake at work. They get a nagging injury when they finally start working out. This stuff always happens to me, is their motto. They fancy themselves a bad luck magnet. Break the bad luck streak.

[00:03:56] Regardless of the choices we face or the events that happen throughout the day, we have two lenses we can choose to view them from. In one hand is the lens that distorts events as being bad luck or unfortunate. In the other hand is the lens that hones in on what has happened, what is, free from distortion or distraction, and gives us the power to glimpse and choose to see beauty or good, or at the very least, reality, without any messy extrapolation.

[00:04:25] There was a time I frequently viewed events through the not-so-great lens. Words like suck and dislike and bad luck, and others with a negative connotation would pass my lips. Then I got a little older, a smidge wiser, and I realized I could choose which lens to look through. With awareness and practice, I stopped picking up the bad luck lens and began choosing to see the good things. A funny thing happens when we choose to look for the good, the beautiful things.

[00:04:54] We can see them everywhere, even in unexpected circumstances. Likewise, if we typically laser in on the bad or unfortunate things, we can avert our gaze and look elsewhere. More simply, erase the bad luck or unfortunate labels we assign to them. Bad luck and fitness. My website is dedicated to providing health and fitness information that doesn't suck. You may think this article is a departure from that goal, but you'd be wrong.

[00:05:21] The same mentality I just discussed, choosing which lens to view events, can and should be applied to health and fitness. Do you have a bad workout or was showing up and getting it done a victory? Did you fail when you ate pizza and ice cream and blew past your allotted caloric intake for the day? Or did you have a great time socializing and enjoying your favorite foods, knowing you'll get back on track with the next meal?

[00:05:48] Do you have a nagging ache or injury that's preventing you from working out the way you're accustomed to? Or is this an opportunity to focus on what you can do and improve in exercises or areas you otherwise wouldn't? Did you let yourself go and gain excess weight over the years and now find yourself hating your body? Or are you seeing the compounding effects of previous years of choices and now you know you can start walking in a more healthful and rewarding direction?

[00:06:18] Do you typically exercise to punish yourself for overeating or having fat on your body? Or will you choose to exercise to make yourself stronger and healthier and a better version of yourself? No matter what situation you face today, tomorrow, the day after, you will have the choice of viewing the situation from one of two lenses. Which one will you hold in front of your eyes? What will you choose to see?

[00:06:47] You just listened to the post titled, Never Have Bad Luck Again by Nia Shanks of niashanks.com Dr. Neil here for my commentary. It was hard for me not to chuckle as I was reading this to you. And that's because many of Nia's experience I shared. For the longest time, I was super negative. I interpreted everything through that not so great lens that everything was an attack on me, my personality, the way I drive, you name it.

[00:07:17] Looking back, I feel like I probably used Ross Geller's line from the TV show Friends. This is where he had been divorced for the second time because he said the wrong name at the wedding, lost his apartment. And he went, could anything else go wrong in my life? I felt like I probably said that a lot to any little thing that happened to me. But just as Nia said, and this is where I almost laughed, was I got a little older and hopefully a little bit wiser and started using a different lens.

[00:07:46] Now, don't get me wrong, it took time. It wasn't easy to do. In fact, I think I keep that metaphorical lens somewhere in my pocket because once in a while, I do end up using it. But just not as often as I used to. And when we think about the research that's being done on happiness, what we're finding is we can retrain our brains. Now, it does take time, but we can retrain our brains to focus on those little good things that happen. And if we keep doing that over time, it kind of builds that muscle in our brains

[00:08:15] that looks for the good in everything instead of the not so good. And if you're interested in looking up research on this topic, check out Dr. Sean Acor's publications. He's one of the leading researchers at Harvard on this idea of happiness and retraining the brain. Thank you, as always, for listening and subscribing. I'll see you back here tomorrow where your optimal life awaits.