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Hey everybody it’s Adam DeGraide here with another micro motivation coming to you from lovely and beautiful Southern California.
It’s literally gorgeous the sun is beating down on me right now, and I’m here to talk about another boat in another water analogy, and it’s something that I heard in a movie that I watched a movie by Neil Simon, it was actually a screenplay at one point and then it was made a movie, I believe in 1986 called Brighton Beach Memoirs, and the principle is this, you don’t worry about boats that haven’t come in yet.
And what was happening in their family was it was mass turmoil going on there was a war overseas, their son had recently lost a job, there was a lot of stress on the Father and the Father said well what if the family comes on a boat over from, you know, the other side of the world and we have to take care of them we’ve got more mouths to feed and the mother looks at the family and says, “in this family, we do not worry about boats that haven’t come in yet.” And it was very interesting because the entire dynamic changed and you realize that’s actually a pretty great statement, it makes all the sense in the world. You see it’s called negative projection. If we’re always negative projecting what might happen or what could happen, it can literally bind us in fear and none of it’s actually really happened. You know I struggle with this myself guys in, in thinking about things, and sometimes saying, well what if this happens negatively. What if I’m in this situation and I feel this way or all these things that surround our minds and cloud our thinking and grip us with fear has a lot to do with negative projection. And what that basically means is that we’re always looking at the negative side of things and not necessarily looking at the positive side of things, and it also reminded me of a movie by Frank Oz called, “What About Bob”, starring Bill Murray, this guy was gripped with fear of negative projection. He never wanted to leave his apartment, he was afraid to do it. He was afraid of having a heart attack. What if I get sick. He walked around with tissue in his hands to open the doors, not necessarily the worst idea in the world, but he literally was so gripped with fear and negative projection of the outside world that it trapped him inside his own world, and he never would have left. And then he ended up meeting this psychologist, and he wrote a book called “Baby Steps”. And for those of you who don’t like uncomfortable comedies, I would not recommend it, some people either love it or hate this movie
I love this movie cause I’m a huge Bill Murray fan, but the whole point is baby step one foot in front of the other. If you’re afraid of this in the future, don’t worry about that thing you’re going to deal with that thing when you get there, let’s just focus on what we have to do Bob to get you out of this room. Then to get you down the street, then to get you on a bus, and then eventually gets you on a vacation in Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire, and it goes back to us, not worrying about boats that haven’t come in yet. And if you are a person that struggles with negative projection and believe it or not, I absolutely struggle with this in my life. We have to understand boats are going to come in, challenges are absolutely going to happen, but let’s not worry about them until they arrive, let’s not make, make believe boats, come in or think that this happened, and have us do nothing today. We’re better than that we can absolutely be better than that.
So, my encouragement for all of us is to think on things that are pure, things that are noble, believe the best in situations as much as we possibly can. And then we can deal with the boats that come in in our life.
Once again this is Adam DeGraide with a micro motivation.
If you can’t make a point in under four minutes, you might not have a point to make.
Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to me ramble. You never know where I’m going to be next week, you never know what I’m gonna talk about
Thanks everyone.
