A Sense of Humor is Essential

I go hiking in the local mountains with my cousin weekly and in addition to working our tushes on the "butt buster" hills, it's also a great therapy chat session.

My cousin, Sue started snowskiing about 5 years ago when she was 40 years old. Her family enjoys the fresh air, exercise, and the beautiful scenery of skiing. Sue (like a lot of skiers including me) struggles with fear while skiing. Fear of falling, fear of getting hurt, crashed into, falling off a cliff precipice, the list goes on and on. She talked about how she starts thinking of all these "What Ifs?" and it takes away her enjoyment of the sport. I said to her, "Why don't you turn it around? The likelihood of any of those things happening is slim to none, the overwhelming odds are that you will be safe and sound at the bottom of the hill ready to get on the lift for the next run." We talked about instead of visualizing wipeouts and crashes to use the power of her thoughts to picture her successful and happy doing what she loved. She is going to try it.

I use this technique whenever I catch myself wallowing in the negative and focusing on my fears instead of the much more likely outcome of success.

Is there anything that you do to help you switch the negative off in your thoughts? Thank you so much and sending you warm, happy thoughts as always.

PostScript: The boys and I wear helmets when we ski because all the good visualization in the world isn't going to protect our heads when we do wipeout.