The other day a friend of mine called me to share that he had a huge breakthrough while sitting on the can.  He thought that last bit of detail essential to his story.  (smile)

The breakthrough that he had during his biological “functioning” was that he was automatically and unconsciously coming from “Something’s wrong.”

From his personal, family and business life he realized he automatically looked at what was wrong with everything. He wasn’t doing this all of the time, but enough to affect his mood and close him down to new possibilites.   He was cynical.

His real breakthrough came from realizing that he could just as easily look at what was right about all these areas in his life … and presto!  He did, and immediately his mood shifted; he was in a space to act powerfully for his future.

I reminded him about a book that I told him about and that I have on my site store called “Change The Way You See Everything.” This book does an excellent job of highlighting how we can shift our perspective, and the very profound effect such a perspective-shift practice can have on your outlook on life, your happiness.

The authors call it Asset Based Thinking (ABT) vs. the Deficit Based Thinking (DBT) that most people have as their default settings.

Personally I think that ABT is our “Factory” setting – just look at kids – and somehow through the people we’ve associated with and the media we consume this factory setting got changed to DBT.  Everybody knows this at some level, yet it takes some event – like finding this book for me, or having an epiphany on the can for my friend – for us to remember.

There is another great practice similar to ABT that is called the Thought Exchange which is also extremely effective at opening up possibility where none existed before.  I recommend both the “Thought Exchange” and “Change The Way You See Everything” for yourself, your kids (before DBT takes hold), and anyone in your life that needs a friendly reminder that there are other more valuable ways to look at everything in life.  Be well.