Has anyone else ever imagined a conversation going badly before it happens, whether it's about a romance, a business negotiation or a job? I notice that fiction sometimes gets bigger until I am ignoring entirely the fact that the conversation hasn't happened yet, the negative outcome isn't real unless I make it so. The tone of my interaction when it happens can change the outcome.
Seth Godin talks about the lizard brain which is primal and rules fight or flight, fear and anger. He has strategies in his new book, Linchpin, for negotiating around that lizard brain and choosing to be an indispensible linchpin that are really powerful. I have observed that my internal reality has the capacity to shape my external reality. In Washington, I saw boats raised along a graduated level canal by locks. When the water rose high enough under the boat in that section, it could move up to the next one. I think people work that way too, at least I do. The difference is that I can raise the water or not. Sometimes circumstances are terrible and all I can do is shift my attitude or reaction to what is happening upward and keep dreaming and knowing and wanting more, sometimes beating back fear that I'm wrong. It works.
