Theme
of Zoom Meeting: Minus to Plus
©2022
by Richard E. Gordon
email: rgordon118@tampabay.rr.com
Last updated March 14, 2022
For several questions, I have provided underlined links that will take you to related online information. Try coming up with your own thoughts first – then investigate the links or ignore them – whatever you wish.
If the links don’t work with just clicking your mouse arrow, hold down your Ctrl key as you click. Any problems with a link please let me know: rgordon118@tampabay.rr.com
Questions:
1. What do you imagine is a minus to a plus experience?
2. How about this definition? An experience when it first happens makes you feel unhappy, but as time goes by, this sad experience puts you on a path that leads to more happiness than you might ever had experienced without first being knocked down by the negative or minus experience.
3. What are Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)? What does the answer to this question have to do with our topic for today’s meeting?
4. Do we tend to remember more the minus experiences than the plus experiences? Why might your answer be important when you consider your thought patterns that may be giving you more sadness than gladness? Can you do anything to cut down on your ruminating about past minus experiences?
5. How might you use a kudos (praise) file to help you offset critical comments?
6. Why are some people better at turning a minus experience into a plus?
7. Can children be taught to turn a minus experience into a plus?
8. How might parents be hurting their children more by always praising them while seldom, if ever criticizing them?
9. Do negative experiences have a more lasting impact on both humans and animals – including rats – than positive experiences? Why might the answer to this question have importance as you deal with the ups and downs of life?
10. In five minutes, list in two columns your early childhood experiences which you remember – the plus memories in one column, the minus in the second column. Then grade each recalled experience from 1 to 3 -- the 1 for only mildly remembered, the 2 for just remembered, and the 3 for vividly, intensely remembered. Then add up the numbers in each column. What, if anything, do the results suggest?
Quotations:
1. “Bad emotions, bad parents and bad feedback have more impact than good ones. Bad impressions and bad stereotypes are quicker to form and more resistant to disconfirmation than good ones.” Professor Roy F. Baumeister
2. “Praise Is Fleeting, But Brickbats We Recall.” Another quote from Professor Baumeister
“ Here is a universal law: that when it comes to negative and positive, you will always thrive more powerfully in the positive if you have first been immersed in, and have heroically overcome, the polar opposite negative of that thing.” -- C. JoyBell C.
4. “Failure is a sign post, directing the right road for life’s journey.”―
5. “The pessimist reasons that things just happen, where the optimist believe that things happen for a reason.”―
6. “Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you'll start having positive results.-- Willie Nelson
7. “Always turn a negative situation into a positive situation.” Michael Jordan
8. “You learn far more from negative leadership than from positive leadership. Because you learn how not to do it. And, therefore, you learn how to do it.” -- Norman Schwarzkopf
9. “Everything is a learning lesson, good and bad, so I am happy with the way things are, and I learned from everything negative. I am in a great space now, so I wouldn't change a thing! ---Karen Civil
10. “We are all products of our experiences,
good and bad. Sometimes you learn as much from the negative experiences as you
do from the positive” -- Brad Garlinghouse
The
End