Miseries creep up on us, crash into us, and threaten to crush us. They come in multiple forms - situations, people, and events. They always drain our energy.  

Think of the most miserable time in your life, a time when you just felt sick and stuck. Now, how did you move through it and beyond it? What positive vision shifted your attention from the problem to the possibility? What resources, within you and around you, did you gather and align to move beyond the misery? What lessons did you learn for dealing with your next bout of misery - lessons for diagnosis, prevention, and cure?

For me, the greatest miseries came when I lost relationships. Turning those miseries into opportunities to learn was a long and painful process. In the end, I learned three key lessons:

• Accept your responsibility for your part in the misery and identify what you could have done differently to sustain and enhance a healthy relationship;
• Then let go of the negatives in the past and focus on generating the positives for the future;
• Then connect with and cultivate positive alliances that will support you in creating the improvements you desire.

Too often, we stay stuck in the miseries of the past, reliving them over and over, letting our foibles and failures define us to the core of our beings. Wallowing in our weaknesses is what led some psychological pioneers about 30 years ago to develop the discipline of positive psychology. Some call this new approach to psychology 'the science of flourishing.' The core question they are asking is what strengths can human beings draw on to be resilient in the face of the miseries that infect our lives and how do we best access those strengths in constructive ways. 

If you are interested in exploring your own strengths further, click here for a free assessment that I often use with my coaching clients.   

As always, if you think Jazzthink can help provoke the poetry and practicalities of improvement in your organization or in your leadership, get in touch with me to explore the possibilities further at fraser@jazzthink.com.

Provocatively,

Brian