Seven Ways Leaders Increase Optimism

1. Focus on the dream: Help others decide what they want. Paint pictures of the desire. Create the feeling of fulfillment.
2. Emphasize purpose: No obstacle can hold back the mighty force of an earnest purpose.
3. Recite inspirational words: "No chance, no destiny, no fate can circumvent, hinder, or control the firm resolve of a determined soul."
4. Cultivate an attitude of gratitude: Be thankful for challenges and opportunities.
5. Use failure as a successful identification of what won't work: Use mistakes and setbacks as a flagstone path to achievement.
6. Emphasize service: Always give more than others expect.
7. Quote Thomas Edison: "The greatest weakness is giving up. The most certain way to success is to try one more time."

Overcoming Fear and Failure

Winston Churchill who suffered from lifelong bouts of depression that he called my "dog days" failed at just about everything he attempted. He failed at school, very nearly failed at Sandhurst where  he was considered hardly bright enough to become a cavalry officer. He failed to win elections. Then as Minister of War during WW I, he sent the British army to the Dardanelles where the troops met with a military failure of enormous proportions. As Chancellor of the Exchequer he helped precipitate the world monetary crisis by returning England to the gold standard.

With bulldog determination to fight back from depression and failure, Churchill inspired Great Britain to withstand Germany's constant bombardment when he became Prime Minister during WW II. Churchill earned much of the credit for the eventual allied victory.

Artist Georgia O'Keeffe said, "I have been absolutely terrified every moment of my life and I never let it keep me from doing a single thing that I wanted to do."

If we take a risk to overcome our fears and our failures we grow in ways we have never imagined. Get out of that comfort zone and try something different. Don’t be afraid to fail. Don’t be afraid to struggle. Learn there is no such thing as perfect. Improvement is about practicing something new. The more we practice, the more comfortable we become. When we keep practicing we become better and better at doing what was once new. We change from being fearful to being courageous.

Applications of Psychoneuroimmunology

Scientists estimate that we create approximately 60,000 thoughts daily, 95% of which are repetitive. These thoughts make-up our philosophy of life, our personality. One way to improve our lifestyle is to change our thoughts through a concentrated effort to think optimistically.

When we say to ourselves something like, Day by day in every way, I'm feeling better and better. I feel healthy; I feel happy; I feel terrific, we energize our optimistic assumptions. Certainly just repeating this or some other positive phrase, reading encouraging quotations, or memorizing inspirational scriptures will enable us to approach life with more positive expectations.

Excellent health goes beyond positive thinking to include an optimistic philosophy of life. Positive thinking is better than negative thinking, but a benevolent life view is the most benficial of all. Here are ten ways to cultivate a positive lifestyle:

1. Through scripture study and prayer we become more mindful of God's grace in our lives
2. Daily prayer for gifts of the spirit--love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control--leads to hopeful expectations
3. Surrounding ourselves with people who fill us with joy and laughter enables us to become more hopeful and fun-loving
4. Viewing our frustrations with humor--learning to laugh at ourselves and our problems--allows us to appreciate the absurdities and paradoxes of life
5. Becoming an inverse paranoid enables us to believe the world is out to do us good
6. Having a genuine interest in others enables us to see that everyone has something to offer that enriches our lives
7. As we become kinder to ourselves by avoiding self-criticism we can be kinder to others
8. Working to improve the lives of others through productive work reduces misery
9. Learning something new stimulates child-like fun and creativity
10. Reading this blog every day will bring encouragement, optimism and hope by saturating our minds with positive stories and ideas 

The Mind-Body Connection

Neuroscientist Karen Bulloch traced direct connections between the immune system and the brain giving birth to a discipline known as psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) that explains how the brain and the immune system communicate with each other.

T-cell lymphocytes--immune cells that protect us from cancer and infectious disease--have receptors for neuropeptide chemical messages sent from the brain. Neuropeptides released from the limbic area of the brain quickly attach to the neuroreceptors on the lymphocytes in the peripheral blood. The lymphocytes send messages back to the brain resulting in a back and forth conversation between the immune system and the brain.

Messages that flow between the brain and the neuroreceptor sites on the lymphocytes are transported instantaneously so that when we experience joy the white blood cells receive that message immediately. Conversely when we are unhappy a negative message is transmitted directly to the white blood cells. Thus our emotional reaction influences physical health.

What's even more exciting is the finding that certain cells in the stomach, intestine, and kidney can make the same chemicals that the brain makes when it thinks. When we say, "A joyful heart does good like medicine, but a broken spirit dries he bones," (Proverbs 17:22), we are speaking metaphorically and literally--our body cells are literally making the harmful chemicals or joyful chemicals.

Let's look at some scientific studies that substantiate the mind/body connection:

• Studies of pregnant women who have lost infants to SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) show that bereavement affects immunity.
• Studies of the unmarried, the loners, and those who lack control over their destiny show a higher potential for poor physical health.
• University of Michigan studies rank social isolation as a major risk factor for mortality on a level comparable to cigarette smoking.
• Studies show that rabbits who were petted, cuddled, and caressed failed to get high cholesterol levels despite being fed high cholesterol diets while uncuddled, unpetted, uncaressed rabbits fed high cholesterol diets died of cardiovascular disease. This study indicates that those receiving "loving energy"metabolized cholesterol differently resulting in normal serum cholesterol levels.
• Premature infants who were loved, stroked, and cuddled gained almost 50% more weight per day than premature infants who received no physical demonstration of love. Furthermore, cuddled infants had increased growth hormone levels. 
• A comprehensive study found that 50% of heart attack victims didn't have the standard risk factors--smoking, hypertension, diabetes, obesity. Instead, the two most important risk factors in this group centered on job satisfaction and happiness ratings. People who answer affirmatively to two questions--"Are you happy?" and "Do you enjoy your job?"--have a much lower risk for heart disease.
• An intriguing study at San Francisco General Hospital documented the power of prayer. Patients on the coronary care unit were divided into two groups. One group received excellent medical care. Those in the second group, in addition to experiencing excellent medical care, received prayer. The group that was prayed for recovered twice as fast as the first group. 

In the next blog we will discuss how to use these studies to improve our lifestyle. 

Follow God's Cairns

After I had climbed several of Colorado's 14,000 foot peaks, my mountaineering friend, Craig Carson, thought I was ready for an awesome one--El Diente. I wasn't sure. Colorado's western-most fourteener, El Diente ("the tooth" in Spanish), ranks as one of Colorado's most savage peaks. 

Vicki and I were enjoying our vacation in Telluride when Craig called inquiring about the weather. He had said previously that we had to have perfect weather to climb El Diente. I told Craig, with relief, that a torential rain had soaked us all day and the local weather channel predicted rain storms for the next few days. "Well," Craig rebutted, "We'll just take it one step at a time and turn back if the weather gets nasty. I'll see you Thursday." 

Although I could feel my pulse racing, I didn't try to dissuade Craig for two reasons. In the first place, I  feared being called a coward (which I am) more than falling off a mountain. Besides, we had, I figured, greater than a 50% chance of cancelling the trip because of bad weather. Nonetheless, I started preparing. The more books I read, maps I studied, and mountaineers I queried, the more I wished for a terrible storm to keep us off the mountain. Pounding rains reassured me. 

Thursday night blustery winds and steady rain left Craig undeterred. We checked our maps, reviewed our route, and packed our gear. The next morning we were up at 2:45 to drive to the Kilpacker Trailhead which we reached at 4:00 AM. A fine mist fell as we slipped on our packs and adjusted our head lamps. Just as we started a brilliant lightning flash penetrated the dark. We began counting-----1...2...3...4...5----then we heard the thunder indicating the strike had originated about a mile away. The next lightning burst, the next, and the next confirmed the storm's retreat. "Darn," I thought and began mumbling Bible verses to give me courage.  

Soon we heard nothing but the slosh of our boots on the muddy trail. The guide book said that the trail rolled through captivating aspen groves for three miles, but we could see no further than the light from our head lamps. At dawn we crossed Kilpacker Creek on a wide log emerging out of the forest onto a vast meadow resplendent with lush grass and mountain flowers. The brilliant sunshine and freshness left by the receding storm gave an exhilarating sense of emancipation from all sorts of cares and responsibilities.



Several miles across the meadow we once again encountered Kilpacker Creek electrified by a series of sparkling waterfalls.

We found a faint trail among chest-high bushes going straight up the west side of the upper waterfall. Reaching the upper falls we began to engage wretched, sharp rocks--scree from El Diente's cliffs.

Traversing upward through the massive scree field, our trail was marked only by cairns--a mound of stones erected to show climbers the way. Occasionally, unable to find the next cairn, we would explore the scree until the marker appeared. Once, after traversing a snow-filled ravine (or as mountaineers say, a couloir), we lost the cairns and had to double-back.

Our way became steeper and steeper until we reached the foot of a gap (or col) in El Diente's east ridge line. No cairns. The guide book told us to traverse west toward the summit, but how far?

Just then the cavalry arrived in the form of Tyle Smith and four other experienced mountaineers. Incredible! The lottery-winning odds of meeting a mountaineering living legend almost blew us off the cliff. Tyle had finished climbing all fourteeners at age eight. As a teenager he had ascended and descended the 54 Colorado fourteeners in an astonishing 16 days, 21 hours, 25 minutes.

With Tyle guiding us, we did an
ascending traverse to avoid the cliffs.
Then we dropped our back  packs and climbed a steep gully strewn with massive boulders. After hard climbing, we reached the ridge line with bottomless drops on either side. We traversed
cautiously along the ridge line, checking  each hold for
stability and sureness of grip. Once I looked down through a thin fog that had gently crept upon us and vowed to keep my eyes on the next hand-hold thereafter.

About fifty yards from the summit, we came to vertical rock on the north face of which was a 5-foot wide, gently sloping ledge; on the south side, a 6-inch ledge. Tyle warned us away from the "easy" ledge: "It's covered with a thin layer of ice." A slip on the ice would have plunged us into a foggy abyss.

The summit appeared abruptly. Hoisting ourselves up onto the summit's boulder, Craig and I celebrated for about thirty seconds, then, with the weather threatening, began our careful descent. During our trip down the mountain, through the scree fields, into the meadow, across the creek, and into the alpine forest--the splendor of which we now could see--we were even more joyful than on our ascent. We were certain that God had been with us throughout the trip. As we drove  down the narrow road toward home, we reviewed Bible verses that affirmed our safe climb. Those verses made  applicable by our mountaineering experience convinced us that God desires a personal relationship with us all.

Show me your ways, O Lord, teach me your paths; guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior,  and my hope is in you all day long.

Psalm 25:4-5

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all ways acknowledge him, and He will make your paths straight.

Proverbs 3:4-5

I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths, I will guide them; I will make the rough places smooth.

Isaiah 42:14

Your love, O Lord, reaches to the heavens. Your faithfulness to the skies. Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains.

Psalm 36: 5-6

Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

Matthew 7:13-14