Using all this information write an essay on the topic "How can one stay positive?" - level b1, 350-400 words 

00:00:02	final rule it's called pedicab when you encounter one on the street and it's it's a very it's the most personal chapter in the book it's a lot about my daughter and my daughter was very ill when she was well when she was a kid but particularly when she was a teenager she had a very terrible time of it she had juvenile rheumatoid arthritis and when she was between the ages of 14 and 16 at first destroyed her hip which had to be replaced and then it destroyed the ankle on her other leg which had to

00:00:31	be replaced and she walked around for two years on broken legs and she was taking massive doses of opiates and could hardly stay awake and like and she had this advanced autoimmune disease which produced all sorts of other symptoms that were just as bad as the joint degeneration but which are harder to describe and so it's just bloody brutal you know and as a test of your faith there's almost nothing that's more direct than a serious illness inflicted upon an innocent child right and so the chapter is a meditation on that and also

00:01:03	on well what to do in a situation like that because everyone is going to have a situation like that in some sense you know because you'll be faced with illness in the people that you love and in crisis and so it's a disc it's a practical guide to coping with those sorts of things like in one of the things you do when you're overwhelmed by crisis is you shorten your timeframe you know it's like you can't think about next month maybe you can't even bloody well think about next week or maybe not even tomorrow you know because now is

00:01:32	just so overwhelming that that's all there is it's like and that's what you do you cut your timeframe back until you can cope with it and if it's not the next week that you see how to get through then it's the next day and if it's not the next day then it's the next hour and if it's not the next hour then it's the next minute and you know people are very very very very tough and it turns out that if you face things it turns out that if you face things that you can put up with a lot more than you

00:02:02	think you can put up with and you can do it without becoming corrupted and she did recover quite quite fully and much as a consequence of her own machination because she figured out what was wrong with her and then took the necessary steps to fix it which is nothing short of a bloody miracle as far as I'm concerned and anyway as part of the the the cat bit is I actually start by talking about our dog who actually died about a year ago but he's still alive in the book I you know I let people know because dog lovers love dogs

00:02:35	and if you love cats then they think you don't like dogs and then they don't like you so I also point out at the beginning of the chapter that you know if you want to pet a dog on the street that's ok too so you don't have to get up in arms about it but but the idea is that you know you have to be alert when you're suffering you have to be alert to the beauty in life the unexpected beauty in life and that's kind of what I was trying to get across with the idea of the cat there's this cat that lives across the street from us

00:03:01	called ginger and Ginger's a Siamese cat and cats really aren't domesticated they technically speaking they're still wild animals but they kind of like people god only knows why but they do you know and so ginger will come wandering over and our dog looks at her but they're friends and she rolls over on his back and Siegel used to you know knows are a bit and and then she kind of mosey over and let you pet her if she was feeling like it's out day and you know you have to look for those little bits of that little bit of sparkling

00:03:30	crystal in the darkness when things are bad you have to look and see where things are still beautiful and where there's still something that's sustaining and you know you narrow your timeframe and you'd be grateful for what you have and that can get you through some very dark times and maybe even successfully if you're lucky but even if unsuccessfully that maybe it's only tragic and not absolute hell and you can do that you know in the worst situation you can make it only tragic and not held and there's a big gap between tragedy

00:04:03	and hell you know there's nothing worse at a deathbed than to see the people there fighting the death is bad enough but you can take that as terrible as it is and make it into something that's absolutely unbearable and maybe I think and this is sort of what I closed the book with is this idea is that if we didn't all attempt to make terrible things even worse than they are then maybe we could tolerate the terrible things that we have to put up with in order to exist and maybe we could make the world into a better place

00:04:33	you know and it's what we should be doing and what we could be doing because we don't have anything better to do and that's what the book is about and that's the end of 12 rules for life [Applause] [Music] you

and one more video^

00:00:03	If you want to start to feel happy it starts with you wanting to feel happy. We like to sit and dwell, We like to sit in our own sadness. Make sure you’re spending time every single day whether it’s 15-20 minutes, whether it’s an hour - two hours. Take time to allow your mind separation from the stresses of your day. If you expect to fail you will fail. On the other hand if you expect to win, you will win. And he’s right, because doctors and psychologists both alike they agree that worrying actually does shorten your life

00:00:38	and it does damage your body. We need to clear our thinking before we go to sleep. We're talking about a book that Norman Vincent Peal wrote “The Power of Positive Thinking." Let’s kick this off with golden nugget number one: Creating your own inner happiness. That you are responsible for your own happiness because unhappiness is usually the byproduct of you thinking sad thoughts, you having these negative feelings, you having resentment towards others and just having an overall crappy outlook on life.

00:01:18	So if you think those things what do you think is going to happen? You have to force yourself to not think those negative thoughts. Peal says, we have to get into the happiness habit by thinking upbeat cheery thoughts throughout the day. We like to sit and dwell. We like to sit in our own sadness. I don’t like to do that but I just know that sometimes my brain forces me to do that and I don’t know why. So I have to force myself to not do that. I have to put on upbeat music, I have to do something productive, I have to get in the gym.

00:01:50	I have to go hang around friends that are gonna make me laugh. And it’s tough. At first it doesn’t feel right. It feels like you’re forcing it because you ARE forcing it but eventually it starts to make you feel better. There are miracles happening all around you. There is beauty all around you. Open your eyes and look. Can you see the sun shining? Great. Can you hear the birds chirping? Great. Can you feel the warmth of the sun on your skin? Awesome! There’s simple beauties all around us. If you want to start to feel happy,

00:02:21	it starts with you wanting to feel happy. So short circuit those negative thoughts. And when you start to feel bad, when you start to find yourself gossiping feeling guilty, feeling angry, feeling... whatever it is you’re feeling that's negative, turn that around, force yourself to think positively, do positive things and while it doesn’t feel right at first, keep going! You’re on the right path. Golden nugget number two: The antidote to anxiety is that people waste a lot of their time, a lot of their energy

00:02:53	fuming and fretting about things that they cannot control. Go back to Covey’s principle: circle of concern, circle of influence. Focus only on those things in the circle of influence. Everything else in the circle of concern, you can’t control. You can’t affect that. So move on! Don’t allow your mind to just spend time in that space. You’re wasting your mind’s energy. So as part of this antidote to anxiety, Peal says that we need to slow down to relieve our anxiety and to attain peace. And he suggests meditation.

00:03:27	He suggests that we devote at least 15 minutes daily to calming and relaxing ourselves by thinking peaceful thoughts or not thinking anything at all. So something he shares in the book, is to help get rid of the tendency to worry and get angry, we need to relax and spend a few minutes thinking about beautiful, peaceful settings. Hearing the birds chirping, feeling the sun on our face. All these things that I was talking about before where it's just a matter of you actually thinking that in your mind.

00:03:52	Wherever you are. If you're at work, if you're in your house, it doesn't... Close your eyes and open your mind to maybe a place where you're on vacation before and go there for 15 minutes. Smell the smells feel what the sand feels like on your feet, feel yourself plunging into the ocean. So the antidote to anxiety it's all about clearing your mind. However you choose to do that make sure you're spending time every single day whether it's 15-20 minutes, whether it's an hour - two hours if you're working out at the gym,

00:04:24	whether you're doing yoga, whether you're going to cycling class, whatever. Take time to allow your mind separation from the stresses of your day. Golden nugget number three: Expect the best. If you expect to fail you will fail. On the other hand, if you expect to win you will win. So, what seeds are you planting in your mind? Are you planting seeds of positivity or seeds of negativity? Guess what? Your life is going to give you back more of that. Are you planting seeds of oh, doubt and oh, I’m not gonna make this work

00:05:00	or something bad is gonna happen? If you're planting seeds of that guess what you're gonna get? More of that. Start focusing on the positive. Start focusing on how things can go right and guess what, when things go wrong say, Hmm there's a lesson in that for me. Because life doesn't happen to me, it happens for me. So everything that's happening is there to teach me a lesson. This isn't a setback, it's a set up. This thing that's really bad, it happened for a reason. I'm gonna learn from it. I’m gonna get better.

00:05:30	Golden nugget number four: Worry not. And he's right because doctors and psychologists both alike they agree that worrying actually does shorten your life. And it does damage your body. We need to clear our thinking before we go to sleep and we need to imagine our worries flowing out of our body like water out of a glass. So don't think that my path is the right path. No, no. This path is good for me. I replaced worry with hope by putting together goals. I put together three goals: a financial related goal,

00:06:03	a health related goal, and a professional related goal. Something that... what I was going to do with my life. And back in the day when I was going through those stresses, I was worrying a lot. A lot. I was having a tough time sleeping, I was having chest pains, my heart was palpitating all the time and I really just could not get you know, a high level of satisfaction in life and you know if you were saying on a scale of one to eight, Ryan again, nines and tens are reserved for very special times in our lives that seldom happen.

00:06:31	I was sitting at a four consistently. Where I would wake up and I'd all of a sudden feel the stresses of the day. I'd pass between three and four all the time. So what I did was to replace that worry, that anxiety, that fear I built myself a plan that gave me hope. Goals that gave me hope. Something that got me excited, something that I wanted to work towards, something I wanted to achieve because I knew that if I did it would get me out of this mess and my life would be better as a result. Golden nugget number five:

00:06:58	Problem solving. I had problems that I needed solutions to. I had desires, I had wants, I had dreams, I had goals that I needed a solution to. The Cut the Crap show was a solution. Create Your 8 was a solution but what I did need to do was take myself out of the busyness of the day and allow my mind to sort of free up and look for inspiration all around me. And know that whatever solution I’m looking for it's going to come to me and this is where in this golden nugget, in the book, where Peal talks about, you know, problem solving,

00:07:36	he gives us 10 problem-solving techniques which many of them I'm going to leave with. The first one... believe that for every problem there is a solution. So yes, believe that your problem can be solved. Yes it's hard, yes it's difficult, yes you don't have a solution right now but there IS a solution. And oftentimes there's more than one. Two: Try to maintain your serenity as you address a problem. So, don't feel anxious, don't try to... don't try to- to get angry and say, ah you know I’m not getting this. I don't understand. No.

00:08:04	You need to be calm, you need to be hopeful that there's going to be a solution to this problem. Number three: Don't try to force an answer more so don't try to say like, Oh my God, I need an answer by Saturday at noon if I don't get it by Saturday at noon then it's too late. Sometimes you can't force it. Life often happens for you. And so you just need time for that to reveal itself to you. Number four, gather all relevant information. Pretty simple. Do as much research as possible. Number five, write down all facts about the situation.

00:08:35	Again, get an understanding for the problem, what's going on. You need to get clarity on the problem so you can get clear on what solutions you need to solve it. Number six: Spend time praying about the issue you are confronting. Listen, if you're praying about it, that's fine, if you're not praying about it, maybe you're thinking about it. Always make time to think about it. When you're walking in nature yes, take time to think in nature and allow your mind to flow but when you separate yourself

00:08:58	from the stresses, the anxieties, the busyness of the day allow your time to think about solutions. Number seven, believe in and seek God's guidance on the promise of the 73rd Psalm: Thou wilt guide me by thy counsel. Again, if you believe in the religious aspect of that, that will talk to you. That necessarily doesn't talk to me. So I, I maybe won't be using that one. Number eight, rely on your inner gifts of insight and intuition. There's things that we believe we should do and then there's things that we know we should be doing.

00:09:33	So you gotta listen to yourself but it takes time, it takes... it does take time, it takes patience, it takes some maturity for you to realize what you're great at. And sometimes you're doing something just to make a living, just because it's my job, it's my career, it's what I believe I'm great at. But you have other gifts within you that maybe you're not exploring yet, that you should be. Number nine, attend religious services where you can and listen peacefully and let your subconscious work on the problem.

00:09:59	Again you can go to church or you can just go for walks. I love going for walks. Period. I’ll put music on my ears and allow myself to think. Pretty simple. Number ten, the answer that develops in your mind or comes to pass is the right answer. So, I just allowed the thoughts that came in my mind, whenever I had a thought, an inspired thought I wrote it down on my phone. Pulled up my phone, opened up the notepad and just wrote it down. At the end of the day I would think about it, ponder on it and say you know what this idea is something I want to go further into

00:10:24	and dig deeper into that. That's exactly how this show happened, that's exactly how Create Your 8 happened, it's exactly how you're going to find solutions to your problems. Last but not least, gold nugget number six: How to handle heartache. Now everybody at some point in their life experiences heartache and it's tough. And so Peal says, that for us to get over heartache we need to resist the heartache by staying busy. So if you're getting a divorce from your husband or your wife, if you just broke up with your girlfriend or your boyfriend,

00:10:57	if you just lost a loved one, if a loved one passed away, a friend, a family member, doesn't matter who it is he says that in order for you to get through it you need to stay busy, you need to return to your normal activities as soon as possible after a loss or a defeat. And you need to resist the temptation to brood and feel sorry for yourself. I gotta get back to work, I gotta get back to my goals, get back in the gym, get back to eating right, get back to hanging out with my friends, my family

00:11:29	listen to the music that I was listening to. We have to return to life but sometimes we just have to be sad and we have to work our way through it. But the key here is to not allow your mind to dwell on it for too long. That's not handling heartache. That's allowing heartache to take control of you and to win.