A New Definition of Thriving

By Tamela Thomas, Wellness Manager

thrive (thriv) 1. to grow luxuriantly; flourish. 2. to gain in wealth or possessions; prosper.

"Thriving" sounds like something you'd wish for your children. Your parents probably cultivated these same hopes for you and the world you would live in while they worked hard and sacrificed in your honor and for their country.

This month's column is by Robert Simon Siegel, MS. Robert is the founder of Thriving With Change™ and the Six Second Stress-Off™ training. Author of Six Seconds To True Calm: Thriving Skills for 21st Century Living, Robert suggests we have the ability to apply a special "solutions focus" type thinking—different from problem solving—to improve our daily lives at work and home. When we do so, we can also, ultimately, improve the world in which we live. I'll take some of that!

Thriving Solutions Focus™

Transform problems, stress and change into solutions

By Robert Simon Siegel, MS

If you had a magic wand, how would you use it? What if your mind became a magic wand, and your every thought was suddenly physical reality? Would you know how to create genuine prosperity? Or would you simply "manage" your problems away one wish at a time?

If your business suddenly had abundant financial resources, would you actually innovate new products, new services and new technologies to improve life? Or would you conduct the typical rampage of hostile mergers to gobble up your competitors?

Even with today's technological advances and a universe of possibilities, we are still not seeing an explosion of innovations hitting the market that compete to improve life on Earth. This is because, amazingly, we've never been taught how to innovate by using the ultimate magic wand: our minds.

The essence of innovation is change, as in "change our minds." However, when faced with change we dig in and resist, stubbornly holding on to what we already know. Why? Because we have been conditioned to instantly react to change—anything new, different or unexpected—with an ancient survival mechanism whose watered-down mental version is popularly called "stress."

This automatic knee-jerk reaction to change threatens our ability to survive. Stress handicaps our perceptions, turning everyday situations into worst-case scenarios. And stress literally decreases our intelligence as survival reactions shift blood flow away from the frontal lobes of our brains where creative thinking and reasoning dwell to activate the more instinctual hind-brain operations of survival. Such reactions detriment aspects of business, relationships and communication.

We do not have to accept these reactions though we are fully immersed in the most accelerating rate of change in recorded human history. Successfully managing change—or thriving—is the key to prosperity for both individuals and companies.

Everything changes. Successfully dealing with this single constant of life is rarely talked about. This too must change. Examining the nature of change, we can glean the most important truths about life. The process of change has three known stages: from stable system to instability (chaos) to stability at a new level of organization. When transforming, confusion dominates. Yet the chaotic system is simply reorganizing. If no longer relevant to life, the system reorganizes to dissolve into another form, like a leaf falls and decays to join the soil as nourishment for yet another plant system.

Our focus determines how we respond to change. We have only two directions for focusing our motivation. Either we are surviving, trying to reduce and eliminate problems, or we are thriving, actively creating and producing innovative solutions. When we add the intent to thrive into the chaotic mix, the system restabilizes at a higher level of organization, improving to better operate with greater relevance within its larger context.

This is growth, or adaptive evolution and success.

Our entire population must shift its focus with the motivation of thriving: responding positively to change. Why? Because every day major changes are creating chaos that will require transformation. We cannot afford the limited survival focus.

We are a society on edge. Overuse of the survival focus has made the proverbial camel's back fragile. Everyone knows that we're running out of carpet under which to sweep our environmental condition. Wars on terrorism, drugs, cancer and energy production are simply not improving our lives.

There's only one thing left to do: THRIVE! Thriving is the growth-producing energy we must now add to the chaotic mix. Thriving involves using our minds to focus in new ways. Curiously, nearly 100 percent of all the greatest human inventions, innovations, artistic creations, breakthrough solutions and insights came to our fellow humans when they were not thinking.

We've ignored the crucial ability to recognize the big picture—the larger system that directs all parts. To make sense of change, we need to cultivate the ability to recognize patterns and perceive the essential inter-relatedness that connects and affects seemingly distant elements of life. After all, innovations flow naturally. The good news: We already have a guidance system to successfully navigate change. Believe it or not, it is stress. Correctly utilized, stress is a valuable communication that guides us, as individuals and as organizations, to thrive with change. It makes us think in new ways.

First, like a ringing telephone, stress signals us that something is changing and it needs our attention. Six Second Stress-Off^TM skills give the lifelong ability to pick up the phone and stop the noise of stress. We quickly de-stress, feel calm and gain mental clarity so we get the message and accurately identify what's changing. Next, we respond. We either react with a survival focus and its unproductive, limiting fear-and-anger-producing survival reactions, or we thrive. We've simply never been taught to choose thriving.

Fortunately we already have the focusing tool to transform stress and problems into innovative solutions. I call it the Thriving Solutions Focus^TM. This is the focus people pop into, often unconsciously, whenever they magically come up with creative ideas. Innovators, artists and most successful business people use this method to access their genius. Applied to communication, the Thriving Solutions Focus generates teamwork, cooperation and accelerated goal achievement. Since the greatest of human innovations come to us when we are not thinking, we can streamline our focus into the magic of creative brilliance. With increasing market demand for innovation in virtually every area of life, there are opportunities to activate this special focus throughout society and the business community. Imagine an entire workforce armed with the ability to continually improve operations. This company could not help but succeed in today's changing global marketplace. Imagine an entire country of citizens with their activated Thriving Solutions Focus.

Thriving Solutions Focus training teaches companies and individuals to activate their innovative genius. Gains in performance, quality, innovative solutions, productivity, teamwork and effective communication are easily achieved. But I believe the real benefit is to society—The more people and companies who are applying the Thriving Solutions Focus, the better the world we can enjoy together.