There is little that delights like stumbling across the question that opens you up to seeing and experiencing everything in your life in a whole new way!

"Let's pretend, just for today, all day long, throughout our every thought and decision, that life is easy, that everyone means well, and that time is on our side. OK? And let's pretend that we are loved beyond belief, that magic conspires on our behalf, and that nothing can ever hurt us without our consent. All right? And if we like this game, we'll play tomorrow as well, and the next day, and the next, and pretty soon, it won't be a game at all, because life, for us, will become those things. Just as it's become what it is, today. Thoughts become realities, too." The Universe (aka Mike Dooley)

I was going to share some thoughts about the value of humor... then receiving Mike Dooley's words today made me laugh!  Having spent the past month totally immersed in the psychological aspects of network marketing has been sheer heaven for this old psych major with a passion for puzzle solving. And what greater puzzle than the ever changing human being?! So I'd like to challenge you to try a little experiment that has helped me fit a few pieces into new places.

Some of the greatest of those start with... What if...? Stay with me here... this can serve as fun if nothing else. (Okay, we just lost the 'reds', [ala Jerry Clark's Flying colors] who quickly find the idea of mixing 'fun' and 'business' too ridiculous to consider.) But hey... What if they didn't find that idea senseless, but instead were intrigued by it? What I'm suggesting is that understanding the psychological dynamics of human behavior is really quite fun, but changing how you feel, when you run across some inner discomfort, often results in funny and effective changes in behavior. And it all can come about simply by being willing to play with the question:

"What if I wasn't that... then might I be this?" [you fill in the blanks on this and that]

Then act it out in your everyday world. Really! Just pretend you're 'this' all day. (Trust me, no one but you will know the difference. With the possible exception of your mother, who might be inclined to respond to your change in behavior and demeanor with a sound admonishment to 'quit putting on airs!' Please pay no attention to her for the duration of the experiment) Okay... I'll offer an example. I've been playing for years and amazingly, I still keep fooling myself out of my fears and discomforts, only to discover how truly groundless they had become.

My sister and I had an intense phone conversation a few days ago. The kind that had the potential for lingering hurt feelings, or not. As I hung up the phone, still experiencing the sting of her words, I started pondering the possibility that the family comments about my being 'over-sensitive', which I'd been insensitively brushing off for years, might hold some truth. Ah... but then I asked myself, "so what if I wasn't an over-sensitive person?" And immediately I shifted from being on the verge of getting stuck in my judgment around my sensitivity level to realizing that the conversation I had just completed with my sister simply served as a reminder that we have very little in common with one another. I was standing out in the snow on my deck replaying those very same words that had stung only minutes earlier and I burst out laughing! What had sounded so tragic had suddenly become quite comical on second consideration.

And that's the power of answering "What if... "questions!

With a willingness to move to the upside of the downside— "What if I am brilliant?", after catching yourself in the downside of the upside— "What if I wasn't afraid of failing?" you can claim something even bigger than the childhood joy of 'playing pretend'— You can have the even richer joy of discovering you are so much more than you realized! So ask, "What if...?" Act on that and watch yourself SHINE! Have a wonderful year!