OH! Magazine - Australian Version January 2016 | Page 24

THE SECRET TO MAKING
‘CRAZY’ WORK

GREG
SELLAR

Greg Sellar explains the valuable impact of awareness.
ave you ever had a ‘fat day’ or a
‘bad hair day’ and it ruined an
occasion for you? The truth is, most of us
are all a little bit crazy. And I don’t mean
zany, I mean barmy, bonkers and nuts!
Usually, most of us can keep it under
control, but sometimes it can feel as
though we’re one slap away from flipping
right out!

H

The stress of it all is understandable
when you consider the current pace of
the world. It took ten years for the
telephone to reach half the world’s
population, yet the mobile phone did it in
less than four! If you think the pace of
society now is bewildering, hold onto your
hats because we ain’t seen nothing yet!
The question is, if we’re feeling pressured
now with our family, work and life, how
are we going to cope in the future?
As the pressure and craziness grows, our
mindsets start to buckle and if it goes
unchecked, it can sometimes feel truly
paralysing.
Tim Burton once said, ‘One person’s
insanity is another person’s reality’. I
think most of us have come to accept the
often irrational and emotionally charged
thoughts that dominate our mindsets as
‘normal’ or the ‘truth’. But they’re not; or,

24

JANUARY 2016 ( OH! MAGAZINE )

they shouldn’t be.
Your thinking is like a computer and the
incorrect stories and craziness we tell
ourselves act like a virus that corrupts
your software, slows down your operating
system and interferes with installing new
apps.

endlessly swipe upwards and scroll
through
‘Falsebook’
hoping
that
something might resonate but often, we
end up just scrolling and hoping our life
away.

Chances are, you, those close to you, and
those surrounding you are on a constant
journey to achieve greater success in life;
however, Harvard University found that
less than two per cent of people ever
realise their dreams.

The truth is, your thoughts are only ever
as good as the action they inspire. Believe
it or not, every negative thought and
emotion that makes up your ‘crazy’
actually has a positive intention. For
example, if you feel anxious about an
upcoming presentation at work, the
positive intention is that it wants you to
do the work well, so you’re successful.
That’s the action. It stems back to our
prehistoric days and our ‘fight or flight’
response, when we experienced fear as a
function of the limbic brain to tell us that
danger was imminent from attacking
animals or other threats. Of course, we
don’t have animals chasing us these
days, so our fear and anxiety gets
redirected to what we consider threats to
our self or livelihood.

Currently, our solution in this journey
towards success, is to keep our ‘crazy’ at
bay by trying to reinforce endless positive
thinking ideas and motivational quotes.
You know the type: ‘Mistakes are proof
you’re trying’ and ‘Yesterday, you said
tomorrow.’ Unfortunately, they’re just
words and so they often don’t work. We

Think about your negative emotions and
mindset and ask yourself, ‘What is the
positive intention it is trying to deliver,
and what action does it inspire?’ If you
can answer those two simple questions,
you can begin to reframe your current
‘ crazy’ and actually make it work in your
favour.

You might be thinking that this doesn’t
apply to you. You might be thinking, ‘I’m
a pretty happy person, I do okay’, but we
live in a world where one in three of us do
not enjoy our work, 35 per cent of us fear
failure, 80 per cent of us loathe our body,
and unless you live in Switzerland or
Denmark, almost all of us are unhappy
with some part of our lives.

http://teamlifehack.com

(Performance Coaching)