This past weekend I spent doing some yard chores here in New England, as well as spending Saturday afternoon, and evening, hiking and hanging with 4 friends I really hadn’t seen all summer.

It was so much fun – we were laughing, telling jokes, razzing each other as well as catching up on life’s successes and challenges.  As we settled down by a backyard fire pit and began catching up, one friend, who is a business owner,  shared she  had a difficult challenge with an employee,  another friend shared news of an illness in her extended family and  I shared how my business did over the summer.

But through it all — the ups and the downs — our energy was positive, upbeat and lively.  I was amazed with all we had going on, that we all still approached our lives with such positivity and  such commitment.  I was reminded of  a quote from my work in energy leadership: ” Life offers neither problems or challenges, only opportunities.”

It made me think about my week ahead and the attitude I was going to approach it with.

Positive, upbeat and lively. Abundant opportunities.  Easy-peasy as one friend would say.

What’s your attitude going to be for the week? How will you approach the opportunities that cross your path this week?

The Big 4 energy blocks keep you stuck and prevent you from achieving what you want in your life. I’ve written about limiting beliefs and assumptions, let’s take a look at #3 – Interpretations.

When you interpret something, you create an opinion about an event, situation or experience. In essence, you create an explanation and then look for evidence to support it’s validity. When you make an interpretation,   you don’t even see that other explanations exist.  In actually, though, an interpretation often represents only one viewpoint among many that are possible.

Your interpretations hold a strong energetic charge, which affects your emotions and actions. If you believe your viewpoint of a particular situation is the only explanation, you might not be aware of another point of view. You may end up wasting a lot of time and resources marching off in the wrong direction.  Because you don’t see that other possibilities exist, you remain stuck in your story, and feel like you have no control over the outcome.

As with assumptions, interpretations  are personal and somewhat difficult to let go of and challenge. Holding onto them may seem like the easy way out as facing them moves you into uncharted territory. However challenging your interpretations opens you to a world of possibilities, literally.

So this week before you jump to conclusions, and believe the first story that comes to your mind, I’d ask you to consider other possibilities that could lead you to new empowering choices and actions and ask yourself this question:

” What’s another way of looking at this?”

I recently went to visit some family in Virginia, and had some wonderful dinner conversation that lasted well into the evening.  My sister had invited some neighbors over for dinner so we could meet them. She and my brother-in-law spoke very highly of them, and their pet pig.

Pet pig? I had to meet these people.  I’ve never met anyone one with a pet pig you see.  Well, I learned a lot about how pigs make great pigs ( and no, I won’t be getting one any time soon), and I also met a wonderful retired couple with a zest for life.  This couple was enjoying and living life to the fullest – full of curiosity and questions.

At one point in our conversation,  Pat ( one of the neighbors) said she’d never move back north to the Albany NY area. I asked her why- and she said  ” Her hometown operated on the theory that the glass was half empty–and she was a half full type of gal.”   Wow – she got it – how your core thoughts and thinking guide your life,  and how this leads to being a great leader.

How often are we operating under the theory that the glass is half empty instead of half full?  And what happens when we do? I’ve been there, done that – my glass is now half full, with a million possibilities to fill it to overflowing.

What’s your thinking on this?  Half empty or half full? and how’s that working for you?