Simple rules that help you survive the difficult times

1. Keep a positive attitude

Life lends us exactly what we are concentrating on at the moment. Pregnant women look around and are amazed at how many divorced their equally pregnant companions. Dreaming of the car of a particular brand begins to see these cars on the streets day after day.

In fact, of course, neither pregnant women, nor cars anymore. Just our brain, focused on its own, filters the surrounding reality and lights the signal lamp: "Look, see, urgently pay attention!" - when he sees an object corresponding to the subject of his reflections. Psychologists call it the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.

The conclusion is simple. The more bad you expect, the more you will get.

It will climb literally from all the cracks, deeper depressing you. And vice versa: thinking about the good, believing in the best, you change the settings of your own brain - and in the focus of your attention it turns out that it is good. Let the optimistic mood and not solve all your problems, but the world around will become much lighter.

2. Make lemonade from lemons.

It sounds like a worn-out record, but nevertheless this approach often works. Yes, there are situations in which we really can not change anything. However, there are others, when it's enough to take a step back or to the side to look at the problem with fresh eyes, connect a little creative - and voila, an elegant and profitable solution will be found. And not where you originally expected. A classic example of this approach is the story of William Wrigley - a man and chewing gum.

In the 90s of the XIX century, the company created by him unsuccessfully tried to enter the market, selling household trivia - soap and baking powder. Things went very well, and in order to at least stand out against the competition, Wrigley came up with a cheap pile of chewing gum for every pack of baking powder.

Alas, the company continued to work at zero, and even at a loss, the clouds over the business condensed, and Wrigley was ready to accept that the businessman would not come out of it. However, at some point, an unfortunate entrepreneur noticed that people sometimes buy baking powder for future use only in order to get a package of chewing gum along with it. Archimedes would have in his place exclaimed: "Eureka!"

Rigley also confined himself to the fact that he completely reoriented the business to the production and sale of chewing gum, which before it was not considered to be any promising product. The whole world chews up the result of this creative and the success that followed it (literally) to this day.