“Shifting Gears and Changing Lanes.”
...a Spirit at Work Breakfast
Thursday, September 13th, 2001

Jay Gubrud presented “Shifting Gears and Changing Lanes” as part of SJA's Spirit at Work Breakfast series on Thursday, September 13th. He shared different ways of how we move through change and roadblocks to change.

Jay talked about our ‘mindset’ and ‘what we think about expands.’ When we think about negative things and we communicate these things to our friends, family and co-workers, we expand ‘negative things’.

He also suggested that we look for people and information that support our mindset. He gave an example of how a woman had tried for many years to get pregnant. She and her husband had been working with her physician over the years to have a baby and had not conceived. Some time later, she began feeling poorly and went to her physician for diagnosis. They ran all kinds of tests and could not figure out the reason for her illness. She just about gave up and decided to try a different doctor. Within a short time, the second doctor had diagnosed her illness. She was pregnant. The first physician had the mindset that she couldn’t get pregnant and when the symptoms of pregnancy presented themselves, the physician had gathered all this evidence that she couldn’t get pregnant, so could not see the real reason for her illness. So just imagine if you have a negative mindset and you gather information to support it. Wow! This is a powerful message for me.

Later, we did an exercise where we were asked to count how many F’s are in the following sentence:

We talked about roadblocks to change. A few items from Jay’s list include:

1. Basing progress/action on something outside our control. For example, I will do _____ once _____ happens. He gave the example of a woman who said that she would exercise when her business slows down. Guess what, it never did.
2. Others don’t want you to change. A good example is someone who joins AA and quits drinking. That person’s drinking buddies don't want them to change.
3. Lack of clarity about where you are going.
4. Other people’s opinions.

1. In the first one, he shared a daily meditation. During morning meditation, he asks for what he wants for the day. In the evening, he gives thanks for what he has.
2. In the second one, he gave us a “Change Box.” In the box, we wrote two commitments to ourselves. He suggested that on our calendar, we put a “to do” and that we check the change box for progress on our commitment.

Vickie Hepler has been involved with the Sister Parish group since its inception in 1993 and traveled with the first delegation to visit TNII in the spring of 95. She joined the SJA choir in 98 and has enjoyed two years of bringing song and music to her heart. Vickie also cherishes her involvement in a SCC that's about four years old.