What’s Your Mantra?
Lately ( as I have already mentioned ) my mantra has been: “Is this a strategic weapon or just catharsis?” I practice repeating this when I’m tempted to say something really stupid during a tense discussion or pretty much any interaction on Twitter. So far, I mostly say this to my friends when they are about to say something stupid. And after reading this article, M.J. Ryan, author of Habit Changing: 81 Game-Changing Mantras for Conscious Goal Achievement , I realized that I already had a lot of mantras.
My favorite mantra is “Good, good!” – taken from an old viral video where a little girl repeats it to her crying sister. My wife and I catch ourselves softly saying this to any small child who, say, decides whether to cry after a fall. We also say this to each other in a modified meaning “no problem!” or “you don’t bother me!”
I came up with a few of my own for special occasions: when my wife and I stayed in some place that turned out to be something like a garbage dump, I told her: “It’s like camping.” Until the end of the trip, we repeated this to each other to meet our expectations. It seems like I understand mantras much better when I direct them to someone else! I should probably work on this!
A few years ago, the 43 Folders productivity wiki was collecting user mantras . My favorites on this list are Deepak-Chopra’s less common truths, such as Break Stones Together (instructions for a budding civilization from Douglas Adams), Can She Wait 15 Minutes? and “With enough traction, pigs fly beautifully.”
So what’s your mantra? I’d love to hear the most embarrassing, prosaic, but actually useful ones that you won’t see in a self-help book. What are you repeating to yourself? What is your “serenity”?
The older sister in the video above is even more famous for her “daily affirmation,” which contains a kind of mantra. Of course, unless you are four years old like Jessica, your mantra probably shouldn’t be, “I can do something good, better than anyone!”
5 Mantras for Dealing with Difficult People and Tense Situations | Oprah.com