One morning a couple months back, my seven year old daughter
came downstairs in the morning with a terrible case of the
grumps. This was no little “got up on the wrong side of the bed”
mood, this was a full scale grouchy “don’t even look at me the
wrong way” thunderstorm. She found fault with everything and
everyone around her. She challenged every word I said. And of
course she thought everyone was just being unfair, as the rest
of our moods turned sour. I tried to make her laugh, I tried to
be patient, but finally after fight after fight, I pulled out
the “let’s have a talk” tone of voice (which rarely ever works
but which hasn’t stopped it from being used through the entire
course of human history), and proceeded to explain the
difference between being a positive person and a negative person
(I probably wasn’t being the best example of the former by that
time).
I explained the advantages and disadvantages of each and I
could tell that very little was making a dent (I was momentarily
forgetting the universal truth that telling a person they are
wrong is the least effective way of convincing them of it). I
finally told her that she needed to try to become a more
positive person. She looked up at me in challenge and said “oh
yeah, how do you do that?”
I opened my mouth to answer her…and nothing came out. I
thought…and thought…and couldn’t come up with any easy ways
for her to implement my sage advice.
The outcome was that I lost a few Yoda points, she eventually
came out of her mood, and I was left with something to ponder.
It’s easy to go on and on about being a positive person and all
the benefits that it brings, but what good is it if you don’t
know how to get there from where you are?
How exactly do you do that glass-half-full thing anyway?
I struggled with this for a couple weeks, because it was easy
to be positive when I was, um, happy! The problem was that the
times I needed to be able to turn my focus from a negative
glass-half-empty one, to one that was healthier for me and my
family, was the exact time when I wasn’t feeling especially
creative. I needed to figure out an easy method to change my
perspective that worked when the going got rough.
Finally it clicked for me. Gratitude! This might sound silly
but go with me on this. When you find yourself with a negative
outlook on a situation, or even just having a pessimistic day,
analyze what you can be grateful for and focus on that instead.
If you find your focus slipping, put a smile on your face and
simply redirect your thoughts.
Here is a simple example:
You are expecting company to come over for the evening. You
have rearranged you schedule for this, you’ve spent hours
getting the house presentable, you have dinner arranged, and
then the folks call you to say that one of them has a migraine
so they have to beg out.
The automatic reaction, especially if this isn’t the first time
these folks have left you hanging, is to be very irritated. You
have done all this work for nothing. You’ve lost a productive
evening, because you specially rearranged your schedule, and now
here you are stuck, and those people have just ruined
everything…negative, pessimistic, and glass half empty.
What can you be grateful for? How about: 1.Your home is clean
and tidy for you to enjoy. 2. Instead of racing around, never
making time for yourself, you have a free evening to just kick
back and relax without guilt because there is nothing else that
you aught to be doing instead. 3. The nice meal you have put
together, will have enough leftovers for your lunches for the
rest of the week, and it is food that is much nicer than the
stuff you normally scrimp by on.
The end result is that if you stay in the negative mindset, you
will have a miserable evening, blame it on the absent guests,
and have a lingering unpleasant memory. If on the other hand you
decide how you can feel gratitude and focus on that, you will
likely have a pleasant, relaxing evening with food and
surroundings that are nicer than you normally would have, and
tomorrow you will be rested, centered, and retain a good memory
of a very nice evening. The only difference is your outlook.
How about a more serious example: Without warning or notice,
you are fired from your job.
The automatic reaction would be to be worried about how you
will meet your bills, furious at your boss and company, and
depressed about how you will find another job quickly. The first
day you look through the help wanted ads and get further
depressed because of how few prospects you find. You check out
the online places and still you only have a couple of mediocre
leads. You end up sitting around watching TV and drinking a
couple too many beers to console yourself and wallowing in your
misery. Over the next few weeks, you follow up on what leads you
can find, but the whole process is depressing and frustrating.
You get up later and later each day, and stay up later and later
each night. You complain to everyone you know, about your lousy
ex-boss and ex-company, and wish they’d get theirs for all the
misery they have put you through. Finally, after being out of
work for two months, you manage to get a job. The pay isn’t as
good as your old one, and for the next six months after, you
blame every money problem on your old boss, because “he” wiped
out your savings by making you unemployed when you had bills to
pay.
The gratitude way? You get your pink slip and you are shocked.
That night, as you sit there trying to figure out where to go
from here, you decide that it will do you no good to be angry
and depressed, so you might as well figure out how to make the
best of things. You get a pad of paper and start writing down
things to be grateful for. You decide: 1. You are grateful that
you have the incentive to sit down and focus on where your life
is going. 2. You are grateful for the extra time each day to
sort out your finances and streamline your life. 3. You are
grateful that this will be an opportunity to maybe find a job
that you like better than the old one.
The next day you look at the newspaper and online for leads,
but the pickings are pretty slim. You spend the rest of the day
coming up with a list of your best strengths you can offer a
company, and updating your resume with the focus on those strong
points.
Over the next few weeks, you spend the mornings searching for
jobs and submitting applications and resumes. In the afternoons,
you work on improving your situation. You get a haircut so that
you look your best for interviews and take a whole afternoon
organizing your finances and finding places where you can
consolidate bills and cut unnecessary spending. After a few
hours work, you have eliminated a number of places where you had
been wasting quite a bit of money, and your bills are organized
and easy to maintain.
You also spend some time figuring out what your greatest
weaknesses are as an employee (and work on ways to overcome
them), what other career paths you might want to pursue (which
broadens your field of possible leads), and other than that you
spend your time exercising and reading up on how to improve your
people skills, all to help keep you motivated.
You find a job after being out of work for about 2 months. It
doesn’t pay as much as your old one, but your expenses are down
from what they were, so the pay cut doesn’t hurt too much. Since
you have been thinking about where you want to go in your
career, you have a clear plan for how to use this job as a
stepping stone to something greater. Your finances are in fairly
good shape and things should only get better. You are healthier,
in better physical shape, and you are confident in your future.
While it would have been nice to not have to go through losing
your job, the end result is that you are much better for it, and
the habits you developed during the interim will really catapult
your life forward. What’s the difference? Only your outlook.
When you find things to be grateful for and focus on them, you
are far more likely to find hidden opportunities. You might find
ways to radically improve your life, or at the very least, you
will find things to enjoy along the way, which really takes the
sting out of the rough places in life.
Find your points of gratitude, keep your focus on them, and you
will always be able to have a glass-half-full attitude and see
the hidden opportunities.
Next time one of my kids asks me exactly how one goes about
being a positive person, I’ll have an answer.
