How to Do that Glass-half-full Thing

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Author: Meredith Keeney

Article source: http://therightpath.bravehost.com/. Used with author's permission.

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.

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