Accentuate the Positive, Eliminate the Negative

I just spent the day with the most relentlessly positive person in the world, and now I feel like I can do anything.

Do you have a person like this in your life? I hope you do. It can change the way you see things.

Here’s what happened: Last night, the father of my daughter’s best friend texted me and asked a few questions about a nearby beach we had recently spoken about at a school function. I sent him the information he was looking for and, out of the blue, he asked me if I was free to go to the beach that day to help him with a small project.

It just so happened that I was free, and it doesn’t take too much arm-twisting to get me to go to the beach. So I checked my calendar one more time and told him I needed to be back by 2 pm. He said he’d pick me up at 8:45, which he did, and soon we were on our way.

Now, I don’t know this guy all that well, beyond some very top-level stuff. But as we drove he filled me in on his life, which sounds as busy as that of everyone else, but with some fairly serious family and health complications. The things he told me about were situations that would bring most of us to our knees, but as the day wore, on he talked more about them as challenges to his character, ways to prove his strength and intelligence and generosity of spirit rather than roadblocks. Sure, he said, there were times, plenty of them, when he wished things would be simpler or that the universe would take it easy on him, but he found as he worked through things, they did become easier and things were simpler, because he had learned so much by pushing through adversity.

Does it help that it was a beautiful, sunshiny day, and it felt as if we had stolen back a day from summer? Probably. But it’s hard to be around positive people without feeling good about yourself. Conversely, negative people can be a drag, and can hold you back.

So as you face life’s challenges, seek out the positive and avoid, at all costs, that which is negative.