Quest for Positivity

We can often lose sight of the beauty around us, if we fail to look beyond ourself.

I have a secret to tell you. I am a cynical person. This used to be something I wore as a badge of honor. I was grumpy and sarcastic. I told people I was a realist and it was better if you didn't get your hopes up. If you expect the worst and it happens, then you are prepared. If you expect the worst and something better happens, then you are all the more happy because you didn't expect it.

Logically, this seems to make sense, but in reality, it doesn't work this way. In reality, I was full of shit. If you go around always expecting the worst, you have a really hard time enjoying anything good that happens. When you expect the worst, you focus on the worst things around you. This keeps you from seeing the beauty surrounding you every day.

One of the drivers of this blog is my quest to become more positive. A lot of my posts are deeply personal, even if they may not seem it. I will often write advice I need to take in my own life and have found it is easier for me to listen to it if I am directing it at other people, even if I never know who you are. We all need to be challenged in life and I only hope you find some inspiration or wisdom from these writings.

As for my quest to become more positive, I have started by recognizing my negative thoughts. I know I don't recognize them all, but I have become better at seeing them. I have also started working on not taking things personally. This is a hard one for me as I am also a bit of a perfectionist and have been search early childhood. I want things to go well and when they do not, I become frustrated. I become frustrated with people who make things more difficult, even though they are only doing what they think is right. By taking their actions personally, I blow things up to much bigger problems than they really need to be.

I know I will continue this quest for many years to come as I think we should all strive to improve every day of our life. Once we become complacent, things start to slide backwards. We have the most power over our own minds and emotions, even if we don't always wield the control well. As I learn things and as I make mistakes, I will continue to share with you thoughts, ideas and any wisdom I come across. With a little help and a lot of work, we may just make this world (and our own world) a little better. If not, at least we can say we gave it our best shot.