Positivity And Optimism Is Always The Answer
I’m going to be honest I have not been the happiest since the start of 2023. In fact, I’ve had many more negative days than positive. It hurts even typing that because I’ve had some of the best things in my life happen so far this year. My wife and I welcomed our daughter and slowly watching her grow and learn how to move in this world has been incredible. I’ve built deeper friendships with people that will last me a lifetime and I’ve had some great career success.
The rest of this year has been a blur. As I type this, I’m trying to remember 5 things I’ve done this year. How sad is that? And when I do start thinking back my mind goes to some shallow points.
Over the Fourth of July weekend, I thought long and hard about this. What is driving it and how can I take on the second half of the year with a better attitude? Everything I came up with was that I needed to be more positive. There are a couple of people in my life (outside of my wife of course) that I love spending time with and what’s the trait all of those people have in common? They are extremely positive and optimistic.
Time spent with them is uplifting, and I always leave our time together feeling better about myself. This is both a good and bad realization. It’s good for me and hopefully them but it’s also bad for me because while I feel like I’ve had such a negative attitude over the last 6 months that means I have projected it onto others.
This year has been littered with dealing with some extremely difficult people and conflicting personalities. It has tested me in every way possible. Pair that with *hard* situations and I can tell how I got here to writing this post. The word hard is quite a subjective word as my hard might be your normal day-to-day and vice-versa. Regardless, these situations have been hard for me to navigate.
We’ve all heard the saying that you are the average of the 5 most common people you spend time with and that they shape who you are. Well, the only shaping I have been doing for anyone over the last 6 months is an extremely dark and negative one. Some of you may be reading this and not believe that and I thank you but that’s just my honest opinion.
So what is my plan going forward? Well, it’s to remember how good I have it—thinking about how I have a great family, a roof over my head, and food on the table. It all sounds so cliche but I have it good and you probably do as well if you’re reading this post.
Negativity leads to more negativity which then leads to even more. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy and I need to step off the train. I wrote a blog post a couple of weeks ago that I will never share and as I was reading it back to myself I realized I never want to be in that headspace again. Everyone has their down days or weeks but I made a conscious decision to be grumpy over the last 6 months and now I’m making a conscious decision to be more positive and optimistic.
But what about the *hard* times? What about the negative people that I have to be around? How can I regulate these situations? Well, I can’t. Hard times are coming no matter what, that is a part of life. But I do have the choice of how I react to them. I can shut down, become an asshole, or just take it out on others. None of these are productive or work towards the goals that I just talked about above. Instead, I’m going to embrace them and understand that these situations will help me become an even better, wiser, person in the future. At the end of the day if I have done all I can do then I will sleep well at night.
Tough times don’t last tough people do.
Yes, I’m hitting you with all the BS quotes today but they hold merit in this situation. I want to be the friend people can go to in any situation and have a real conversation. One, that they know will be there at 2 in the morning if they need something. A person that will say yes to the spontaneous beer on a Wednesday afternoon or a weekend trip to hike. To be that person I think I need to also be more positive and optimistic and this blog post is the first step in moving towards that.
Thanks for reading.