Being a positive person is a gift. If you do not have this gift naturally, then you must work hard to change your viewpoint from negative to positive. Let me provide a simple example. In the world of accounting in which I grew up, people often debate whether costs are variable or fixed. When costs are fixed, there is a good chance that they will be ignored because people believe they cannot impact fixed costs. However, we know that in the long run all costs are variable. This means that all of the decisions to incur any cost resulted from some choice at some point in time. Our personal lives are similar to this concept. We can look at situations as being happy situations or unhappy situations. Unfortunately many people choose to look at the unhappy situations as if they are fixed. Once they have deemed it as fixed or unhappy, they may choose to remain in the unhappy situation because they believe that it is unchangeable.
Our universe has a basic rule that for each negative there is a positive and vice versa. A coin has two sides: heads or tails. It is either night or day. Our attitudes, our outlook on life work in the exact same way. Decades ago there were management plaques hanging in the office that said, “Are you part of the problem or part of the solution?” The first stage in overcoming negativity is simply by changing your viewpoint. It is easy for us to dwell on the negative. It is hard work to look for the positive things. Can you remember the movie, “The Sound of Music” when Julie Andrews sang, “these are a few of my favorite things?” The concept of the song was to remember the happy or favorite things to help turn around your attitude. In the Bing Crosby film “White Christmas,” he sang the memorable song of “Counting my blessings.” As long as you have life, as long as you can move forward, you have a chance to emphasize the positive in life. By doing so you will enjoy life much more and you will find opportunities that you never believed that existed.
Copyright 2010 - Jim Lindell