Many years ago, I vowed to take a positive outlook on life. That principle has guided me through many circumstances and continues to frame how I look at the events shaping our world and the way I CHOOSE to respond to them. You can be negative or positive. You can look for solutions or you can complain.
For those of you who read my column regularly, you know that I frequently bang the gavel about our finger-pointing, “blame the other guy” culture. This attitude is the essence of negativity and helps no one.
A healthy sense of inquiry is good. A heightened willingness to dig below the surface is important to informed opinions. I don’t expect everything to be rosy. There are huge problems the world faces, that our country must address, and that each of us must deal with on a daily basis. Life is not easy. But it doesn’t mean you have to drop the fun out of life. It seems to me that we’ve lost the sense of the absurd in our hyper-critical, social media-saturated environment. Perhaps we’re all just taking ourselves too seriously.
As my last column of 2018, I look back on many things. Staying positive in how I treat others and sharing that attitude is worth commenting on. When I made that decision years ago to keep a world outlook driven to make things better, it was an easy one to make. It’s harder to keep. In 2018, I found a few new ways to share and influence, and though my voice is small in the grand scheme of things, I receive consistent feedback to keep doing what I’m doing. Positive reinforcement. Thanks to those of you who encourage me along.
For those of you wanting to do more, here’s what I found. On Facebook, when something good happens, I share the event with my friends. I “like” or “comment” on fun, humorous of family-related posts. I ignore the rest. Let us know how you have fun. Make me laugh.
On LinkedIn, I share solutions. I find news that can help solve some of the problems the world faces and post those items. It might be an innovation to fill potholes quickly and cost-effectively. Or a recycling technique that removes plastic from the environment and crafts the discarded material into a usable product. I could find an article that discusses how to purify water more effectively than current technologies.
There is a lot of good news in the public arena. There are HUGE numbers of good people committed to making the world a better place to live. We don’t hear from them as often as the complainers. I choose to WALL off the complainers and seek out the doers, the ones getting the job done.
There is no requirement for a New Year’s resolution in 2019. Stay positive. That’s easy. Compliment others. Smile. Listen. Dig below the surface to find out what’s really going on.
Look for news clips that show our human capacity to turn shore slop into pure guava. Stay on it.
We can turn things around, folks. Influence others. The world will change. Slowly, but it will.
For those of you who read my column regularly, you know that I frequently bang the gavel about our finger-pointing, “blame the other guy” culture. This attitude is the essence of negativity and helps no one.
A healthy sense of inquiry is good. A heightened willingness to dig below the surface is important to informed opinions. I don’t expect everything to be rosy. There are huge problems the world faces, that our country must address, and that each of us must deal with on a daily basis. Life is not easy. But it doesn’t mean you have to drop the fun out of life. It seems to me that we’ve lost the sense of the absurd in our hyper-critical, social media-saturated environment. Perhaps we’re all just taking ourselves too seriously.
As my last column of 2018, I look back on many things. Staying positive in how I treat others and sharing that attitude is worth commenting on. When I made that decision years ago to keep a world outlook driven to make things better, it was an easy one to make. It’s harder to keep. In 2018, I found a few new ways to share and influence, and though my voice is small in the grand scheme of things, I receive consistent feedback to keep doing what I’m doing. Positive reinforcement. Thanks to those of you who encourage me along.
For those of you wanting to do more, here’s what I found. On Facebook, when something good happens, I share the event with my friends. I “like” or “comment” on fun, humorous of family-related posts. I ignore the rest. Let us know how you have fun. Make me laugh.
On LinkedIn, I share solutions. I find news that can help solve some of the problems the world faces and post those items. It might be an innovation to fill potholes quickly and cost-effectively. Or a recycling technique that removes plastic from the environment and crafts the discarded material into a usable product. I could find an article that discusses how to purify water more effectively than current technologies.
There is a lot of good news in the public arena. There are HUGE numbers of good people committed to making the world a better place to live. We don’t hear from them as often as the complainers. I choose to WALL off the complainers and seek out the doers, the ones getting the job done.
There is no requirement for a New Year’s resolution in 2019. Stay positive. That’s easy. Compliment others. Smile. Listen. Dig below the surface to find out what’s really going on.
Look for news clips that show our human capacity to turn shore slop into pure guava. Stay on it.
We can turn things around, folks. Influence others. The world will change. Slowly, but it will.