This is a post from my My 20-day Zappos + Buffer Values Challenge
“Always Choose Positivity and Happiness”
I once watched a film on television. I didn’t know it at the time, but it had quite an effect on me, until today, I’d always attributed it to other films.
The film was the Pollyanna – the 2003 adaptation of the 1911 book by Eleanor H. Porter. As Wikipedia explains:
Pollyanna’s philosophy of life centres on what she calls “The Glad Game”, an optimistic attitude she learned from her father. The game consists of finding something to be glad about in every situation.
It originated in an incident one Christmas when Pollyanna, who was hoping for a doll in the missionary barrel, found only a pair of crutches inside. Making the game up on the spot, Pollyanna’s father taught her to look at the good side of things—in this case, to be glad about the crutches because “we didn’t need to use them!”
I don’t think I realised quite the effect that this (and my family’s apparent worry-free approach to life) had had on me, until relatively recently.
It’s very easy to get distracted by things that induce negative thoughts, and often things seem like worthy causes, but consider this:
We’re put on this planet for a lifetime. The reason we care about anything is because it may impact on our happiness, or the future happiness of others. But if we aren’t enjoying the present, we are wasting our minutes.
We can do the right thing AND choose happiness.
I’ve blogged before about happiness and focusing on the positive. It’s clear to me that ‘objectively’ it’s a good thing – not just for philosophical reasons, there are clear pragmatic benefits.
I actually think this is one of the hardest core values, because I think that it’s something that most people attempt to do, but find it difficult to actually put into practice. It looks simple on paper but the concious effort required, every day, to do it, is nontrivial. Having the discipline to relentlessly pursue things is hard – but often very rewarding!
There’s a question everyone will someday consider:
What would I do if I won the lottery?
If you can bear to spend a moment thinking what you do if you won a spare couple of million, stop now and think.
Otherwise, let’s move on.
My feeling is the wisest answer to this question is, “continue doing what I’m doing now, just with more money (and I might not tell anyone about the cash)”.
One of the best things you can do, is to find what you’d like to be doing, and then everyday, cross one thing off your list of things to help you get there.
I think I am doing what I’d want to be doing, whether I won the lottery or not, and I find encouraging other people to be a way of renewing my own positivity… It’s complicated, but it seems like the more of it you give away, the more you get back. 🙂
