Attitude

I have recently discovered the TED website (ted.com). What an amazing and inspirational site! I listened to a talk called “The 3 A’s of Awesome”. The gist of it is about a man whose life had been going pretty well but then ran into a string of bad luck, not just bad luck, but terrible things started happening; his wife left him, his friend died. He was inundated with these terrible things and had a choice: suffocate under the awfulness that was closing in on him or find a way through. He decided to start a website that focused on 1000 things to be happy about and eventually started to emerge from the funk of life’s down cycle. As he was doing this, he came up with the 3 A’s of awesome: Attitude, Awareness and Authenticity. 

I don’t want to go any further with the explanation; I think you should go to the site and watch it. He’s an excellent speaker, very inspirational. The reason I brought this up is because it helped give me a glimpse of how much I’ve let myself become bogged down by worry and fear lately. It’s so easy to forget about what makes me happy! I’ve been really worried about my family, work, money, health, etc. that I am forgetting about all the stuff that’s going right lately.

I also listened to a very compelling talk called “Using Our Practical Wisdom”. Wow, this one is great! It’s about the need for common sense and the ability to let people do the right thing for each situation they are presented with, without restricting their ability to think for themselves. It also discusses the consequence of stifling our ability to think for ourselves. Awesome stuff! (I could do an entire post on just this topic, but not today).

Being the crazy list maker that I can be, I’ve decided to make a list of what makes me happy every day to help me remember that these are the things I am living for and these are the things that are truly important:

-          Waking up next to my husband. I like having him there.

-          Seeing my son smile in the morning.

-          Hearing my son talk about the world around him.  This morning he asked for a yogurt cup for breakfast and he looks at the cup and asks “Where baby go?” There’s usually a pic of a baby on the package, but today there was only a pic of a banana.  It was so cute! He then says to me “Mommy, baby fall down and hit head.” This would explain why there was no pic. Thank you to the “Little Monkeys” song that taught him that when you fall down, you hit your head.

-          Spending time with my girlfriends. They always make me laugh and think and stop taking myself too seriously!

-          Eating. I love eating!

-          Sleeping. First runner-up after eating.

-          Calendars.  I like having a mini-calendar in my purse, a wall calendar at my desk, one in my kitchen AND I use the one on my cell to remind me of stuff. Overkill? Maybe.

-          Chocolate. Godiva chocolate squares with caramel. Mmmmm.

-          My iPod touch. Games, music, silly stuff.

-          Notebooks.  I write stuff down all the time, yet I’m very forgetful.

I could go on, but that would be too self-indulgent and I don’t want to bore you. What I’m hoping to do is remind myself that for every one thing that brings me down, there’s something that picks me up. I’m not Atlas, I don’t need to carry everything around and be a drag. It’s time to lighten the load. I’m going to think about ways to do this more. I used to TiVo stand-up comedy on Comedy Central; that was fun, it could get a little annoying at times though, I tend to like intelligent comedy and shy away from fat-jokes. It’s time to find something new… The key here is to start with my attitude.

Attitude is the first step with anything.  Why is it so easy to have a bad attitude? Part of me thinks it’s because it’s easier to shun things than it is to participate. Participation requires responsibility and effort. Those things can be work and, you know what they say, nothing worth doing is easy – but who wants more work? It all comes back to attitude. How you approach each situation in your life can determine how much effort is required. When I look at my day as a chore, the effort it takes to get through it is already doubled before the day has even begun. When I look at my day ahead as something fun or take it one part at a time, the day doesn’t seem so daunting. My trouble is being consistent in my attitude and thinking.

Here are my questions for my new blog buddies: What do you do to take yourself less seriously? How do you lighten up? How do you maintain a positive attitude?