Happy Thoughts...

One of my favorite childhood movies (and still one to this day) is the old Disney movie, Pollyanna. A quick synopsis: There is a town of miserable people; people that are always rude to each other. A little orphan girl comes to live with her aunt and she is always happy and positive and soon begins to affect the whole town.

Throughout the movie, Pollyanna responds to negativity with a counter and says, "I'm glad of that." Finally it becomes clear that it is a game, the glad game. I'm not going to spend too much time talking about it. But if you want to see it, here's a clip:

I remember as a teenager, I could not stand people like Pollyanna...especially girls. They never seemed to have any thought or opinion of their own. They just seemed stupid and spacey to me. And culturally positive people are not really seen in a positive light. One of my favorite shows, How I Met Your Mother  has a character Patrice that is so sweet and positive and never responds any other way but with kindness. But she is also portrayed as kind of stupid. Who wants to seem stupid? So I opted to be different. I chose to be sarcastic, witty and a realist. Like Darlene in Roseanne. She was intelligent, quick witted and did not take crap from anyone.

                   

I always believed a realist is someone who accepts reality as what it is. You aren't negative, you are just realistic. But guess what I realized?Every realist I met is actually quite negative. And they make me feel down, not better.

The truth is, I have realized that I love being around positive people. Positive people seem to be able to make the most boring, tedious tasks exciting events. No matter what that person is doing, it is fun.          "Sure, come on over, I am just doing laundry. But it would be so fun cause we could drink coffee and  get sun and gab while hanging wet clothes on the line." "Woohoo! Laundry! That's sounds so fun!"

                                                                                                                                                                       Positive people give off light. They give off energy, good energy. Kind of like the sun on a cool spring day. It comes out and all you want is to bask in it's warmth. I feel happy and uplifted and joyful around positive people. I feel encouraged, because instead of focusing on how horrible a situation is, they somehow manage to find the silver lining.  Joel Osteen is one of my favorite motivational speakers. I hear a lot of criticism about him because he doesn't talk about Jesus. But he's an encourager. And I feel encouraged every time I listen to him. No matter how down I am, he can lift my spirits.

I want to be a Pollyanna, not a Negative Nancy. I want to be the encourager, the person that sees the silver lining. I want to be the girl that lifts people up and gives them rays of hope, not the person that sits with them in gloom and sees all the shadows. But how? How can you suddenly become positive? When you have spent your life as a realist, it seems impossible. But hey! Isn't that just the realist in me talking? 

There's a book called "The Power of Positive Thinking." It's a really small book and I found it for free online. I was listening to Tony Robbins and he mentioned it.  I read it and I plan to read it again. The book challenges you to not "entertain" negative thoughts for seven whole days. Sounds easy, right? It is harder than it sounds. The idea that if you can change your thinking you can change your life. And that is what I hope to do.

I am taking the challenge, but I am going to extend it further. It says it takes 21 days to make or break a habit. So for 21 days I am going to play my own version of the glad game. For every time I say a negative thing, anything negative, I get a red ticket.  

 

This means anything I say that could be conceived as negative. You know what that means? I probably will be talking a whole lot less. I might actually not have anything to say. But I really don't see how that is a bad thing. 

For every time I find the positive in a bad situation, I get a smiley sticker.  For every sticker, I pay myself a quarter. For every ticket, I pay out .50 cents.  And after 21 days I will count and see how I did. Of course I will not know every time I am doing it. But the idea is that the game will help me be more aware. 

The truth is, it will be a challenge for me. I am analytical, so my mind is always weighing the possibilities. I am going to have to constantly challenge myself to reject those negative thoughts that I believe to be realistic. And I also like to talk things out. I love having deep conversations about life and politics, etc. But I think I will have to learn to embrace the silence.