Count Blessings, Not Losses

“There’s been a man fished out of the river barely alive.” This was the talk in a shop my husband was in this evening. The bearer of the news and the recipient (of no relation to the soggy man) kept focusing on the barely part, even when my husband tried to point out the key word here was alive.

At the same time, elsewhere, I was catching up with someone I hadn’t seen for a while who was telling me how bad things had been for her. A greedy business partner had sued her and was trying to take her business away which also put her home at risk, they didn’t succeed. However, the focus of the whole conversation was on the near loss of house and possible bankruptcy, if the ruling had gone another way. It didn’t, she won, sure she lost money but, she still has both the house and the business.

In both cases each party where determined to see the worst of what might have happened, instead of acknowledging the positive outcome.

There are blessings and joys all around if you choose to see them, but that’s the thing, you do have to want to see them. As Randy Pausch of the famed ‘The Last Lecture’ http://www.thelastlecture.com/ asks ‘Are you a Tigger or an Eeyore?’ Do you see the good or the bad in the situation, because that’s what it comes down to at the end of the day your ability and desire to want to see the good or the bad, because anything in life is only as good or as bad as you choose to see it.

My husband was once 24 hours from dying but he didn’t and we marvel at how lucky we are. We went through bankruptcy after a long illness and see the positive side of it. We came out of it stronger than ever as a couple, we no longer feel sick when the post falls on the mat in the morning, we only buy that which we truly want or need as we don’t and won’t do the credit thing ever again, I could go on. The thing is we see the bankruptcy as nothing but a blessing because we look at what we’ve gained.

Whatever happens it’s your choice how you view that situation, sure things can be upsetting, hurtful, worrisome but you can always if not straightaway see a positive in it somewhere. Something can always be worse than it actually is.

It helps to know what is important to you. For me it’s my family, my husband and my two lovely kids, as long as they’re ok my world is ok. But even then I think about the lady who coined the title of this blog. She’d lost her only daughter in a car accident, through no fault of the daughters, and yet she seemed peaceful. She said that through her grieve she still counted the blessings not the losses, and was grateful that she had had those precious years with her daughter.

Here’s the thing, life experiences are always going to come your way, you get to choose whether you see the positive in something or someone. All you have to do is to consciously choose that you are going to see things from a positive point of view, there always is one somewhere. When you do, the rewards are many fold, you feel gratitude, you feel at peace, you can feel good about life, you can smile about stuff and pass that smile on to others so that they too can feel good, and you have the added benefit of a much healthier immune system.

Give it a try. Find something that you would may be see as a negative and find the positive in it. The more you practice the easier and quicker it will come.

Good luck

Have a good one

Dxxx