Reminders to have a positive attitude and cheer up are all around us. Strangers suggest positive affirmations, but are we listening? Perhaps we practice positive affirmations to keep a focus on positive thinking, but fail to recognize the calls to action we routinely receive. We've grown accustomed to people we don't even know telling us to "have a good day." Many people in customer service jobs routinely mouth the "good day" words as the closing of a transaction. But they don't really mean it, or do they?
Even though the words are mouthed routinely and without emotion, isn't this a reminder to us that we can choose to have a good day, or a bad day for that matter?
There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. ~William Shakespeare
The next time someone routinely, seemingly without meaning it, leaves you with, "Have a good day," why not say, "Thank you, I will, and I hope that you will choose to have a good day, too." What do you think would happen to both of you if you did this? Researchers tell us that we move toward what we think about. By affirming that this day is a good day, regardless of the events that transpire, we transform our thinking and we focus on the positives of life.
A man is but the product of his thoughts, what he thinks, he becomes. ~Mahatma Gandhi
Cheering up is a process. Cheering up begins with choice. By choosing to have a good day, we're affirming the intent to focus upon the good that is in each day. This doesn't guarantee that the day will be without negative events, but that we will have a different and more positive experience of each event that occurs.
People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them. ~Epictetus
Choosing to have a good day, regardless of the day's events, is scoffed at by some people. Pollyannaish thinking, they might say. Unrealistic, burying your head in the sand. Let them scoff. The only thing that counts is how you feel about your day. Choosing to focus upon the positives of life is no more unrealistic than choosing to focus upon the negatives. Which feels better?
The positives and negatives of life will always be there, so our choice in life is how we decide to react. Novelist Anne Perry, in her World War I novel, Shoulder the Sky, says (through her character Joseph), "Most people are doing their best anyway. The big choices are taken away from us, it's only how we react that's left."
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. ~Winston Churchill
Make the most of each reminder to cheer up and have a good day, even those mundane reminders we receive with every routine retail transaction.
If Cheer Up with a Positive Attitude is helpful, you will probably like Cheer Up Feel Good and Live Longer and Positive Attitude and Affirmations.
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