Happiness, it’s all About Your Attitude

Dawn at Burning Man

Adopting the right attitude can turn a negative stress into a positive one ~ Hans Selye

Attitude

So tonight a deeply personal post about attitude. I’m going to start with an old joke and inserts some realities from my life. Someone asks how are you?

Me, well – my blood pressure is too high, my blood sugar is out of balance, my knees are shit, the bursitis in my shoulder is acting up, work is draining my soul and the love of my life will soon be celebrating her 10th or 11th wedding anniversary with another man on my birthday.

But you know me, I can’t complain.

If you know me and read it in my voice you didn’t do it justice, it really works with a crusty old woman’s voice, I always here the voice of the neighbor in Rosemary’s Baby.

Everything I mentioned in the quote above is actually true, but it comes from a negative perspective and attitude. You see, I could just as easily paint everything above in a completely different way.

My blood pressure which I inherited from my mother’s family is too high but it’s controlled by medication which I’m utterly grateful for because in the 60’s my grandfather literally died from a brain hemorrhage related to his uncontrolled blood pressure.

My blood sugar is out of balance, but only at the moment, it’s controlled by my food intake and I’m back to eating well again and in a few weeks it will be back under control soon.

My knees are shit, but not too the point that they constantly hurt and they don’t prevent me from doing what I want to do. My knee problems have also forced me to stay in better shape and build up my legs and lose weight to take the pressure off of them.

The bursitis in my left shoulder is acting up but it’s nothing compared to the problem I’d had in my right shoulder and it’s really just a minor inconvenience, solved with a some Aleve.

A positive beautiful day

Work on Yourself

Work is draining my soul but only because I want to be doing something more and I got a taste of it. But hell, I’ve got a really well paying job that gives me excellent health care, five weeks of vacation a year, doesn’t make me punch a clock and is allowing me to work toward a really good retirement and plan so eventually I’ll be able to do what I want full-time.

The last one is the really hard one, because the way to look positively on the situation is to be grateful that I found her and had her for a time. The old, it’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all, with a nod to Tennyson. That’s the silver lining, the positive outlook, but the truth is my friends on a lot of days it’s hard to look at things that way, but that’s 6 months in therapy and a the book I wrote about it.

Positivity

On the road to happiness you have to be positive, you have to fight to find the positive in everything. It is the only way to stay happy on a consistent basis. Very often in talking with someone who understands the term, I’ll mention doing work on myself. Often I see people feign understanding of this term and yet they don’t ask what it means. What it means is to identify something within yourself that you don’t like and do what it takes to change it. This is what we I am talking about tonight. It’s as simple as the idea of looking on the brightside and as hard as convincing yourself to actually do it. It’s a habit and a practice that I admittedly from time to time struggle with myself.

The idea of positivity is one that really truly pays benefits. You feel happier, life seems just a little bit brighter and frankly all attitude is contagious, so the more positive you are, the more positivity you tend to see around you. A happy contagion if you will.

The path to happiness is not much of a secret, we talk about the elements of it on the blog all of the time. In order to be happy first you need to make sure the basics (sleep, food, safety, etc…) are all in order. You need to maintain your positivity, you need to have a goal to work toward, you need to be kind and show gratitude. You also need to have some fun, not be too serious and get out of your comfort zone. Do these things and unless the randomness of the universe, or your brain chemicals come crashing down on you, you’ll remain fairly happy. But you have to be conscious and focused on yourself and what’s happening in your life, you have to be willing to truly see what’s in the mirror and change what needs to be changed. Writing this blog has always been an honor, an honor to serve you all and occasionally provide some help and wisdom. It has also been a help to me, a way to force myself to look in the mirror. Take a look yourself my friends and have a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane