I saw this hand-written sign that someone had photographed and posted on Facebook recently. It said:
Three ways to fail at everything in life
1. Blame all your problems on everyone else
2. Complain about everything
3. Don’t be grateful
Makes you think.
Makes me think about when people’s character traits and habits of mind combine to create their ‘temperament’ – defined by the Oxford dictionary as ‘a person’s or an animal’s nature as shown in the way they behave or react to situations or people’. I am absolutely NOT talking here about someone who has difficulties caused by trauma or illness or bereavement etc – I’m talking about people whose ‘normal’ world-view is a downbeat one.
Do you know someone for whom the glass tends to be less than half full? I remember asking someone who appeared to fit this description once (I say ‘appeared to’ because, of course, we humans are complex creatures who aren’t easily shoe-horned into simplistic descriptions – and yet…), and he said: ‘That’s just the way I am’, with a shrug. I think he felt that the way he was was outside of his control, like death and taxes and the fact that the moon is just up there.
Pessimists often refer to themselves as realists who see life as it is, and they frown upon optimists as naive people bound for frequent disappointment. But what I like about the pithy ‘3 Ways to Fail…’ sign is how these three things can be easily flipped to the positive.
‘Blame all your problems on everyone else’ can be flipped to: I take responsibility for myself, as beautifully described by William Ernest Heatley’s stirring final sentence of his poem ‘Invictus’: ‘I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul’.
‘Complain about everything’ translates nicely to: I always look to the positive; I try to view challenges as opportunities; I get on with things, as best I can, without complaining.
And ‘Don’t be grateful’ morphs into: I remind myself regularly about all the good things in my life and I am thankful for them; I say thank you to people all the time – and I mean it.
Happy people aren’t happy because they have everything; happy people are happy with what they have.
Flipping to the positive gives us three ways to succeed in life. Much more edifying!
