Why It’s Important to Have a Positive Attitude

It’s Monday, but I’m still recovering from last week. Last week was one of those weeks. You know, the kind that always seem to drag you below water, when you’re fighting to just float to shore. One of those weeks where everything that could possibly go wrong, well, goes wrong and you just want to crawl into a corner and cry for days on end.

During these times, it can be so easy to be negative about your circumstances and experiences. For many, it’s their go to. It’s easy to go on and on about the things that are not going right, it is almost as if it overshadows the super awesome thing that happened earlier in the day.

Case in point, on Wednesday, I won a giveaway at my local Starbucks for a free holiday drink and a holiday cup. For me, that was like hitting the lotto, because not only do I love the fact that holiday drinks have arrived for the next few months, I also love the fact that I got a free reusable coffee cup so I can try bringing coffee in from home without using my ceramic one. Or, even better, leaving the cup of coffee at work for coffee.

Needless to say, I was excited.

That little moment nearly made my day. Keep in mind, this was a terrible day. In that moment, I was choosing to be happy about that one little positive outcome, that I nearly (okay not really) forgot about my awful day in the first place.

In my yoga practice, one of the videos tells viewers to recall a moment in their day that did not suck, because truthfully you did not have a bad day, but an event in your day that made it bad. The video goes on to say that our brains have a negativity bias. What does that mean? Well, we tend to overlook the ten positive things that happened in our day, and go directly to the one negative thing that we were told.

In my opinion, having a negative attitude towards things never helps with anything. For instance, the more you dwell on the negative things that happened or the fact that nothing seems to be going right, then you are less likely to focus on the fact that there are some good things that happened in your day.

So, I am going to stop this blog post and ask you all to recall a positive thing that happened today. Even if it’s just a free cup of coffee from the local Starbucks.