Comment: It can’t be all bad.

So I’m reading about “learned optimism” in Martin Seligman’s book “Authentic Happiness” and I have to say that I have a lot to learn on this topic. I tend to skew on what I guess is ‘learned pessimism’. (And yet in other ways I have quite a sunny disposition. “But then again, I’m an enigma.” Name the source of that quote and I owe you a Coke Zero.)

Well it turns out that when we play these old negative tapes in our head over and over, instead of losing power, they gain it. (Kind of a duh, but bear with me.) So the more you do or think something negative, the more it embeds itself into your psyche, the way a car’s wheels dig deeper into the mud the more they spin, to use a familiar analogy.

So if negative think begets more negative think, perhaps we should focus on the positive. It’s easy not to see what’s right in front of you if it’s clouded by the vapors of negative thinking. Glass half full or half empty? It’s an age old way of defining how you think, and it’s not far off the mark for most of us. We either focus on what we’ve got, or what we haven’t got. I certainly have a way to go on learning how to see the positives in even the most challenging circumstances.

Example: as I’ve mentioned before, where we live now is not ideal; nor are the working conditions for my husband. The whole thing is sub-optimal, made all the more so in comparison to the fairly optimal conditions in which we lived previously. But it isn’t terrible, either.

So even though I complain about the tagging and the shopping cart lawn ornaments, how bad can it be when your next door neighbors are kind enough not only to check your mail for you when you’re out of town, but bring you Christmas cookies? And good ones, at that?

Life is sweeter than we think. Apparently some of us just have to learn to think.