When you train yourself to think positively, your vision of the world changes a bit. I noticed that the more positively I thought, the more I started paying attention to only positive things.
Thinking positive isn’t about ignoring reality. It’s not about pretending. But it is difficult to make it part of your common thought process if you are not used to doing so.
Once, when I was a little girl, I made a comment about someone on tv “looking weird.” My mother looked up and said “now find something nice about her.” I looked at her a little stunned. “Why are you focusing on what you don’t like about her? Find something nice,” she said. I remember being so annoyed. I was looking at this person on tv and thinking there was just nothing about her that I thought looked nice. But my mother said I had to find something, so I searched. I noticed her eyes were very blue. Then I realized-her eyes were actually quite pretty. I told my mother that her eyes were pretty. She said “Good job. Start finding what you like about people, not what you don’t like.” (I must have been a critical little five year old.) She did this every time I made a statement like that. What she and I both didn’t realize was that she was actually opening my eyes up and teaching me about positive thinking. (Nice job, mom!)
Today is the perfect day to implement that type of lesson. It’s rainy, gray, and cold outside. It has been for the past two weeks. It’s easy to notice the house is now a disaster and the kids are going crazy. So I made myself find something good about the rain this morning. I looked outside. Blah. Then I saw the English Ivy I planted forever ago was finally growing. I’ve had it fail twice-the huge amount of rain finally brought it to life. I looked around and my neighbor’s tree caught my eye. Covered in pink blossoms, it looked absolutely beautiful. It only has the pink blossoms for a short time before it turns completely green and I almost missed it. I hadn’t even noticed it at first…I was too busy looking at all the gray.
