See The Positives in You

See The Positives in You

Whining is more like a trend these days, in fact unconsciously people just start to complain about anything and everything; how their life sucks, and some even compete with whose life sucks the most. You hear one person saying “my life is hell” and another saying “mine is more hell than yours”. Come on guys, we have to keep hope alive to stay alive, we have to focus on the positives we still have. Pity party can seem like fun and relieving but in the end it doesn’t solve the problem, rather it robs us off the zeal to fight back.

For every downside there is always an upside but it takes learning to appreciate what is unseen. Tragedy has a way of magnifying the buts, the should haves and the inflicted but with deep thoughts we can always see the blessings, the haves and the deflected. Raw diamond could be mistaken for an ordinary stone but even in its raw form people with knowledge still know its worth. No matter how tough times may be, if you have faith you will be able to see beyond the trials.

I remember some years back, I was battling with loss of job and many people i knew then kept reminding me of how many mistakes i made on my way to losing the job, some tried to shift and push the blame on my colleagues while others almost turn it into a charade of pity party and jamboree of condolences. I remember telling myself “I may have made some mistakes, some people may have had a hand in it but i can always come back from these better”. I didn’t just sit and allow life roll me over, I pushed back by not allowing myself drown in the negatives. I focused on the positives; my skill, my experience and my expertise, even when people said it was going to be hard getting another job, I was never in doubt i can come through.

Don’t hold your problems high up, don’t emphasize your negatives, focus on where you want to be, the kind of life you see yourself living five or ten years from now and work passionately towards it. We seriously have to quit bemoaning our situation, past or present, for a fact we will all pass through some forms of trying times, but these trying times are not meant to be our end rather a means to an end depending on our attitude during and after these times. Our attitude; did we choose to complain or embrace and forge ahead?

One day, a donkey fell into a pit. The animal cried and whined for hours while his owner tried to figure out what to do. Finally, the farmer decided that since the animal was old, and the pit needed to be covered up anyway, he’d just bury the old donkey right there. He got a shovel and started filling in the pit. The donkey kept up its wailing, but then fell silent. After an hour of furious shovelling, the farmer paused to rest. To his amazement, he saw his old donkey jump out of the pit and trot away! At first, when the donkey realized what was happening, he cried even more piteously. But then the wise animal hit on a plan. As each spadeful of dirt hit his back, the donkey would shake it off and take a step up on the growing mound of earth. Eventually, the mound grew high enough for him to jump out of the pit. Life is going to shovel dirt on you, all kinds of dirt. The trick to getting out of the pit well is to shake it off and take a step up. We can get out of the deepest pits by not stopping and never giving up. Just shake it off and take a step up.

– Jew tales

Most people focus on the negatives because they keep comparing themselves with other people. They keep using other’s achievements as yardstick for their own lives. Life is not designed to be a rat race, as individuals we have our own unique contribution and they are embedded in the lessons we have learned and the positives we have taken from our troubles over the years. Don’t waste your time chasing others when you can be setting your own pace, there are lot of positives you can take from your current situation and create the kind of life you want for yourself. It is never too late to decide on who you want to be; the guy that whined about everything and did nothing or the guy that made the best of bad situations and lived happily ever after.

Life is no fairy tale my friend but miracles still happen, people still move from nothing to something, talents still make way, hard work still gets reward, faith still move mountains, persistence still breaks through, consistence still gets celebrated and negatives still yield a whole lot of positives.