I am the type of person who used to have a very negative attitude toward most aspects of life. I am not alone in thinking this way as most of the people I meet seem to be constantly moaning about different things and basically feeling sorry for themselves. This article looks at the reasons and benefits of having a more positive outlook on life.
About ten years ago I decided that I needed to have a change of approach. I wanted to be a happy and carefree person and was fed up with always being stressed and worrying about the future. To achieve this I started to read many self-help, confidence-type books, and websites. There was a regular message which came from this literature which was to think more positively and to believe in your ability to succeed in whatever you attempt to do. This is easy to write or say, but in reality, it is difficult to implement in practice. Of course, I tried but in truth, I did not really believe in the whole practice. I would go into a task thinking, I can do this, but it would still end up in failure.
I could not understand what was going wrong so I, therefore, went back to the books to try to learn more. There was a new and even more important message that I had missed the first time around. What I had to do was to take a positive out of whatever happened to me, even if this is learning from my failings. An example of taking a positive from whatever happens in life is something that happened in my family recently. My grandmother has recently passed away, she was eighty-eight. I used to visit her at least once a week at the flat where she lived. She was a very honest person and always talked very openly to me. Around two months before she died, she told me that she was very tired and that she no longer wanted to be on this planet.
I was quite shocked by her admission and asked her what was wrong. She stated that she had nothing to look forward to and that she did not want to reach a point where she could no longer bathe herself etc. She continued that she hoped that I would not grieve for too long when she did die and that she wanted me to be happy for her. This was quite upsetting for me to hear but at least she was being honest of course.
Two months later my mother phoned me and told me that my grandmother had passed away in the night. I was obviously upset and the thought of never being able to see her again hit me hard. I then thought about what she had said and looked up to the sky and gave my grandmother a smile and a message, I love you. I thought positively about the whole event and was actually happy for her. I hope that one day we will meet again.
