Monday, March 7, 2011

BECOMING MORE OPTIMISTIC

From "Monday Morning Choices" by David Cottrell

Want to be a more optimistic person? You can find the path in the Six Laws of Growing Optimism:

You reap only what you sow.
If you’ve sown apple seeds, you’ll get apples. Don’t expect oaks from apple seeds. If you want to be more optimistic, sow seeds of optimism. Sow positive behaviors to reap positive results, and surround yourself with positive people.

You need to know where to sow.
Seeds sown on rocks will never bear fruit. Find fertile ground, and sow your seeds there. Commit to positive projects, people, and tasks. Spend your energies to achieve positive goals, never wasting precious resources.

As some point, you must reap your harvest.
One farmer loved to cultivate and till the soil into neat rows and then sow his seed, but when it came time for harvest, he hated to drive the combine into the fields, crushing the neat mounds of soil and leaving nothing but chaff in its wake. If we sow, then we must reap. Otherwise, why bother?

You can’t do anything about last year’s harvest.
Life is filled with important choices, and every choice has a consequence. It’s not about whether last year’s harvest was good or bad. It’s about how you handled the success or failure of that harvest. Did your failure prevent you from sowing positive seeds today? You can do something only about this year’s crop, but you can also take what your learned last year and make this year’s harvest more bountiful.

Don’t worry about the weather, the beetles, or anything else.
Worrying is a wasted effort and a fertile breeding ground for self-doubt. It will lead you to focus on potential losses rather than effective solutions. Your best choice to stop worry Is positive action.

Be easy on yourself.
It’s important to have the strength and the desire to continue sowing. Beating yourself up for a poor harvest only wastes time. You’re can never like anyone more than you like yourself, and you can’t expect others to like you if you don’t hold yourself in high esteem.