Are you feeling lucky? Perhaps you're having a "don't ask" sort of day? Why is it, you wonder, that some people are given great big buckets from which to dip into the river of wealth while you were handed a teaspoon with a hole in it? If there is a silver lining to every cloud why are you the only one who just sees it as a meteorological disaster with a hurricane brewing?
If your toast always crashes to the floor butter-side down and it's not that the glass is half empty but you got the dregs and there's a fly doing backstroke in it, then it may be high time for you to re-tune your attitude dial.
As coaches we often quip that what we focus on expands. Ladies who have a battle with the morning mirror whilst dressing will know all too well of which we speak. Bottoms balloon, tummies treble their girth as our radar zones in on our areas of mass disgruntlement. All our best features are obliterated by our absorption of what we perceive as imperfect. Before you know it our bottoms and bellies have blotted out the sun.
When we focus and concentrate on what we see as the negative in ourselves, our lives or our current situation, it just gets bigger, all consuming and dominates our perspective. We feel low and depressed, victimized and frustrated with our lot. "Why me?" or "blooming typical" become our moaning mantras and we shrug our cynical shrug, narrow our eyes at all those for whom life is "easy" and shuffle through our days in down-beat gloom.
It has to be said that there is something irksome about Pollyanna people who always look on the bright side. I know I can't stand them too. However if your natural default position is one of pessimism and luck, love and life on easy street is something that happens to other people, you are living a half life built on fear.
