I survived the 90-minute Weekend Warrior class at my gym, and was dragging myself out of the building when this much younger woman was coming in the other way. She looked not so miserable but like a misery. Like she had been weaned on a pickle. Or worse.
She held the door open only long enough to let herself through, letting it slam in my (exhausted) face. Nice. And as I slowly used all my energy to push the door back open, I heard her say into her phone, “I haven’t laughed all weekend.”
I wish I could tell you that I kept walking to my car, without saying a word. But I couldn’t help myself. “That’s pretty obvious,” I said (half) to myself. Fortunately, she was too wrapped up in her call, her misery and herself to have heard me. And maybe she thought I was just choking for breath. Whatever.
The worst part is that I thought about her all the way home which was ten minutes more than I wanted to see her snarky face.
And it took me all that time to realize that she hasn’t laughed because she doesn’t want to, not because she can’t or that there aren’t things to laugh about. She’d rather wallow in her pity party and bring everyone else around her down, down, down.
Forget that! Okay… a way corny alert … but “attitude determines latitude” and if she is willing to fly low, so be it. But don’t you. And don’t hang around with people who do. And don’t buy in to their negativity/anxiety/pity party. There have always been hard times.
You know what successful people do when times are hard? They figure out how to make them less hard. For themselves. For others. For humanity.
Watch your language. Are you talking doom and gloom or new opportunities? Are you talking this is what I can afford, or this is what I can’t? Are you figuring out how to be happy today, or waiting for tomorrow?
Laugh. Today. Now. Go ahead. Right here, right now. Because the saddest thing would be to go into the office tomorrow and tell someone that you haven’t laughed all weekend.
What do you think?
Oh, and check out Speak Schmeak for a nice post on getting rid of negative thoughts.
Power Sales Writing