Read Today’s Blog for a Winning Experience

Here are three things to remember.

1. At the end of the day, win or lose, it is just a game. Yes, we like to win. Yes, we like for our team to win. However, sometimes we, or our team, learn as much if not more from losing than from winning. We don’t like to learn lessons the hard way, but sometimes it is essential for our overall well-being. We may not understand it at the time, but at some point later in life, we likely will. This lesson is oftentimes more important for fans than for those playing the game, especially when children and teens are the ones playing. Too often the fans expect them to play as well as the pros do, and that’s just not going to happen. If you lose, mourn the loss, then get over it and move on.

2. You can’t accomplish much in life without knowing how to read. You don’t have to like reading, but you have to be able to read. As often as not, most information is communicated to us through the written word. We have to be able to understand what we’re reading. Parents who encourage their children not to be successful readers are doing them a huge disservice. I’d go as far as to say that it is a form of negligence. In the year 2013, there is no reason for a healthy child not knowing how to read.

3. If you don’t learn from your mistakes, you will repeat them. Experience is the best teacher, and we can learn a lot from the mistakes we make. We learn easier, better ways to accomplish things based on experience. We learn who to trust and who not to trust based on experience. Life can sometimes become a lot more enjoyable if we learn from these experiences. If experience shows us we can’t trust somebody, then it doesn’t matter how much we love or like that person, we need to stop trusting them. You can love someone and not trust them. If experience shows us that eating certain foods is detrimental to our health, we should refrain from eating those foods. If experience shows us that procrastination is more harmful than helpful, then we should stop procrastinating. Experience is the best teacher, but only if we stop to actually learn something from the experience. These experiences and lessons can be both positive and negative; not all things we learn have to be learned through negative experiences. It’s just up to us to make sure whether it’s positive or negative, we get the message.

Carpe Diem … with a Positive Attitude

Every day you make choices. Some of these are significant, major, life-changing events which require lots of thought beforehand. Others aren’t all that significant, major, or life-changing, but they are decisions nonetheless. Truth be told, we make a lot more of the insignificant decisions than the significant ones, which is probably a good thing since sometimes the significant ones can be quite stressful.

One decision we all make every day, whether consciously or unconsciously, is how we will approach the day. We have the option each morning when we get out of bed to approach the day in a positive or in a negative manner. That decision affects everything we do during that day.

More often than not, we don’t consciously make the decision. Instead, we get up, we start getting ready for our day, and we let the circumstances we encounter determine whether it’s a good or bad day. In actuality, we should consciously make the decision, then let that decision affect whether it’s a good or bad day. Obviously, I would suggest that you make the conscious decision to have a good day and approach the day with a positive attitude.

Our attitude is everything. Bad things may happen throughout the course of the day, but if we’ve made a conscious decision that morning to have a good day and to be positive, we can overcome those bad things that happen throughout the day. This will not be an easy task. We will often have to remind ourselves throughout the day of our decision from that morning. Here’s the thing, though. After days of doing this (and by days, it could be weeks, perhaps even months), eventually we won’t have to keep reminding ourselves of our choice. It’ll be a natural one, and we’ll respond accordingly.

I know a man who when asked how he’s doing always answers, “Marvelous,” and I know another who always answers, “Better than I deserve to be.” Both of these men have made the choice to be positive, every day, and it shows in everything they do. A great side effect is that their positive attitudes are contagious; when you’ve been around them for just a few minutes, you just feel better and more positive yourself. Shouldn’t we try to be like that all the time so we can have that kind of positive impact on others?

Do any of us enjoy having a bad day? I know there are mornings when I would much rather stay in bed and sleep a couple more hours than get up and get ready to go to work. There are days when I dread going to work and days when I look forward to going to work. The thing is I have the power to control that, and even if it’s a day that I’m not particularly looking forward to going to work, I can still decide that morning that I will have a good day, and I will be positive. Initially, this will take some work and some practice. I will possibly have to keep reminding myself of my choice, but in the end, I’ll feel much better not only about myself but about everyone else if I make the choice to be positive.

The older I get, the more I can see the value in being positive every day. It will not always be easy, but I’m going to make the choice right now to start deciding that every day will be a good one. When the day starts getting tough, I’m going to remind myself to look for the positive in the day. It’s there; I just have to open my eyes and see it. I may still complain on occasion when I encounter things that just aren’t right, but hopefully I will also take a positive action to change whatever isn’t right.

I have to start, though, by changing my outlook. I don’t consider myself to be an overly negative person, but I do have my moments. I’m going to work to make those negative moments rarer; I’d be foolish to believe I can completely eliminate them, but I can work to decrease them. So, that’s what I’m going to attempt to do, and I hope you will also try to find all the positive things in your life and focus on those and how they can be used to make every day a positive day for you.