Tag Positive Attitude

Choose your case scenarios

Michael 9 Comments

With all that’s wrong in the world, it’s easy to want to consider the worst-case scenario. When was the last time you considered the best-case scenario? I realize I spend a lot of digital energy bringing up some pretty bad things that are happening. Given the chuckle crew based in Washington DC, it’s just too easy not to find laughingly stupid, or stupidly laughing examples of criminal behavior, let alone their usual level of just dumb crap. Given all of that, good things still do happen.

Among all the wars, conflicts, skirmishes, and scuffles going on, Cambodia and Thailand signed an immediate and unconditional ceasefire on July 28th following military activity along a disputed border. Yay, peace without insisting someone say “thank you” first.

Following months of reports regarding the unconscionable shifting of previously targeted humanitarian aid (aka money) to blood-sucking billionaires, word comes of a new medical school just opened that aims to train new doctors on preventative medicine funding by (be still, my heart) a billionaire! Walmart heiress Alice Walton put up the money for the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine. So she’s not modest about it. We’ll give her that. At least she’s spending her own money.

If other cash-rich American have an altruistic streak in them, there is a opportunity in Vermont. Realizing how spotty cell phone service is in his area, Vermonter Patrick Schlott bought an old pay phone and installed it outside a local general store using a device that doe some magic and changes an internet connection to an (old-fashion) analog telephone line. He then removed the coin-operation mechanism and free phone service was available where previously no cell phone service existed. 370 calls were made from the phone in June, many of them students who needed a pickup from a parent. Schlott would like to expand the project if he can figure out financing. Billionaires of America, here’s your chance to prove you’re human too.

While we are discouraging alternate energy sources, nay, actually encouraging energy dependance on dead dinosaurs, for the first time ever, June saw solar energy become the largest source of electricity in the European Union, supplying a record 22 percent of power. At least 13 countries saw solar output hit a new monthly high in June, with solar amounting to more than 40 percent of the power generated in the Netherlands! Take that T. Rex!

While we find more ways to close parks and remove finding for environmental projects, for the first time in over a century, Parisians and tourists will be able to take a dip in the Seine. The river is opening up as a summertime swim spot following a 1.4 billion euro ($1.5 billion) cleanup project.

So there are good things happening and positive influences around the world. Even in America (gasp!) What prompted my foray down the sunny side of the street? Life on the Sunny Side, this week’s Uplift post of course. We explored how by saying, thinking, and doing positive words, thoughts, and actions, we can shift the focus to looking for those best-case scenarios. Give it a read. Please.

 

Happy Half Year!

Michael 4 Comments

Ahh July! One of the two months tossed in by the Caesars Julius and Augustus rendering the clues to the position in the calendar by their names of September through December moot.

The month that added pages to calendars and is the reason February holds the short end of the day stick started in the hubris of a petty little tyrant. (Warning, Donober may be just around the corner.)

Still there are some good things that came out of July. Not only does July contain within its weeks National Hot Dog Day (on the undoubtedly soon to be more available July 4) it is in its entirety National Watermelon Month and National Ice Cream Month, perhaps not at the same time. Fun fact(?) or perhaps Sad fact, the Fourth of July was not declared a federal holiday until 1938.

Not only was it in July (the one in 1687 specifically) that Isaac Newton published Principia, that contains within its pages his laws of gravity and motion, it was also in July (the one in 2001) that the wildly popular sit-com “The Office” premiered (the British production). And it was on July 13, 1923 that some future real estate tycoon erected the famous HOLLYWOODLAND letters in Griffith Park on Mount Lee above Beachwood Canyon that you might be more familiar with as the Hollywood sign after the last four letters were taken down in 1949.

For the fans of vaccines, and other reasonably intelligent people, it was in July that the rabies vaccine was first given to a patient. Microbiologist Louis Pasteur administered the vaccine to a nine-year-old boy bitten by a rabid dog on July 6, 1885.

For those who think weird like me, July is the first month of the second half of the year. In yesterday’s Uplift we suggested July is a good time to reaffirm your New Years Resolution. Ours is to find something everyday that makes you start the day smiling inside and work on that until the smile defines you. Read more about it at Half Year Resolutions. It’s good. Trust me.

This or That

Michael 8 Comments

I hadn’t planned on doing this today. I was going to do that. When I discovered eventually I’d have to do that, I thought today would be a good day for that. In fact, I even said to myself, “Self,” I said, “Thursday would be a good day for that.” And indeed, it would, but so would Monday be, so instead I’m doing this.  And equally indeed, on Monday I’ll do that.

This is promoted by yesterday’s Uplift post. No surprise there as usually Thursday RRSB posts do recall Wednesday Uplift posts. Not always, and it wouldn’t have been had I done that instead but I’m doing this so that’s that.

This, about as far as I can tell, is an absolute original thought Diem and I had and posted yesterday. Quiet Change. I’m capitalizing them here although we didn’t there because the more I think about it, the more I think this concept of Quiet Change is something special.

A few sentences from the post:

So which is it – change is all around and within us as a natural part of our existence, or change happens when we take the steps to initiate it? It’s probably more neither than both. Yes, we are closing our ears to the noise about change, both the change being inevitable and change being instigated. Change is self-fulfilling. So we say.

Too often we use change as an excuse for our actions, or inactions, rather than an impetus to them. We call for the need for a change then wait for others to do the hard work of change. Or we explain away lapses in performance or even in judgement by citing something that had changed without our knowledge. We’ve turned change into the noise that detracts, distracts, and deflects us from responsible action.

The quiet side of change too often is overlooked.

We contend that people make change artificially difficult and use it as an excuse for bad or incomplete decisions and procrastinated or poorly executed action. The magic to Quiet Change is it allows us to work with it, appreciating the positives of the process and progression.

If I say so myself, “Self”, I’d say, “that’s something on the Internet well worth the time to read.” So why don’t you Listen for the Quiet.

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This or That

Michael 11 Comments

Disingenuous. That’s a great word. It sounds almost polite but there is no mistaking it means you’re about as trustworthy as a fox in a henhouse, as loyal as a Benedict Arnold fan club member, and/or as honest as a politician. Let’s take an average Joe, or your average Donny who rants and raves about immigrants and wants to see them all deported, yet two of his three wives and one of his one mother are immigrants, his loyal assistant’s wife is an immigrant, and his best buddy is not only an immigrant but an illegal one, entering the country on a student visa but never matriculating to any institution of higher learning. That is a good example of disingenuous.

It also doesn’t sound like one, but disingenuous is one of those black or white, this or that, yes or no type words. There aren’t many shades of gray to dishonesty, disloyalty, or distrustwrothiness. (By the way, do you know the difference between gray and grey. One is a color and the other is a colour. Hahahaha!!!!)

Anyway…back to shades of gray. It seems unless one is discussing their own sketchy behavior (behaviour), people don’t like ambiguity. We want a definite yes or no, good or bad, yea or nay, do you or don’t you. I could go on and on. Or on and off.

Of course the worst of the either/or scenarios are when we assign good or bad, plus or minus, love ‘em or hate ‘em qualities to people. Seeking absolutes divides us into “us” and “them,” limiting understanding and the ability to find a common ground. And believe it or not, we’re all pretty common even if we aren’t necessarily all grounded.

This week’s Uplift post explored the idea that in a world where everyone believes themselves to be right, everyone might be wrong, and that admitting the possibility of being wrong can encourage discussion and collaboration to uncover the real truth. If you haven’t seen it yet, take a look. It isn’t too long yet not too short, and neither is it our best work, nor is it our worst. Take our word for it, there’s more right than wrong in it and we genuinely can say that. (By the way, tomorrow’s Friday Flashback further explores this idea. If you join our mailing list today you’ll get an email notice of that tomorrow.)

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