Chapter 5 – Be Positive

This chapter is about having positive thoughts leads to positive lives and having negative thoughts leads to negative lives. In addition, if you expect good things to happen, good things tend to happen. If you expect bad things to happen, they certainly will. It is a part of the glass half empty and glass half full realm of thinking. Are you a pessimist or are you an optimist? When something bad happens to you or your day doesn’t go as expected, do you lament? Or do you look on the bright side and make lemonade?

When I train prevents me from continuing forward, I rejoice, put the car in park and whip out my book. I don’t care if I am there for 40 minutes. I am content. If I am in a doctor’s office and they are running 2 hours behind due to labor and delivery, I lean back, lean over and draw out a book. I am blissful. I finish my book ahead of time and didn’t grab another and I am fit to be tied. I am not prepared. I am on a rampage. I might do something stupid or act rudely … Ouch. Sometimes I get it. Sometimes I don’t.

I would go a step farther to say that people who can properly occupy themselves are also more positive. People who have too much time on their hands and do not know how to properly fill it can be miserable. Let’s take two steps beyond … You are occupied with laundry or running or something else physical, but your mind is left to wonder – to gravitate wherever it will. Without positive thoughts, you can make yourself miserable. It is better to keep your mind as occupied as your body.

I’ve been miserable. I don’t have enough to do. In such an instance, I wish I was a cleaning tornado. I just don’t operate that way. My mother-in-law can achieve in one hour what it would take me to accomplish in a day … When my husband was at officer school for 4 months … my weekends were lonely and long and foreboding and I hated them. On Saturday, I cleaned everything – top to bottom and the bathroom as well. I didn’t take a shower or get dressed until I was done, and then I would reward myself with a scrumptious dinner. I did this every weekend even though my husband, the one who would appreciate it, wasn’t there. It was more like punishment for me. But it was also busy work to keep me occupied.

I don’t do that anymore because there are so many other things I’d rather be doing. But they certainly don’t keep me as well occupied … Maybe the house is just too big. And there are three bathrooms … and two children …

It’s not just positive thinking I need, but positive work to go along with it …

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
Romans 8:28 (ESV)