For years I’ve been wrestling Pollyanna – struggling to stay positive in a world of negativity, trying to shield my children and myself from a bombardment of negative news and media images only to feel like it was a loosing battle – one against the masses – but that’s life. What can you do? Well, this…

I, for one, am going to turn negatives into positives, stop wrestling with my inner Pollyanna and let her shine and begin to refocus on the good in life.

As a child, like most I suppose, I was overwhelmingly positive – the quintessential Pollyanna, always looking on the bright side of life.  If I fell and scraped my knee (which I did with remarkable frequency), I thought, “Well, it could have been worse, I could have scraped my nose too.”

But as I matured and the many things I hoped would happen, didn’t; the many things I imagined would happen, didn’t; the many things I expected to happen, didn’t; my Pollyanna braids unfurled and disappointment transformed them into a tight pony-tail of conformity or neatly constructed bun a-top my head while a that’s-life-what-did-you-expect attitude took shape.

As much as I have tried to suppress it, a Pollyanna-ness still flickers inside me, the warm embers of which help me to maintain an overall positive attitude, believing that things happen for a reason and there is a lesson to be learned from it all but from the vantage point of age (or what some might argue as ‘wisdom’), I wonder why I’ve accepted that adage.

Sure things happen but the reason might be because of my attitude toward it so just because it happened, do I need to accept it?

  By changing my outlook, perhaps disappointment could turn into gratitude.

So I haven’t travelled to Italy, nor do I have the money to do so in the near future.  It doesn’t mean that I won’t get there at some point.  Instead I should be grateful that I can afford to put a roof over my head and can make spaghetti whenever I want. Italy is something I have to look forward to, and what is life without dreams?

Am I the only one out there yearning for the bright-side in life?

According to one recent listing of the top ten tourist attractions in the world, Disney theme parks took two of the top spots with a third at number eleven.  Are we so discontented with reality that a combined 32,952,000 of us annually spend our hard-earned tax dollars to live a week in a fantasy world rather than in the world we created?

Perhaps it’s time to change our perspective.

Join in my observations as I share my findings — things I see around me to celebrate, the good in humanity, the quirky, things that make me smile or things that I’m pondering in my quest for what’s good out there — and send me some of your own ‘brighter-side of life’ observances for as that originator of all things zen said:

“The mind is everything. What you think you become.” Buddha

  Let’s focus on the good in the world. Fasten your pig-tails Buddha, this is going to be fun!

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Any links associated with blog posts are for your reference only.  I am simply sharing my brighter-side-of-life findings and receive no compensation for such recommendations.

I’m spreading the positive, people. What you put out, you get back. Please keep all comments to a positive tone.  Negative comments will not be posted.  

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photo credits: Carolin Grandin
© Carolin Grandin 2012