There's nothing like a good old-fashioned case of the flu to throw a person into a state of reflection. You reflect on what is wrong in your life, and that can be pretty quickly extrapolated to what all is wrong in the world, which is darned near everything, if we believe what we hear, read and see on the news.
Yes. A little case of the flu was all it took this week to tilt my glass to half empty and draining.
Have you noticed that we don't go around asking each other, "hey, what's right?" We ask each other, "what's wrong?"
And when we have those little one-to-one meetings with ourselves, we are also not inclined to ask ourselves, "what's right?" We ask ourselves, "what's wrong here," sometimes followed by, "who's wrong?" We’re left waiting, worrying.
Please don't take my word for it. If you pay attention to your attention, you will notice what channel you're tuned into at any given moment, either the What's Wrong channel or the What's Right channel.
So, what's wrong with "what's wrong"? If it truly helps us to identify a problem, figure out what's causing it and take action to solve it, then it's a good thing! That makes one less problem in our lives. It's only a problem when we get busy worrying, somehow thinking that worrying and complaining will result in a solution. This is a glass half-full perspective, or worse, a glass that is draining your energy and the energy of those around you.
My husband Frank and I were both ailing with the flu actually this past week and I recognized our pitiful trend and decided to take a few minutes for a little experiment. We brainstormed all the things that were wrong or seemed wrong at the moment. We came up with seven items. Then we brainstormed all the things that were good or seemed right at the moment, and we came up with 28 items. Voila! In just five minutes, we identified four times more right than wrong things. We found ourselves relieved and grateful!
So, do we just ignore the problems, the things that seem wrong to us? That would be denial and we're pretty sure that only works for a short while, if at all. We suggest instead that it may pay to invest a little attention, on a regular basis, to those things that are right as well. Focusing on what was right worked better for us than taking megadoses of Vitamin C. We immediately began to regain our energy to handle all the rest.
