A short rant about perspective and positivity.
My wife recently updated her Facebook status asking friends to say how their day was going using only a GIF. I started to notice as the GIFs rolled in that most were negative. Lots of heads banging against hard objects, things that should work not working. GIFs that depicted general craziness and mayhem filled the comment section. The consensus among those that participated was that this was not a good day.
Why is it so natural to think of what makes our lives so frustrating and difficult, yet so challenging to recognize how fortunate we are? I am guilty of this daily and challenged by it. Here’s an example. A typical Monday is not something I look forward to. It starts too early for one. I need just a little more sleep (the walking dead or SNF). When I do get up, I know the day is going to be packed so there’s no reason to make a lunch because there's no time to eat if I want to be home before 7. The rest of the day is filled with staff meetings, one on one meetings, conference calls, inevitable problems and interruptions (wouldn’t be Monday without them). Most Monday’s this is how I see these things. Interruptions, problems, inconveniences, wastes of time, frustrations.
Let’s turn Monday upside down for a moment. It’s worth losing a little sleep for Zombies and football. I can work while I eat a sandwich (I can eat a sandwich while doing just about anything). I have the opportunity every week to meet with my whole leadership team and catch up on what’s going on in our business during a staff meeting. Not only that, if I have something important to share, the whole team hears the whole message! Having a weekly one on one meeting with assistant managers gives me an opportunity to invest in my team, help them learn the business, and often hear their amazing ideas for how we can do better. Conference calls are a chance to hear ideas from my partners that are making them successful and could help me improve how we operate. Every problem that could occur is a chance to make someone’s day by investing time into them and helping them with a solution. Best of all, when I go home, I get to go home to the world’s best family. Perspective changes everything.
I don’t like the first version of Monday, but it’s my choice to see it that way every week. It’s NOT easy to choose to see everything as a positive. My natural tendency is to complain and think about how good I don’t have it, or how frustrated I am with a situation. The reality is I, and you if you’re reading this, are incredibly lucky. I don’t just mean in the sense that we have computers and smartphones so we must be in the richest percent of the world’s population. We are lucky that we are alive at all. We are so incredibly fortunate to have been born and have a chance to live and read and complain and mourn and do any of the things we do. Think about it. You could be a rock, or a tree, or a Frog, or bacteria. You get to be a human being on planet earth in the year 2017. How do we start seeing Monday as an opportunity rather than a crap shoot? Just think about the alternative. I could have no one to invest in. Nowhere to work. No family to come home to. No peers to learn from. I could be a Frog.
The problems we face are eclipsed by the enormity of the opportunity in them. Monday doesn’t suck. Monday is a gift. Monday is an opportunity to kick ass. I challenge you the next time you see a status asking to explain your day with a GIF, think about the alternative to your crappy day. Think about what life would be like if you didn’t have any of the things or people you have in your life. Think about how you’re going to create an opportunity out of your issue, and then put up a GIF of a dancing frog.
Here’s to Monday.