Illuminating Your Successes

Lighting up your day

Every day your life is full of success. And yet for many people, it’s the tiny little inconsequential failures or things that go wrong that tend to dominate their thoughts. I’ll give you one or two examples.

You’re having breakfast, at home or out, and you distractedly spill a small drop of coffee or pat of butter on your shirt or blouse. And for some people that is enough to ruin the entire morning.

Or how about driving to work on your commute and one asshole cuts you up. Nobody gets hurt, no damage is done, but this one little incident infects your whole day. What about the 25,000 cars you passed that didn’t cut you up?

It’s human nature to focus on the things that are in fact out of the ordinary. And it is prevalent in all parts of our lives. It’s even in the newspapers. A headline screams out “Bus number thirty-nine hits bridge! ”

When did you ever see a headline scream out about how of the 139 buses the company owns 138 of them did NOT hit the bridge?

At school, a young teacher writes ten equations up on the blackboard for the kids to copy. Suddenly all the kids scream out that the teacher has got one wrong. Every hand in the class is thrust into the air as the entire class create a melee to point out to the teacher that he made a mistake with equation number nine.

Eventually, the teacher calms all the kids down. He then explains that the mistake was intentional.

The teacher simply wanted to show the kids that that is how the world will treat them when they grow up. People will ignore what was right and home-in on the negatives.

Or how about the little girl who does really well with her exam. She proudly tells her Pop she got 97 out of 100 correct.

“ Ok,” says Pops “ Let’s take a look at those three you got wrong.”

“No Pops” complains the little girl, “ Why don’t we take a look at the ninety-seven I got right huh?” Smart kid.

A man works from home whilst his wife goes out to work. He not only does all of his work, but he also manages to find time to cut the grass, do the shopping and put the washing out. What’s more, he got the kids to and from school, changed out of their uniforms, helped them with their homework, fed them and got them ready for bed. His wife comes home and sees a few crumbs of bread on the table, and oh boy, she is not gonna let that one slip by her without comment. Suck it up, princess.

At the end of the day sit down and grab a hold of a pen and paper. Draw up two columns, one to list your successes and one to list your failures. I can guarantee you, your successes will far outweigh your failures.

Think about that for a moment. Success dominates your activities. Yet it is failure that dominates your thoughts!

Of course, it’s human nature to want to put the things that are wrong right. It’s how we get better at what we do. However, we mustn’t let our failures infect our minds to the point that we feel that we have failed completely.

Get things into perspective. Celebrate and rejoice all the things that went well. Forget the drop of coffee on your shirt or blouse, the asshole that cut you up on the highway, the bus that hit a bridge, the mathematical equation that was wrong, the bread crumbs on the table, forget them all. Remember all the things that you got right or that went well as you navigated your way through the day.

Home in on your successes, not your failures.

Geetika Sethi Thewriteyard Henery X (long) Tony Young, Jr. Terry Mansfield Rebecca Stevens A. 🦋 Adiba Abid Concierge Jo-Anna~ Communications Connector Joe Luca Denise Larkin