3 Secrets to Happiness: Secret #3 Focusing on Positivity

The third secret that I wanna share with you may be the hardest. It may be the most difficult. However, if you’re doing number 1 smiling and if you start to focus more on complementing and contributing and condoning, this 3rd secret is not gonna be so daunting. What is the 3rd secret? It is actually focusing on the good aspects of every situation regardless of what you’re doing or what somebody else’s doing or what the circumstances are, it is focusing on the positive.

I’ll give you a little example. I was having a business meeting, one of my first businesses, and my son was about 1 year old. It was at this woman’s house, we were both young entrepreneurial moms and we were going over quite a bit of business. My son who was just a couple of feet away from both of us, we were at the kitchen table, went over to one of those huge drinking water jugs and started playing with the knob. Before we knew it, the floor was flooded, absolutely flooded. I remember my reaction, I was embarrassed, I was shocked. He wasn’t really doing anything I couldn’t punish him for. He was curious and he was playing with these valves and it wasn’t something that he needed to be punished for but I was very embarrassed because I am sure that the water cost a lot of money and now it’s all over the floor and it was not going back in the jug.

My business associates reaction is something that has stayed with me ever since and I go back to that when I have little different upsets in my life. Her reaction was to say “My floor’s needed to be mopped anyway”. I was like, wow that was a very happy way to look at it. She looked at the good, she found a way out, and she alleviated my constant concern about what my son just did. We all feel better, we all laughed a bit. We got a couple of towels and we ended up cleaning her kitchen floor. You know easy, easy. That is what we need to do.

She’s very happy and very successful. She taught me to find something positive about it. I like to remember that when I’m focusing on the not-so-good things in my life, I go back to that. There’s got to be something good coming out of it. And there usually is and we all know it usually works out in the end and getting upset, particularly at little thing, particularly with children or co-workers or whatever, it doesn’t serve anybody and it doesn’t help us solve our problems any faster.

As a matter of fact, studies have proven that when we get angry and very upset and frustrated, it locks our brain down. We can’t find solutions when we’re angry and frustrated. So we have to start focusing on the good. Successful people do that all the time. Happy, successful people don’t place the blame on others. They don’t focus on the negative aspect of situation. They deliberately focus on something positive. You can do the same thing. It’s going to take some practice but you can do it. We can all start doing it.

I love to hear how you put this into practice so the next time somebody spills something or misplaces something or even break something, getting angry and upset and placing blame and all these things isn’t gonna help. You know, me getting mad or angry it’s not gonna put that water back on the jug. It doesn’t fix anything so you might as well focus on the positive.

So I’d love to hear what you come up with. Share with me if you would and what you’re doing to be more positive. How you’re smiling and how that might be affecting your feelings because it will. You will honestly and instantly start feeling more relaxed. Share with me what happens when you start complimenting people, when you start contributing. That’s gonna start changing your life for the better. Also share with me a situation where you have a choice to focus on the negative or positive and tell me how that worked for you. Thank you and till next time, it’s Stephanie McCannon.