For a long time I've been focusing on having a positive attitude about life, and life has just gotten better for me because of it. On that note, a few things have happened recently that showcased that.
A few weeks ago, I was on the phone with my parents, and while I was talking to my stepfather, he asked the usual, "So how are things with you lately?" or something along those lines. Quite cheerfully, I answered, "Oh, nothing major new, but life is good. I can't really complain." This apparently threw him slightly, based upon his response: "Well, it's nice to talk to someone with such a positive attitude for a change." And I don't consider either him or my stepbrother to have negative outlooks, but he had a point....people bitch. About a lot.
Fast forward to yesterday. I was behind the bar, doing my thang, and was talking to a couple of tourists. They asked a couple of questions about Key West, this being their first time here, and after answering them to the best of my ability, I asked if they had any other questions, as I often do. And that's when the young lady threw me a curve ball. "Best bartender advice?" Huh? Talk about a random left field generic question. At first I did not know if she meant best advice from a bartender about Key West, or best advice about being a bartender, or just generally best advice from a bartender. As it turns out, she meant the last one. I was kinda stumped, and didn't know what she was looking for. "You know...life advice, I guess." Oh, well, in that case, I told them, my best advice was to not let little shit and life's problems get you down, but to generally have a good and positive attitude. I commented on how so many people in life always seem to have so much drama in their lives, and they let it drive them crazy. And it's always the same people. My thoughts were that those people don't really have more drama than the rest of us, overall, but they just let it get to them more, and they highlight it by focusing more on it than others. I have drama in my life too, and negative things happen in it, but I don't usually let it get me down, and when I do I don't for long, and I focus on the positive.
Shortly after this exchange, I managed to accidentally break a pint glass in my right hand, slicing my thumb pretty badly. It was a bleeder. I immediately ran it under water, applied pressure to it with some napkins, and alerted the manager to the incident, and also had him apply bandages on it. And then put on a glove over the bandages, and wore the glove the rest of my shift, for the protection of my guests. Shortly after that all went down, I was laughing and joking with my guests, and even said to the above couple, "Well, I certainly didn't mean to illustrate my point so violently!" Because a lot of people would have focused on, "FUCK! That hurt! And now my right thumb is all sliced up, and if have tomorrow off and have to do a lot of shit, including packing for my vacation." Me? My basic philosophy was more along the lines of, "Fuck that hurt! But at least I only have a couple of hours left in my shift, and I have tomorrow off so I don't have to deal with this at work, and then I just have two shifts left before vacation!" Same incident, same situation, two completely different outlooks.
Rewind to a week or two ago. I was giving my friend Little Red a ride to work, for various reasons. Her tool of a boyfriend had just left town a few weeks earlier, ostensibly to take care of some legal troubles back in the Midwest, but as he had taken everything with him, even his favorite lamp, Red was pretty sure he wasn't coming back. And eventually realized that I and her father were probably right that this was, in the end, better for her. But that left her dealing with rent on her own. And just a day or two before I chauffeured her downtown, her place being on just about the furthest point of the island from both her downtown jobs, and her being without a vehicle beyond a bicycle, she had found out that her roommate, who held the lease, was not renewing it, and she would have to find a new place to live. And she was bitching and moaning, because she knew from experience that finding a place within her budget was tough, but even tougher for her due to her having a large dog. (A Husky/Chow mix who is absolutely adorable.) And despite Key West being a generally dog friendly town, many places do not allow large dogs.
So there Little Red is, bitching up a storm, woe-is-me-ing it, and I finally interrupted. Quietly and calmly I told her she needed to have a more positive attitude. Rather than having her self-defeating attitude, she needed to be more positive. No more, "Fuck, there's no way I'm gonna find a place!" Rather, "Okay, I'm gonna find a place, damn it!" She basically rolled her eyes at me, but I continued to beat my positive drum.
That night at work, she found out about a place for rent, downtown, that would allow her dog, that was within her budget, that would enable he to easily ride her bike or even walk to both of her jobs, that would eliminate her reliance on public buses and taxi cabs, and that was with a person that a mutual friend of ours had roomed with previously, and whom this mutual friend said was definitely a good egg.
Do I believe my positive attitude somehow magically made this place appear? No. But I'd like to think that my chiseling away at her negative armor made her more open to asking around and listening to people, and having them listen to her, rather than being a little negative drama queen and not hearing what is going on, and having others write her off as a little negative drama queen that they didn't want to help.
Now, I know this kind of advice does not bear on people who are clinically depressed or bipolar. I am not a doctor, psychologist, or psychiatrist. I have no mental health training, and I don't delude myself into believing that merely having a more positive outlook automatically erases life's ills and makes things better. As I said, I still have problems in my life, many of them that I probably could have avoided, to be honest. But rather than letting most of them get me down, I use them as learning experiences or laugh them off as the idiocy and insanity of my life. And those few that really do get me down, don't do so for very long. And I firmly believe, and have seen with my own eyes, that for most people, such a more positive outlook on life and attitude in general is healthier and, let's face it, more pleasant to live with.
Some people are always going to be determined to be miserable. I will not be one of them. I only hope that more people join me, including some of you.
A few weeks ago, I was on the phone with my parents, and while I was talking to my stepfather, he asked the usual, "So how are things with you lately?" or something along those lines. Quite cheerfully, I answered, "Oh, nothing major new, but life is good. I can't really complain." This apparently threw him slightly, based upon his response: "Well, it's nice to talk to someone with such a positive attitude for a change." And I don't consider either him or my stepbrother to have negative outlooks, but he had a point....people bitch. About a lot.
Fast forward to yesterday. I was behind the bar, doing my thang, and was talking to a couple of tourists. They asked a couple of questions about Key West, this being their first time here, and after answering them to the best of my ability, I asked if they had any other questions, as I often do. And that's when the young lady threw me a curve ball. "Best bartender advice?" Huh? Talk about a random left field generic question. At first I did not know if she meant best advice from a bartender about Key West, or best advice about being a bartender, or just generally best advice from a bartender. As it turns out, she meant the last one. I was kinda stumped, and didn't know what she was looking for. "You know...life advice, I guess." Oh, well, in that case, I told them, my best advice was to not let little shit and life's problems get you down, but to generally have a good and positive attitude. I commented on how so many people in life always seem to have so much drama in their lives, and they let it drive them crazy. And it's always the same people. My thoughts were that those people don't really have more drama than the rest of us, overall, but they just let it get to them more, and they highlight it by focusing more on it than others. I have drama in my life too, and negative things happen in it, but I don't usually let it get me down, and when I do I don't for long, and I focus on the positive.
Shortly after this exchange, I managed to accidentally break a pint glass in my right hand, slicing my thumb pretty badly. It was a bleeder. I immediately ran it under water, applied pressure to it with some napkins, and alerted the manager to the incident, and also had him apply bandages on it. And then put on a glove over the bandages, and wore the glove the rest of my shift, for the protection of my guests. Shortly after that all went down, I was laughing and joking with my guests, and even said to the above couple, "Well, I certainly didn't mean to illustrate my point so violently!" Because a lot of people would have focused on, "FUCK! That hurt! And now my right thumb is all sliced up, and if have tomorrow off and have to do a lot of shit, including packing for my vacation." Me? My basic philosophy was more along the lines of, "Fuck that hurt! But at least I only have a couple of hours left in my shift, and I have tomorrow off so I don't have to deal with this at work, and then I just have two shifts left before vacation!" Same incident, same situation, two completely different outlooks.
Rewind to a week or two ago. I was giving my friend Little Red a ride to work, for various reasons. Her tool of a boyfriend had just left town a few weeks earlier, ostensibly to take care of some legal troubles back in the Midwest, but as he had taken everything with him, even his favorite lamp, Red was pretty sure he wasn't coming back. And eventually realized that I and her father were probably right that this was, in the end, better for her. But that left her dealing with rent on her own. And just a day or two before I chauffeured her downtown, her place being on just about the furthest point of the island from both her downtown jobs, and her being without a vehicle beyond a bicycle, she had found out that her roommate, who held the lease, was not renewing it, and she would have to find a new place to live. And she was bitching and moaning, because she knew from experience that finding a place within her budget was tough, but even tougher for her due to her having a large dog. (A Husky/Chow mix who is absolutely adorable.) And despite Key West being a generally dog friendly town, many places do not allow large dogs.
So there Little Red is, bitching up a storm, woe-is-me-ing it, and I finally interrupted. Quietly and calmly I told her she needed to have a more positive attitude. Rather than having her self-defeating attitude, she needed to be more positive. No more, "Fuck, there's no way I'm gonna find a place!" Rather, "Okay, I'm gonna find a place, damn it!" She basically rolled her eyes at me, but I continued to beat my positive drum.
That night at work, she found out about a place for rent, downtown, that would allow her dog, that was within her budget, that would enable he to easily ride her bike or even walk to both of her jobs, that would eliminate her reliance on public buses and taxi cabs, and that was with a person that a mutual friend of ours had roomed with previously, and whom this mutual friend said was definitely a good egg.
Do I believe my positive attitude somehow magically made this place appear? No. But I'd like to think that my chiseling away at her negative armor made her more open to asking around and listening to people, and having them listen to her, rather than being a little negative drama queen and not hearing what is going on, and having others write her off as a little negative drama queen that they didn't want to help.
Now, I know this kind of advice does not bear on people who are clinically depressed or bipolar. I am not a doctor, psychologist, or psychiatrist. I have no mental health training, and I don't delude myself into believing that merely having a more positive outlook automatically erases life's ills and makes things better. As I said, I still have problems in my life, many of them that I probably could have avoided, to be honest. But rather than letting most of them get me down, I use them as learning experiences or laugh them off as the idiocy and insanity of my life. And those few that really do get me down, don't do so for very long. And I firmly believe, and have seen with my own eyes, that for most people, such a more positive outlook on life and attitude in general is healthier and, let's face it, more pleasant to live with.
Some people are always going to be determined to be miserable. I will not be one of them. I only hope that more people join me, including some of you.
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