Living Positivity

Excerpt 1

What do you want from others? Love, trust, faithfulness? A smile, a kind word, a helping hand? What if we gave the things we most need—and gave them without being asked—to the people we see most often and value more than anyone else in the world? What good would it do you to give in this manner?

At first it seems that you only invite abuse and advantage taking by “doing unto others.” And to others affected by your behavior—at least initially—this will also seem to be the case. But the effect of giving the things we need the most to the people we value the most is the unifying effect of positivity.

It’s not for the purpose of gain; it’s not for reasons of selfishness; and it certainly is not because we want to manipulate others by our giving. And yet, in a way, it is all of these things because we put others first. We expect gain, but we put others first, first. We watch out for our own interests, by making others have higher priority. And we cause others to change by changing ourselves.

Excerpt 2

In the same way that weight loss is often associated with diet fads, painful and inconvenient exercise and frequent failure, the quality of being nice and giving to others has for centuries been connected to the church, the salesman, the politician and, lately, the motivational speaker and self-help guru. But, like the latest trendy diets (and all the expense and stress that go along with them), this sort of Help Others to Help Yourself is ridden with ulterior motives, so much so that people now avoid anyone who smiles and offers them something to read.

If any of you are like I am, you don’t have too much trouble with your co-workers, the tellers at the bank or the cashiers at the grocery store. These are people we’re accustomed to accommodating. We like being positive to people who gain nothing from being negative to us. We get along because we have to get along to make the day go smoothly.

But what about at home? What about family? What about the people we are not paid to get along with, but must live with all the time that we’re not at work or hanging out with the people we like…er, those other people, I mean.

We often displace positivity in the home with being positive at work. This is unfortunate; because those closest to us can reward us in ways others can’t even comprehend. What happens instead is that family members—knowingly or unwittingly—deny us the things we most need: approval, support, positive words, encouragement, and replace them with criticism, doubt, subversion, or simple silence in the place of what is really needed.

As ironic as this sounds, this behavior comes from the fact that family members often feel unable to be positive to those they live with and know, or they believe that their proverbial “loved ones” are unable or unwilling to return positivity for positivity. Many times this appears to be true because of the unwillingness just mentioned and sometimes it is the product of misunderstanding and miscommunication. But it can be changed.

Happiness begins in the home. Why? Because we began there. We don’t remember the hospital; otherwise happiness would begin in the hospital. We remember joyful family times growing up and we anticipate these happenings as adults. It is wrenching to us that we do not discover this happiness automatically. In fact, many of us never discover the secret to unleashing unbridled happiness at home. Pssst…tell you a secret? The secret is inside you. When you let that out, give it all you’ve got, your family will latch on to it and voila! Happiness will be yours. But not without struggle.