Day 1 January 3rd 2011

A year in positive thinking:
Today January 3rd 2011 I am going to begin logging my days, my difficult ones, my easy one and all the ones in between. To share with everyone my goal and challenge to myself to be positive. To always find a positive light in every situation. I posted a simple question on my Facebook in response to some posts by friends that it seems as of late the posting that stick out most in my head is that they are negative in nature. So I ask myself why people are more negative than positive, or fail to see the positives in a situation. Why do I find myself sometimes getting caught up in the negative in the world, and fail to notice that a new day begins tomorrow and that it is not the end of the world when a difficult situation happens. Myself this is something that I have been practicing for quite some time now. Because I found how being negative impacts the body, mind and spirit on a daily basis and in fact also effects your personal and professional relationships and is a lot of cases your job performance.

I can talk all day and Say “Your being negative.” “You're not positive enough.” But just point it out to people without a point of reference can make it difficult for people to identify these behaviors and to hopefully want to adjust how they look at things and improve their lives and outlook on life. In turn this improve health physically and mentally and strengths personal relationships as well.

So basically I am going to tell you about my day my work, my life and interactions with total strangers, how it impacts me both good and bad. I am not going to just share where I succeeded at being a happy and positive person every day, I am going to share where I struggle and where I need to grow. To show that it is an area where I have chosen to improve my life, and it has done wonders. And I hope you may also find where it will benefit you in your life and endeavors.

First entry 1/3/11:
Good morning world is the first thoughts in my mind when I look to my Facebook page, it is a new day! This is something I began doing 6 months ago to set the stage for my day that it will be a good one, and it is always full of possibilities. I am generally not a morning person and I have a tendency to be grumpy. In fact I am the poster child for Folgers in the morning. Once I realized that part of grumpiness in life was from my morning ritual or lack thereof that was the first change I made. I created a simple ritual that set the mood and tone for my day. I get a cup of coffee, open Facebook and sometimes I great the world publicly or privately, either way I will make my decree to the world that I will have a good day.

So my morning started this morning not the way I like... like everything in life not everything happens according to plan, I was awaken to rummaging around the room looking for lost or misplaced items over the holiday. So I woke to assist in the search effort, now mind you when I am awakened I am a grumpy butt especially when I had other items on my agenda to do like SLEEP. But all items were eventually found and accounted for, and crises was averted. Now granted nothing was negative about this morning other than my personal feelings of being awoken earlier than I anticipated. I took the opportunity to lay back in bed for a few moments to gather my thoughts and re-start my day right and a got up to get a bit of an early start on my day. <-- Positive thought #1 (rather than concentrate on my annoyance of being awoken earlier, I took a step back and reset, and reproached a different way).

After getting ready I made it to work a bit early and dived right into my work. Now for those of you who do not know, I am a Quality Assurance Specialist with Ryla Teleservices who Verizon Communications contracts us to handle sales and billing calls. I am the person the recording is referring to when you call “This call may be recorded or monitor for quality and training purposes.” I get a fantastic start on my day got my goal of 3 agents from the 1 of 3 teams I assist with quality. And the first monkey wrench of the day gets thrown in. We are called into an impromptu meeting to change direction of focus, which required a lot of running around! And by running around I am quite literally saying running, my legs and my feet a very sore at the moment because this was done with my new dress shoes I just purchased. The good side of this is that I got my exercise in for the day. <--positive thought #2 (since another focus of mine is to be healthier this year, not necessarily losing weight, but eating better and getting moderate exercise I was able to complete a daily goal while getting paid for it)

However the flip side of the monkey wrench is that I am behind in my goals for the day. This is huge because the pressure is higher this year for us to make our goals daily, and I began to feel this impending pressure that I would not make my goal on the first work day of the year and my instinct is to say...This year is not starting off very good. As I felt the pressure mounting and disappointment in my personal job performance failing I had to take a step back. There has got to be a solution to the problem. At this moment I go and speak with my boss, and express my concerns and understand the importance of all the goals and why we are doing what we are, but I fear that this new plan of action is preventing me from doing one part of my job.

A solution was presented to me that will help with both goals for the center. I was able to jump right on it and meet my goal today. Sometimes a positive outlook does need to come from an outside perspective. That’s part of teamwork in a professional setting. Now I was able to knock out a few more of the observations that I needed, but unfortunately I did not make my goal for today. However, I made myself in striking distance that I can report by deadline that I have completed if I go into work slightly early. So it was a good thing I set the tone this working year to go ahead and get an early start, so it’s simply a continuation of my morning ritual, not something new to do one day out of the week. <--Positive thought #3 (Sometimes things simply just work out for the best)

So on my way home I find myself thinking about the hornets next that I stirred earlier on in the day with a simple question “How are you being positive today?” it was interesting to see the varying responses and I was reflecting on my day and how I to “Oh champion, of positive thinking!” can find myself struggling at times to see the positive side of things. So I was inspired to start this blog to share my successes and sometimes struggles on remaining positive through my good days and my challenging days. <--Positive thought #4(notice I did not say “bad” day, Challenging is the word, because challenging is a chance to learn something new and grow, bad is simply accepting it as is and there is nothing that can be done about it when you can always learn from an experience and therefore something was done.

I leave you today with my favorite quote, and each post will have a quote of the day that will fit the post for the day.
“A pessimist may be proven right, but an optimist has a better time on the trip!”

Remember tomorrow is a new day, what will you make of it?