It’s been weird as of late. My perception of events has been skewed towards the negative. I find myself constantly daydreaming like usual, but the outcomes are always sad or fall into the macabre. It’s as if my life is one big joke; “This bad thing happens, bad luck here, bad luck there etc.

And I forget my teachings from my Interpersonal Communications class, namely the lesson of self-fulfilling prophecies. The best way to describe this idea is to give an example.

Let’s say you woke up and said, “oh no, today’s going to be a shitty day.” Now maybe you have an event that’s stressful or embarrassing like a presentation at work, and you cannot wait for the day to be over.

-First thing, you forgot your towel and had to walk on a cold floor across the entire living room to grab one, and you left a trail of wet steps the whole way.

-Then later, on the way to that embarrassing day at work, you hit all the red lights and wound up late for work.

-And finally at work, you got so nervous you had to go to the bathroom and you were out of toilet paper.

You’ll chalk those up to the bad day you already told yourself you’d have.

But what about the rest of the day?

-Walking from your car to the office, you found a $20 bill on the ground and you took it (A whole other issue, cheapskate).

-Then you got to go out for lunch and it was “probably the best cobb salad you’ve ever had.”

And finally during the presentation, the board actually liked most of it and while you may not know the final decision, people seemed positive.

Now, if you had been hopeful and positive when waking up, you would have noticed the latter chains of events more than the negative.

—

But it’s that perspective that will make things easier. And that applies to everyday things, for example my current job cleaning dishes at the hospital. I always tell new employees to look for dirty dishes first, not the clean ones. The majority of the dishes are clean on the clean side. Look for dirty and you will spot it much quicker (and more effectively).

After my vacation, a lot of my negative viewpoints have been subdued. Now I know that my mundane job and its lacking payout is what’s the problem. BUT, I know that while I’m broke, I’m still able to feed myself and to keep a roof over my head (for the time being).

I must use this humbling knowledge to further propel my positive outlook in turn to accelerate my career. If I want to be better off, then I must achieve my goals. I have to keep positive in order to do so.

Keep your heads up, folks. As the AA members say, “It works if you work it.”

---

Continue on this journey of crazed daydreaming by following this blog and of course, my Twitter @GuyOnAWire

-Jamie