January 30th, 2020

The song tells me “You got to accentuate the positive, Eliminate the negative.”  That is advice I want to heed.
So much emphasis is placed (and rightly so me thinks) on keeping negative people at arms-length.  I do need to interact with them but spend too much time with them and they can bring me down.  It may or may not be their intention, but I need to be careful I don’t become one of them.  Becoming like what I associate with is a common thing.  Married couples start to look alike.
What seems to be emphasised less, but to me is just as import, is how I can bring myself down if I think wrong.  Heaps of things happen which are not good.  I know that if I dwell on them, they grow bigger in my mind.  Eventually bad things can be all consuming.
It is one of the reasons I liked working where I did.  If I made a mistake it was not dwelled on.  I learned and we all just moved on.  It is dwelling on stuff that can be my undoing.  It is right I acknowledge something and hopefully learn from it.  It is not right for me to stay there as if that was the end of the matter.  It’s not. 
I am really happy when my team wins, but I do not pretend that it will never be different.  As they say, “you are only as good as your last performance.”  That is part of what keeps things interesting for me.  Every day presents new challengers.  Some I have seen before.  Some are totally new.  So far so good really. 
I sometimes blow it big time.  At other times at the very least I am happy for me.  For me, it is no good complaining about what I cannot control.  For Christmas it was said this will be a no criticism zone.  I thought to myself, this will be a no negative reaction zone.  I cannot control others, but I can control myself.  My reaction matters more than what comes at me.  I can and should try and level the playing field, but sometimes others are playing by different rules.
To me, there is a lot of good stuff everywhere (there is a lot of bad stuff too, but I don’t go there).  What disappoints me, is that so often people make an institution of it.  It might be a good way of thinking, but I have no desire to join the crowd.  I will take what works for me and move on.  I cannot take my guru with me.  I cannot take anyone with me, and I have no desire to.  The best I can do is make the good stuff a part of me, so where I go, it goes.
I am not a pull myself up by my own bootstrap’s person.  I need help and will acknowledge it and ask for it.  I am looking for solutions that are good for this life and beyond.