My father was the consummate positive thinker. He knew, first-hand, the sick tendency of the human mind to dwell on the negative. He believed that, to counter that, and live life to the fullest, required a mental exertion in the opposite direction. He also knew that the day would come when his sons would face difficulties and that our having a positive attitude would be a big key to moving through our disappointments successfully.
Probably, just like you, I wasn’t long into my life before I faced disappointment and failure. As a child it was things like the loss of a loved pet, the death of a family and personal friend, and being hit by a car and spending a month-and-a-half in the hospital and healing. As an adult, experiencing betrayal in business and personal relationships, death of family members, divorce and financial loss. I give my dad a lot of the credit for my being able to walk through these experiences, generally, with a good attitude. Once someone commented with amazement that I could joke about a terrible thing that I was going through. My response was, “OK. But don’t you think that’s a lot better than killing myself?”
How can anyone start their day, with anything but a good attitude, after making thousands of cases of Corn Plops and Pow Juice? (And it only took about ten minutes!)
(To be continued.)
