SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE, Ill. — As 2011 began, I knew I had some tough personal choices to make. These choices were life-altering and I knew I needed to find a way to gain the strength through the effects of these choices.
Enter positive thinking.
I knew the choices I was making were going to require a positive attitude and positive thinking. It’s a process I’ve gone with through much of my life and it’s proven to work for me.
For example, early in my life, I made a decision that the people I associate with on a daily basis would be good for me. Someone once told me, “If you surround yourself with good people, you will do good things.” In many ways, that statement has held true. When I joined the military 19 years ago, positive thinking helped get me through basic training and technical school successfully. It helped me get set up at my first base overseas after I was newly married and as I became a father.
Positive thinking also helped me become more confident in my abilities to do my job as an Airman. I believe it has helped me be a good supervisor and has aided me in setting an example that if you “look on the bright side” of life and work hard, good things will happen.
Now I can truthfully say there have been plenty of times when I wasn’t feeling so positive. There have been many times when life got tough, but in the end, it took a positive attitude and some support from the positive people I surrounded myself with to get through it.
My wife, for example, is a positive influence every day. If I am acting or saying something that seems negative, she’ll sometimes say, “What’s wrong Mr. Negativity?” This often makes me laugh because I know she is sending me a message. The second I hear that, I know I’m traveling down a not-so-positive path and need to change my attitude.
I believe positive thinking also fits in with being a more resilient person. When you have a positive attitude, the tough and scary things you face in life just seem a bit easier to deal with.
Recently, my family and I went on a three-day, 1,000-mile road trip. On the first half of the trip, we were towing a trailer behind our vehicle. At the end of that leg of the trip, the trailer broke down.
For most people, a broken trailer on a road trip can be a big problem. We just took the “positive” approach to dealing with the issue at hand. Once the problem was realized, I went to work to get it fixed and wouldn’t you know it, a person I never met before stopped to help me get it fixed. Within a couple of hours, we were back on the road to our destination and I had a new friend. In all, a bad situation turned into a positive experience.
On the second leg of that trip, we ran into bad weather. And not just any weather. We went from clear skies to blizzard conditions to freezing rain to black ice on the roadways back to clear conditions. Accidents were everywhere. Through driving was stressful we knew if we took our time, measured our risks and kept a positive attitude, we’d be just fine, and we were.
I can give you many more examples, such as how being positive has gotten my family and me through seven overseas deployments and the after-effects of what I’ve gone through following those deployments. I also could tell you stories of how it has helped me to help other people. The bottom line is that thinking positive has been a powerful personal ally in my life.
Those tough choices I mentioned before were just that, tough. In early February I had knee surgery. At the same time, I decided to stop smoking. Now, my knee is healing well and I am smoke-free for the first time in nearly a decade. Most of all, I am happy I have made those choices, and thanks to positive thinking, there is no bounds to what I believe I can do.
In your life, I encourage you to think about thinking positive. It helps me every day to do my best in service to my country, to my family and to myself.
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SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE, Ill. — As 2011 began, I knew I had some tough personal choices to make. These choices were life-altering and I knew I needed to find a way to gain the strength through the effects of these choices.
Enter positive thinking.
I knew the choices I was making were going to require a positive attitude and positive thinking. It’s a process I’ve gone with through much of my life and it’s proven to work for me.
For example, early in my life, I made a decision that the people I associate with on a daily basis would be good for me. Someone once told me, “If you surround yourself with good people, you will do good things.” In many ways, that statement has held true. When I joined the military 19 years ago, positive thinking helped get me through basic training and technical school successfully. It helped me get set up at my first base overseas after I was newly married and as I became a father.
Positive thinking also helped me become more confident in my abilities to do my job as an Airman. I believe it has helped me be a good supervisor and has aided me in setting an example that if you “look on the bright side” of life and work hard, good things will happen.
Now I can truthfully say there have been plenty of times when I wasn’t feeling so positive. There have been many times when life got tough, but in the end, it took a positive attitude and some support from the positive people I surrounded myself with to get through it.
My wife, for example, is a positive influence every day. If I am acting or saying something that seems negative, she’ll sometimes say, “What’s wrong Mr. Negativity?” This often makes me laugh because I know she is sending me a message. The second I hear that, I know I’m traveling down a not-so-positive path and need to change my attitude.
I believe positive thinking also fits in with being a more resilient person. When you have a positive attitude, the tough and scary things you face in life just seem a bit easier to deal with.
Recently, my family and I went on a three-day, 1,000-mile road trip. On the first half of the trip, we were towing a trailer behind our vehicle. At the end of that leg of the trip, the trailer broke down.
For most people, a broken trailer on a road trip can be a big problem. We just took the “positive” approach to dealing with the issue at hand. Once the problem was realized, I went to work to get it fixed and wouldn’t you know it, a person I never met before stopped to help me get it fixed. Within a couple of hours, we were back on the road to our destination and I had a new friend. In all, a bad situation turned into a positive experience.
On the second leg of that trip, we ran into bad weather. And not just any weather. We went from clear skies to blizzard conditions to freezing rain to black ice on the roadways back to clear conditions. Accidents were everywhere. Through driving was stressful we knew if we took our time, measured our risks and kept a positive attitude, we’d be just fine, and we were.
I can give you many more examples, such as how being positive has gotten my family and me through seven overseas deployments and the after-effects of what I’ve gone through following those deployments. I also could tell you stories of how it has helped me to help other people. The bottom line is that thinking positive has been a powerful personal ally in my life.
Those tough choices I mentioned before were just that, tough. In early February I had knee surgery. At the same time, I decided to stop smoking. Now, my knee is healing well and I am smoke-free for the first time in nearly a decade. Most of all, I am happy I have made those choices, and thanks to positive thinking, there is no bounds to what I believe I can do.
In your life, I encourage you to think about thinking positive. It helps me every day to do my best in service to my country, to my family and to myself.