“When you wake up every day, you have two choices. You can either be positive or negative; an optimist or a pessimist. I choose to be an optimist. It’s all a matter of perspective.” – Harvey Mackay
***
“The greatest discovery of my generation,” said William James, a psychologist, “is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitude of mind.”
Thomas Alva Edison is a name familiar to many. Throughout his lifetime, he was responsible for the invention of approximately 1,093 items, earning him the distinction of holding more patents than any other individual globally. While many attribute his success to innate creative genius, Edison himself attributed it to hard work.
“Genius,” Edison once said, “is ninety-nine percent perspiration and one percent inspiration.” That’s true but there’s a third factor: his positive attitude. At one time, he exclaimed to an assistant marveling at the bewildering total of his failures – 50,000 experiments before he succeeded with a new storage battery: “Results? Why man, I have gotten lots of results. I now know 50,000 things that won’t work.”
Edison was an optimist who saw the best in everything. “If we did all the things we were capable of doing,” he pointed out, “we would literally astound ourselves.”
We are what we think. Our mind has complete power over us. “If you have the will to win, you have achieved half your success; if you don’t, you have achieved half your failure,” David Ambrose said.
A lot of people succeed in life because of their positive outlook on life. Our attitude of looking at the brighter side can really make a difference. “The winner’s edge is not in a gifted birth, a high IQ, or in talent,” family life expert Dennis Waitley once explained. “The winner’s edge is all in the attitude, not aptitude. Attitude is the criterion for success.”
Psychologist Victor Frankl shared a similar belief. “The last of our human freedoms is to choose our attitude in any given circumstances,” he said.
Frankl understood the validity of this assertion, having endured imprisonment in a Nazi concentration camp. Despite the harrowing conditions he faced, he maintained a positive attitude throughout his suffering.
Never give up. “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up,” Edison commented.
If you find life to be intolerable, consider adopting a positive mindset. A constructive attitude is equally crucial to achieving success like any other factor. It is also essential to recognize that optimism, much like actions, conveys a stronger message than mere words.
Several highly successful individuals have gone to great lengths to present themselves as modest, often downplaying their own accomplishments, while remaining relentless in their quest for excellence.
“When it is dark enough,” Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “men see stars.” This statement reminded me of a piece written by Ron Mehl. It was a story of a strong man facing an enemy beyond his strength.
His young wife had fallen gravely ill and unexpectedly passed away, leaving the large man alone with a wide-eyed girl of nearly five years, her flaxen hair framing her delicate face.
Following the funeral, a neighbor approached him and said, “Please bring your daughter and stay with us for a few days. It would be best not to return home just yet.”
The man responded, “I appreciate your generous offer. However, we must return home – to the place where she lived. My daughter and I need to confront this reality together.”
Thus, the father and his child made their way back to what now felt like a desolate and lifeless house. He moved his daughter’s small bed into his own room, so they could endure the first dark night side by side.
As the hours passed that night, the young girl struggled to find sleep, and her father was equally restless. What could wound a man’s heart more profoundly than the sound of a child weeping for a mother who would never return?
Late into the night, the young child continued to sob. The father leaned down into her bed, attempting to provide comfort in any way he could. Eventually, the little girl managed to cease her tears, but only out of concern for her father. Believing his daughter had fallen asleep, the father looked up and said with a heavy heart, “I trust You, Father, but… it’s as dark as midnight!”
Upon hearing her father’s heartfelt prayer, the little girl began to cry once more. “I thought you were asleep,” he remarked. The daughter replied, “Papa, I did try. I felt sorry for you. I really did try. But – I couldn’t fall asleep. Papa, did you ever realize it could be this dark? Why, Papa? I can’t even see you; it’s so dark.”
Then, through her tears, the little girl softly asked, “But you love me even in the darkness – don’t you, Papa? You love me even when I can’t see you, don’t you, Papa?”
In response, the father extended his large hands, gently lifted his young daughter from her bed, and cradled her against his chest, remaining in that position until she peacefully drifted off to sleep. Once she was finally silent, he began to offer a prayer. He took his daughter’s cries and presented them to God.
“Father, it is as dark as midnight, and I cannot see You at all. Yet, I know You love me, even in this darkness where visibility eludes me, do You not?”
Art Linkletter encapsulated this sentiment: “Things turn out best for people who make the best out of the way things turn out.”