Power Thoughts

By Amy Wong

Welcome to The Up Beat! I’ll be blogging every week about all kinds of things that help me—and you too, I hope—think positive.

I’ll admit, I’m an optimist by nature. Does that mean I never have a bad day? Not at all. I have my down moments—times when I feel aggravated, unfulfilled or just plain stressed out. Take this morning.

I slept wrong and woke up with a stiff shoulder. I sloshed coffee on my white pants and had to waste time changing to a skirt (black, like my coffee). In my rush to get out the door, I stepped on my dog’s tail and caused poor Winky to emit an indignant yelp. Halfway into my walk to work, it started raining.

As soon as I stepped into my office, I saw the red message light on my phone blinking insistently. “More calls I won’t have time to return,” I groaned, wishing I could go home and start the day over.

Wait a minute, I thought. I can! Not go home, but I could press the restart button on my day. I just needed to use a simple technique my friend and fellow blogger Jon Gordon taught me: Transform each negative thought into what he calls a Power Thought, full of positive energy.

I looked at the message light again. Hey, it might be someone I’ve been hoping to hear from! (And it was…Jim from our IT team, who quickly solved some troublesome computer glitches.) The cloudburst? We needed some relief from this record-breaking heat wave. The wardrobe malfunction? Definitely a blessing in disguise—my black skirt didn’t show a single rain splatter (no way white pants would’ve escaped unscathed). My stiff shoulder? A reminder to get in a post-workout stretching session at the gym (I did, and boy, did it feel goooood!). My dog? When I got home tonight, Winky greeted me with a full-body wag, the tail incident forgiven and forgotten.

Okay, so today wasn’t the best day I ever had, but it ended up a lot better than it started. And that’s what matters, doesn’t it?