Positive Attitude

A positive attitude. That’s everything! The right attitude all the time and we can do anything.

That would be a very easy way out for anyone. On OneRoad Traveled we find we are not able to have a positive attitude all the time. It would mean we feel everything in our past is positive, we feel everything we have done is positive, and we feel we are positive about succeeding in everything.

Attitude is one of the many balance challenges on our journey.

We will have discovered on our joyful pursuit of happiness it is best to embrace our positive attitudes and manage our negative attitudes. They are equally important and add fuel to who we are.

 

Consistent Behavior

Consistent behavior helps us build character, relationships, strengths, successes, and more. Like many great things, it can be overdone and become a weakness. We will have discovered it can be beneficial to have:

behavior that is consistent

• With our beliefs
• with our purpose
• with our promises and commitments
• with who we really are
• with our daily needs
• with the goals we set

Consistent behavior can become a weakness when we get stuck in our routines. We will have discovered a need to strike a balance between consistency and the personal growth that comes from creativity, risk taking, spontaneity, and intentional change.

Staying Too Long

Time to move on? No, wait, if I just hang on a year or two more, it will be……..

When to bow out of an environment is one of the challenging choices in life. Changing jobs, moving our residence, retiring, no longer living with parents, severing a relationship are some examples we all face during our joyful journey. No one bows out of environments with perfect timing every time.

We will have discovered, as we gain experience bowing out, we tend to err on the side of taking too long to move on. Our jobs go from challenging and rewarding to draining and boring. Our relationship with a friend can go from comforting and trusting to one of constant conflict and anxiety. Individuals are no longer in control of choosing a late retirement.

Fame and fortune bring example after example of this challenge via the media. Stage, screen, and TV stars; famous singers and musicians; superstar athletes and legendary coaches; and elected and appointed governmental officials provide example after example of going far beyond the best time to bow out.

With a successful past, it is very difficult to focus on future opportunities. Life is very difficult. We will have discovered as we review our journey in later years we regret most the things we did not do. Bowing out sooner versus later can be a major category of “If I had it to do over again……”

Strengths and Weaknesses

Oh, such weaknesses we have! How do we make them go away? How do we get better and better?

The truth is we will have found during our journey that focusing on eliminating our weaknesses does not help us very much at becoming a better and better person. There are extreme exceptions. If we are in denial of a debilitating weakness, we will continue a downward spiral until we hit a bottom or until we stop denying. If we admit it, we will need to focus on correcting the major weakness and nothing else.

Otherwise, we truly find spending more time building on our strengths is, by far, the very best way to personal growth. It’s a whole lot easier, it’s more fun, it’s more motivating, and most importantly, we can do it.

Some weaknesses are “wired in” to our beings to such a degree we cannot get rid of them. Sure, we can manage them to some level and it is best to do this. No human being on this earth is capable of eliminating all their weaknesses.

Balancing our efforts is the key. This means spending most of our time building on strengths and spending a smaller amount of time managing our weaknesses. Easier said than done. Recording our successes helps more than beating ourselves up for one step backwards.

Priorities

Too much to do, too many choices, too many #1 priorities…….too much stress!

Somehow in today’s world, we have arrived in a place where choosing the best next action has resulted in a myriad of prioritization approaches. We have even come to believe this is a necessary skill for every adult. Because of our approach to prioritizing, Henry David Thoreau actually turns in his grave daily, spiritually screaming, “simplify, simplify!”

The inability to effectively prioritize has led to massive multi-tasking. Somehow, considering what all we might do on a given day, we are choosing to do as many activities as we possibly can, many of them simultaneously, as fast as we can do them. The theory of this planning perspective has become, at the end of the day: Surely we will have done something of worth in all that activity and people will perceive with great admiration we are incredibly busy.

The actual result is many important activities not completed thoroughly, a huge number of activities undone, and a debilitating amount of stress. We stare at the to-do list at the end of the day and see a few items with lines through them, causing us to focus on those that were not accomplished. Rather than a journey of life, we have created a marathon race of life.

The truth is the greatest driver of results is motivation and the greatest driver of motivation is a feeling of success. If we believe this, the only conclusion we can come to is to focus on the activities performed each day, both those resulting in successful completion and those with bumps in the road. Learn from the bumps in the road and record the successes.

The best start for each day is to review recent successes and with a balance of logic, intuition, and spirituality, choose the best activities for the day. Sure, we must keep track of what needs to be done, consistent with where we are headed on our journey. The emphasis just needs to shift.

When a successful accomplishment is completed at some point during your day, rather than strike a big line through it, just highlight it, smile, and move on with your journey.

A daily success list, not a to-do list, is the best way of creating future successes. Isn’t that really the goal? ….or is it excellent prioritization?!