Things don’t always go the way we want them to. In fact, if you’re having a bad day, things always don’t go the way you want them to. It can be quite demotivating and it will certainly make your mood go bad.

I believe everyone has such an experience, myself included. But over the years, I’ve learnt that no matter how screwed up things are, it is not the end of the world. And no matter how bad things look to be, there are actually not THAT bad if you look at them from another perspective.

For example, the other day, I woke up late as I was feeling very tired. I was late by 40 minutes actually. So I rushed to my workplace, just few minutes before the training started. Of course, rushing will not make one’s mood good. I entered the office with a not-so-good mood. Guess what? The office building was having a power outage since 6am. If I were to go in earlier, I would have to suffer for longer period of time!

Another example, my business trip to Sydney was canceled. I was pretty sad but when I think about it, it’s actually a blessing in disguise. The H1n1 case in Australia is actually worse than Malaysia so canceling my trip to Australia is not really a bad thing.

There are countless examples that I can give you but I’m sure you get the meaning, so I’ll just spare you with those boring stories. And I’m pretty sure you can find those similar stories in your life as well.

All I want to say is, things do happen for a reason. If it’s a setback, don’t dwell on it for too long. Look at it from a different perspective. Maybe it IS better for things to be in this state. Hope it helps.

p/s…. mmm maybe the spread of the flu virus in my office is also a blessing in disguise? hmmm

This year, a lot of people will be feeling the heat from the recession especially those who have lost their jobs or have their salary reduced. Due to this, it’s very normal to be feeling down and demotivated.

What does this mean for us? It means that there are a lot of people around us who are feeling negative and we will more or less be affected by these individuals. It’s really difficult to stay positive when people keep telling you that the world is going to end soon (imagine people saying that for every single hour….isn’t that very demotivating?).

What should we do then? The best solution, as recommended by many motivational gurus, is to chase them away. Isolate them. Make them disappear from your life, or vice versa. This way, their negativity will not reach you and you can continue your quest to be more positive-minded.

But, how applicable is this advice? To be honest, I don’t think it is applicable. If these individuals are our hi-bye friends, colleagues or other people who are not very close with us, we can give them this “isolation treatment”. But what if these individuals are our family members, close friends, pets, or those who play an important role in our life? We can’t just say “Let’s ignore them and their negativity. I want to be positive and I will only take in positive stuff!”

No, we can’t, because they do matter a lot to us.

What we can do, however, is to try and change them to become more positive. This is a very difficult thing to do, but it is worthwhile for both you and the people you care about. Try to make them think more positively. I know there are some people who are very negative, and stubborn – this kind of people, I will still try for few times before giving up. If they are not willing to change, I will not isolate them, but I will filter out those negative elements whenever they talk to me. Accepting them for who they are is the best I can do.

Also, it does help if you force yourselves to be positive even when surrounded by negative people. If you do it often enough, people will see the difference in you and they will change for the better. My parents are now more positive minded because of that approach (they’re quite stubborn, so the first approach didn’t work on them).

Last but not least, do take note that this process is pretty tedious and not easy. But for me, it is still a lot better than just isolating the people you really care and love just because they are negative-minded.

Hope it helps.

Just a few days ago, I’ve posted on a topic saying that I’m feeling quite demotivated nowadays due to a number of reasons. You can read it here – Things are not going well for me nowadays. Today, things are not much better. My stupid SIME DARBY share dropped a whopping 80 sen in a single day. =_=

Anyway, I’m still feeling quite demotivated…constantly thinking of ways to earn more money. Somehow, all these unnecessary worries are draining my energy a lot and I’m feeling pretty tired nowadays. It’s only 10.40pm now, and I’m already feeling very tired and have no energy to continue working. I realized how much this “demotivating” attitude is draining my life and how I’m allowing it to do so.

And just now, something amazing happened which woke me up from my “deep slumber”. The moon showed a very pretty sight…a smiley face. It was wonderful and I’ve never seen anything like that before. Guess what, it actually made me smile. Even the moon is trying to smile when the whole world is feeling depressed due to recession, terrorism, retrenchment, etc. To be honest, that’s a wake up call for me.

Smiley moon, taken by my friend KK

Note: The right eye looks very dim due to the cloud. You can actually see it if you look carefully.

I used to be an optimistic person and I think I can use the things I’ve learnt from all those motivational books now. We choose our destiny in life. We also choose how we want to feel at any given moment. Worrying about things that we cannot fix (yet) will not make them better or disappear. Money is never enough, and true, there are a lot of WANTs that I feel like buying but in the end, I believe I can do without them. I’ll just stick to the necessities.

All I need to do now is to focus on the path ahead – jobless or not – and make sure I have enough cash reserve to survive the next Depression. And continue to push ahead with my dreams. Still pretty far from becoming reality.

Be positive, and I’ll attract positive things. Be negative, and I’ll attract the negative feelings. I have a choice, so do you.

p/s…. there will always be people who are negative-minded. They are all around us but as Damien said, as long as our root is strong, there is no way their constant ranting can affect us. And I find this to be quite true. I might be harsh in shoo-ing them off, but I find my mood is not really affected by them….not that much anymore.

p/s…. I’ll embark on a mission to start another new site – focusing on one of the things which I love to do – designing. Not sure when I can have it up though. Do give me some time.

p/s…. One method I always use to cheer myself up in the morning is….when I’m alone (example, in the car)… just sing with the music or LAUGH OUT LOUD. I’ll actually continue laughing…laughing at my own silliness.