This blog is about recognizing what is going right in our lives, something that many do not acknowledge.
Upon birth, our mandate is to solve problems, grow, and improve. Our survivalist nature to identify and solve problems, in fact, is used to profit many businesses. This is why the news, entertainment, gaming, and book publishing industries primarily feature articles and activities related to problems. We're hooked on the subject!
Many of us are more likely to discuss the shortcomings of our activities than we are to tell others about our pleasures and successes. Complaining is entertaining! A lot of comedy, for example, uses complaining to make us laugh.
It is unlikely we'll ever find ourselves in social situations where we tell one another about how happy we are. Just because we don't often discuss these things with others, however, doesn't mean we should ignore the subject in our own minds. If we don't think about what is "right" with our lives, we lose the ability to identify what's OK and our awareness of the subject, resulting in stress, anger, and sadness.
So how do we inform ourselves about what's OK in our lives if we don't discuss these things with others? Should we become lost within the confines of our troubled minds, or are there actions we can take that lead to our celebration of happiness and contentment without group confirmation?
Perhaps you've heard of "self talk," as in the phrase "positive self talk." The key in this phrase, in fact, is "self," and not anyone else. If we can't talk to ourselves about pleasure (rather than pain), no one else is going to tell us about it and we remain uninformed.
Links:
The links recommended here were found by asking Google "how to identify the good things that happen to us."
Raising low self-esteem, from the British National Health Service (NHS) website
Benefits of Thinking Positively, and How to Do It, by Santi Nuñez for HealthLine.com
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by Sketch-Views with Karen Little