I get on the bus in the morning to go to the gym.  As grateful as I am to be in the warm vehicle, I actually look forward to getting off again as quick as possible most days.  The driver just talks and talks and talks to me.  I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t even sit down because I know he is going to start talking away.

I didn’t mind at first, but after the first week or so I started noticing a very frequent trend…the man is bitter about everything.  He complains that he is going to a 5 day schedule come the new year, yet has been complaining that he never takes advantage of his 4 day schedule he currently has in regards to getting things done and being productive.  He’s complained about his work schedule and his pay and how he used to work in IT, but has been away from it for so long that he can’t go back, how he would have to go to school again and then by the time he got out his degree would be outdated due to how fast technology develops.

Your outlook you have on life dictates how you feel.  I have tuned this driver out because I have actually found myself getting depressed during my workouts on certain days based on things he has ranted about.  He’s continued to complain about the weather and how he never gets to the gym and a bunch of other things that I have honestly just tuned out because I’m tired of hearing negativity.  We are inundated with negativity from so many sources and it impacts all of us who hear it for the worse.

One of the first things people notice about me is my optimistic outlook.  They are very calmed by it, but certain friends are confused because they don’t understand how I can be so calm.  I prefer to keep my life in perspective and view life the way I prefer to live it, and that is happily.  Sure, terrible things happen in the world, but plenty of good things happen to.  Everyone just seems to give attention to the bad versus the good.  As bad as I may feel for certain things that happen, I can’t do anything about it so I choose to not ignore it, but rather focus on the aspects of my life that I do have control over and live them positively instead of drowning in the negativity that seems to consume our society right now.

One day I will be able to do something and impact a large number of people for the better, but until then I will be happier living my life as I always have and positively impacting the people I actually can reach instead of stressing about the people I can’t reach.  I prefer to see it as people who I will reach in time.  Instead of being influenced by the negativity others tend to live with, I want to maintain my perspective because that is what fuels me to do the good that I have done, especially since graduating from college.  I look at the people who I have helped, the survivors out running races they never thought they could and the strangers who email me thanking me for what I’m doing.  Those are the people I am touching, and they have been touched because they used to be more negative than they were.  All I did was help show them a new perspective.  I didn’t change them, just simply showed them a different way of living.

Bad, devastating things will always happen, but because they do we cannot forget to remember and embrace the good that prominently exists in the world and in our lives.  It gives me reason to smile every day, multiple times a day.  If all of us could smile even one more time a day, that type of impact would do more good for us than any amount of worrying ever could.  The world can become brighter…all we have to do is smile.  Find reason to smile and everything becomes better because the good is what we are seeing.  When we surround ourselves so closely with good, the bad still exists, and we may acknowledge it, we don’t focus on it because we realize how much good we have to live for and enjoy.