Let’s face it. Between the pandemic and economic dislocation, we can sometimes find it hard to maintain a positive attitude. However, with a few simple tricks, you can feel a degree of contentment even in the worst of times.
The first thing you should do is to count your blessings. The advice seems to be trite and even clichéd, but it is effective, nevertheless. If you have a roof over your head, food on the table and a loving family, you are ahead of a lot of people less fortunate. Focusing on how your life is good will make you more feel positive than concentrating on a disease or how politicians are lying to you, neither of which you have much control over.
Next, you should take a vacation from cable news and social media. The various cable news networks not only follow the attitude of “if it bleeds it leads” but like to focus on controversy in order to attract eyeballs and thus ratings. And, let’s face it, while social media is a great medium to stay connected to friends and family too many people like to use it as an arena to fight in. You don’t need the drama.
Instead, why not pass the time by reading a good book or streaming a movie or TV show. If the story is uplifting with a feel-good ending, so much the better.
Finally, you should exercise a little perspective. To be sure, life in the second decade of the 21st Century has been, as the old Chinese curse says, “interesting times.” But in living memory, the times have been even more exciting than they are currently. If you feel skeptical, ask your grandparents what it was like to live in the 1960s. Then crack open a history book and read what it was like to live during the Civil War or just about any other time in the past when the times were, to say the least, challenging.
Remember the old saying when confronting dire times, This too will pass. The knowledge should be of some comfort.
