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Blogs by Albert L Isaac
The Power of Positive Thinking 3/31/2008 11:28:03 AM
This is something I wrote Oct 26 2005. It is time it sees the light of day.
Positive Thinking. Yes, it’s a buzzword - or more appropriately a pair of buzzwords. And it is also the title of a very successful book that I should one day read.
But most importantly, it must become my way of life. Positively. There is power in focusing on the good, and in finding the silver lining behind every dark cloud.
I know I feel better when I am in a positive mindset. I am healthier. I am certainly more fun to be around. There’s an energy created by positive thoughts. I’ve felt it. I’ve seen its results. People respond to me very differently when I’m thinking and acting in a positive manner, when I am energized with optimistic beliefs.
Bad things still happen. Bad things will continue to happen, that will not change – it is our perception that must change.
I sometimes get wakeup calls from God that shake me back to reality, usually when I’m feeling sorry for myself. Right on cue I will encounter someone with far greater problems.
Recently, while working near the hospital and having a particularly bad day at my new job, I spotted a four or five year old child with cancer. He was bald except for tufts of hair on the back of his head and he had IV catheters in his arm. Then I heard him talk, with his little boy voice, sounding exactly like any little boy his age - sounding like my little boy - and my heart went out to him. I felt like crying for him and his family.
Despite my sorrow and pity for this child and his family, I tried not to dwell on it. I focused on the fact that he is being treated. He is in a hospital. He is sick, but he is alive. He is there to get better. And he will get better, I told myself.
Suddenly the problems with my boss seemed less important.
And now that she has fired me I have an entirely new set of problems – I mean challenges - to contend with.
My dismissal came as a devastating blow. I began to question my value, my integrity, my intelligence.
I was nearly fifty years old and I felt like yesterday’s news. Old goat put out to pasture. Who would hire me?
I realized that my sense of self-worth should not come from the people for whom I work. It should and must come from within.
I have skills. I have value. I have talent.
I just didn’t have a job.
So I decided to go full steam ahead doing something that I have wanted to do my entire life: write.
Blazing behind the dark cloud of losing that job was a bright and shining silver lining, and the final impetus for me becoming a freelance writer.
It is a career with its up and downs but one I may not have ever pursued had I not been given the boot – and hence the opportunity – to explore an entirely new world.
Writing is a career I would not have if not for the support of my wife and family and friends, and the positive belief that I can, indeed, do it.
I imagined my novel nearly 30 years ago. It can now be found in bookstores.
After I left my first job, I picked up local magazines and newspapers and pictured myself writing for them. Within a year my articles and photographs graced those very pages.
I will be the first to say positive thinking in and of itself is not enough. There is work to be done. One must have the courage and conviction to actively pursue one’s dreams without being stopped by the fear of failure.
I am a writer. A professional writer. And that is pretty good stuff.
