Yesterday I woke up in a funk. Usually I can change my outlook just by staying in bed for 10 minutes and reorganizing my thinking. That did not work yesterday.  It took longer to change from negative to positive but I did it.

It has always been important to me to be positive. In my early teens I read Norman Vincent Peale’s book, The Power of Positive Thinking.  At the time I couldn’t figure out why it took an entire book to say that to think positively you needed to work at doing just that – it doesn’t often just take place. Well the book must have made an impression because I’ve been working at thinking positively my entire life.

One of the things I do, and I’m hoping this will help you when you have your blue days, is to organize my day – on paper. This helps me to establish priorities and when you write down what you absolutely must do, the list isn’t as big as you think. This is particularly helpful for me when I feel overwhelmed about what I should be doing. The problem is I sometimes confuse what I should or could be doing or want to be doing with what I need to be doing.  Once I detail what I need, which usually resembles my personal and business goals, that murky unsettled feeling drifts away. And when that happens I usually, almost always, acknowledge my gratitude for what I already have and what I’ve achieved.

It’s the organization of the day that starts the move toward being positive.

I know the challenges will become even more frequent as my husband and friends and I add up the years.

Do let me know if you find this helpful. And I would love to know what you do to get up from being down in the dumps.

To your healthy aging,

Ruthan Brodsky

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