Look For The Positive – You’ll Be Amazed At What You Find

When Raising Our Children, Look For The Positive – You’ll Be Amazed At What You Find

Note: This was written for Mike Dolpies and RaisingGreatWinners.com

My daughters often tease me about my Saving The World, One Soul At A Time.

I can’t say that I’m aiming for the WHOLE world, but one person at a time is a great beginning.

Let me give you a little background: There’s a part of our brains called the Reticular Cortex (sure hope I have the correct) and it sees what we tell it to focus on.

As an example, when you purchased a new car, did you notice all of a sudden that there were LOTS of them on the road that you had never noticed?

Or maybe when you were writing a paper for school, out of the blue a very important point came to your mind and an example was on the front page of the newspaper you were reading.

Did those things just “happen” to be there OR, because you were now energetically-focused on something, did you just happen to NOTICE them?

Clear, you just happened to notice them.

On my website, RaisingGreatFamilies.com, I decided that I didn’t want “negative” material. No negative quotes from world heroes, no matter how profound. No negative jokes by stars of the golden era of TV even though they still make me laugh. No books about the 7 Worst Things Your Kids Will Do Before The Age Of Five.

Just positive energy emanating from the site.

Why?

So that the reticular cortex of EVERYONE’S brain could focus on the GOOD in our world, allowing people to see MORE good.

See how that works? We focus on the good and we SEE the good.

The same is true with how we see our children.

How often has your child brought home a report card and most of the grades are really good but one is not. What do YOU focus on… all the great achievement or the one area where he or she fells short?

Believe me, I’m not saying to forget the shortcomings. I’m a positive guy, not naïve.

But how much better will our children do if we accentuate the positive (as the old song goes) instead of droning on about the negative.

Here’s a good story to amplify this. I heard this a few weeks ago and though I won’t get all the details correct (the way it was originally told), I’ve made it “my own” story now, as I process it through the filters I use to see the world.

There was a young couple who bought their first house. Their dream was to turn it into a loving home with several children.

The young husband did everything he could around the house to turn it into a beautiful environment for him and his wife, but he just couldn’t get the muddy patch from the front yard to turn into a nice lawn.

His wife suggested that her husband call her father who had had beautiful lawns for as long as she could remember.

When the father-in-law came over, he instantly saw how to fix the lawn problem.

“Keep planting grass. Stop pulling weeds.”

For you see, the husband was focusing most of his time on getting rid of the weeds and not enough on culturing new grass to grow.

“Keep planting grass. Stop pulling weeds.” And the lawn turned into a showplace that the young family used for years as their playground.

Good advice for all of us.

Keep positive. Banish negative. Keep working with the good and downplay the bad. Keep planting grass, and enjoy your life.