It's a Wonderful Day!

Towards the end of my mother's life, she fell ill, and my brothers and I rotated care-giving duties. For some weeks, she made daily trips to a local hospital for outpatient treatment. During one of my rotations, I chauffeured her to the hospital. I lost count of how many times.

This particular hospital offered valet parking service for outpatients, and we came to know the parking valets as people. One man was an extremely energetic, voluble, happy guy who I figure was aged somewhere in his seventies. When we pulled into the driveway to give him the car, he'd greet us. Then began the repartee. Somehow, we learned quite a bit about him. Four kids, a stint in the Army, and some aches and pains, but he wasn't complaining: "The usual things, ya know."

One morning, he said something I'll never forget. He asked how we were today, and I said my usual, "Pretty good, how about you?"

Smiling broadly, he answered, "Oh, pretty good myself, thanks, but ya know, at my age, every day that I wake up and I'm still alive…that's a wonderful day!"

How true.

Many of us have jobs that compel us to focus on defects in products or processes, or tasks frustratingly incomplete, or insubordinate subordinates, or any of myriads of other unexpected difficulties or disasters. We're fixated on what's wrong or troubling, rather than what's going well, or even better than well.

And from our employers' perspectives, that is as it should be. Our responsibility is to make desirable things happen. When they don't, we figure out why, and we make adjustments.

But this pattern, so useful in our work, has a risk for us personally. Our uninterrupted focus on what's wrong at work can interfere with our ability to appreciate what's right — at work or in Life.

Ironically, appreciating what's right can help us fix what isn't. The experience of appreciating gives us ideas, hope, and renewed energy. It brings us together, and working Appreciating what's right and
working well, when we're
in the midst of tangled
confusion with no clear
way through, takes skilltogether we find new insight. But appreciating what's right, when we're in the midst of tangled confusion with no clear way through, takes skill.

Fortunately, skill comes with practice. Start with something — anything — that seems troubling, or you feel confused about, but not totally hopeless. Try finding three things about it that are right, wonderful, and working fine. It might take time. When you find one, contemplate it for a while. Give yourself time to appreciate it. Then look for another. I like to write them down as I go. You'll be surprised how fast the list grows.

When you get really good at it, one morning, you'll wake up, and you'll say, "I woke up alive today…it's a wonderful day."  Top    Next Issue

Love the work but not the job? Bad boss, long commute, troubling ethical questions, hateful colleague? This ebook looks at what we can do to get more out of life at work. It helps you get moving again! Read Go For It! Sometimes It's Easier If You Run, filled with tips and techniques for putting zing into your work life. Order Now!

Your comments are welcome

About Point Lookout

Thank you for reading this article. I hope you enjoyed it and found it useful, and that you'll consider recommending it to a friend.

Point Lookout is a free weekly email newsletter. Browse the archive of past issues. Subscribe for free.

Support Point Lookout by joining the Friends of Point Lookout, as an individual or as an organization.

Do you face a complex interpersonal situation? Send it in, anonymously if you like, and I'll give you my two cents.

Related articles

More articles on Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness:

The True Costs of Cubicles

Although cubicles do provide facility cost savings compared with walled offices, they do so at the price of product development delays and increased product development costs. Decisions of facilities planners can have dramatic project schedule impact.

Organizational Loss: Searching Behavior

When organizations suffer painful losses, their responses can sometimes be destructive, further harming the organization and its people. Here are some typical patterns of destructive responses to organizational loss.

Mitigating Outsourcing Risks: I

Outsourcing internal processes modifies the usual risk configuration of those processes, but it also creates a special class of risks that are peculiar to the outsourcing relationship. What are some of those risks and what can we do about them?

Solutions as Found Art

Examining the most innovative solutions we've developed for difficult problems, we often find that they aren't purely new. Many contain pieces of familiar ideas and techniques combined together in new ways. Accepting this as a starting point can change our approach to problem solving.

Team Risks

Working in teams is necessary in most modern collaborations, but teamwork does carry risks. Here are some risks worth mitigating.

See also Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness and Emotions at Work for more related articles.

Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout

Coming December 19: Embarrassment, Shame, and Guilt at Work: Creation

Three feelings are often confused with each other: embarrassment, shame, and guilt. To understand how to cope with these feelings, begin by understanding what different kinds of situations we use when we create these feelings. Available here and by RSS on December 19.

And on December 26: Embarrassment, Shame, and Guilt at Work: Coping

Coping effectively with feelings of embarrassment, shame, or guilt is the path to recovering a sense of balance that's the foundation of clear thinking. And thinking clearly at work is important if you want to avoid feeling embarrassment, shame, or guilt. Available here and by RSS on December 26.

Coaching services

I offer email and telephone coaching at both corporate and individual rates. Contact Rick for details at rbrenwuoThPvILiLCJnmtner@ChacsZQiottZUoZSppfboCanyon.com or (650) 787-6475, or toll-free in the continental US at (866) 378-5470.

Get the ebook!

Past issues of Point Lookout are available in six ebooks:

• Get 2001-2 in Geese Don't Land on Twigs (PDF, USD 11.95)
• Get 2003-4 in Why Dogs Wag (PDF, USD 11.95)
• Get 2005-6 in Loopy Things We Do (PDF, USD 11.95)
• Get 2007-8 in Things We Believe That Maybe Aren't So True (PDF, USD 11.95)
• Get 2009-10 in The Questions Not Asked (PDF, USD 11.95)
• Get all of the first twelve years (2001-2012) in The Collected Issues of Point Lookout (PDF, USD 28.99)

Are you a writer, editor or publisher on deadline? Are you looking for an article that will get people talking and get compliments flying your way? You can have 500 words in your inbox in one hour. License any article from this Web site. More info

Public seminars

The Power Affect: How We Express Our Personal Power

Many people who possess real organizational power have a characteristic demeanor. It's the way they project their presence. I call this the power affect. Some people — call them power pretenders — adopt the power affect well before they attain significant organizational power. Unfortunately for their colleagues, and for their organizations, power pretenders can attain organizational power out of proportion to their merit or abilities. Understanding the power affect is therefore important for anyone who aims to attain power, or anyone who works with power pretenders. Read more about this program.

• A recording of a program presented 6:00 PM June 29 (Eastern Time), Monthly Webinar, Technobility Webinar Series. You can earn 1.0 Category 'A' PDU by viewing this program. View this program now.