Chapter 1 Waking Up to Positivity One's own self is well hidden from one's own self: Of all mines of treasure, one's own is the last to be dug up. --Friedrich Nietzsche TAKE 1 The morning sun streams through your bedroom window and wakes you from a fitful night's sleep. After a long string of gray and rainy days, you appreciate seeing blue sky. But soon enough you realize the alarm didn't go off. You're disappointed because you've been meaning to wake up extra early so you can have time to yourself before the kids wake up and the morning race begins. With what little time there is, you decide to skip your planned exercise routine, spend some more time in bed, and write in your journal. You write, I can't believe I let myself down again by forgetting to set my alarm. How am I ever going to take charge of my days (and my life!) if I can't make this simple change? Without exercise, I'm going to feel like a slug today. Ugh. I'd better focus on why I write in this journal in the first place: to think about my larger goals and connect them to what I do each day. Is this really working? Is it worth my time when I could be sleeping? What I really should be doing with this extra time is checking for fires on e- mail or reviewing my ridiculously long to- do list. Isn't our water bill past due? Where is it anyway? At this point you close your journal, get out of bed, go to your computer, and open your e- mail. Sure enough, you find that your co- worker, Sharon, needs input from you before she can submit her proposal, and she needs it by this afternoon. You'll be stuck spending at least part of your morning preparing forms for her. Feeling angry at her imposition, you open the next e-mail to see that the project you spearheaded received preliminary approval and you've got forty- eight hours to make a final set of revisions. " Fortyeight hours!" you say out loud. "Am I supposed to drop everything to make these revisions?" How am I going to fit this in?" The nanosecond of joy you felt on learning the good news is squashed by your concerns about clearing this last hurdle. Just then, your daughter, who's nearly four years old, wakes up and calls, "Mommy!" You glance at the time: 6:42. You've told her time and again to wait quietly in her room until you come in for hugs and kisses at seven, and here she is, not listening, again. Your frustration is growing-- far too many demands both at work and at home. Nobody understands how impossible your life has become with this career shift. You go to your daughter's room, snap at her about calling for you early, and then march off to make breakfast. The whole morning is a grim race, and everybody's losing. You'd have been out the door on time had your seven- year- old son not misplaced his favorite shoes. Then starts the parental nagging: "Why can't you just wear a different pair!? If those shoes are so important to you, why don't you keep better tabs on them?" Now all four of you-- the kids, you, and your husband-- are racing around the house trying to find those @#$% shoes! Later, having dropped the children off at school-- late again--you arrive at work-- also late. The first person you see is Joe, your collaborator on the project that was just accepted. He's smiling broadly. At times you appreciate Joe's good spirits, but today his smile makes you suspicious. You think, He's trying to butter me up so I'll do all the revisions! He approaches. "Did you hear the news? We got the money! We're set for the year!" You say, "Yeah, but did you see that list of revisions-- and just forty- eight hours to make them? I've also got to deal with Sharon's p Excerpted from Positivity: Groundbreaking Research Reveals How to Embrace the Hidden Strength of Positive Emotions, Overcome Negativity, and Thrive by Barbara Fredrickson All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
