Being Thankful: The Power of a Positive Attitude

Welcome to Building Better Developers, the Developer Nord podcast, where we work on getting better step by step, professionally and personally. Let's get started. Well, hello and welcome back. We are here on yet another Turkey Day, also known as Thanksgiving. And it's that time that we want to talk a little bit about being thankful. We talk a lot about our goals and our aspirations and momentum and work and just driving forward. However, there is a lot that goes into that that we can look back on. It's not all just blood, sweat and tears. There are also victories. There are goals that are achieved. There are milestones that we have passed. And there are businesses and customers and relationships that we develop as part of this that make it all worthwhile, or at least they should. And so when we're as we sit here on a day of thanks, of trying to look at ways to be thankful, there should be more than a few out there. Every year we treat this a little bit differently. But this time, I think it's just sort of a random laundry list worth considering. And if you're not if you're not celebrating today, that's OK. Just take this and think about this in the days and weeks ahead, because it is rough. It is possibly even draining to not have some victories, to not have some sunshine in your life. There's only so long you can go through that dark tunnel before you get tired of the darkness and you're ready to see the light at the end. And being thankful is one of the ways that we can do that. We can see in our thanks where things did work out, where we have something to look forward to or that we have something that was a win, some sort of victory. It may be very big things. It may be something like you found your soulmate and you have a family and awesome stuff related to that. It may be small stuff like the latest Marvel movie dropped on Netflix and you get to watch that this weekend. Maybe you think that's big. I apologize if that offends you. But there are there are big things and little things for us to. I don't want to say just hold on to because it feels like it's almost like a desperation thing. But there are things to remind us that even in the midst of a struggle, even in the midst of being on, even if it's a death march, some sort of project where you're just slogging your way through it, there are some victories. There are things that we can look to to rejuvenate ourselves a little bit, to just stop and smell the roses long enough to be able to go back into that heads down monotonous thing maybe that we're running through. And of course, I say that when that's really the worst of the times. There's probably most of our time, most of our life, our career where it's not that bad. It may not be the case for you. Case that more directly, I guess it sucks to be you in that situation. But also it's it has to do with attitude. If we go into the attitude, if we go into something with the attitude that this is going to stink, it's going to be horrible. It's going to be painful. Everybody is going to be incompetent. Just all negatives. You're going to find that you're correct. However, if you go into the situation with positives saying this is going to be great, this is going to be fine, it's all going to work out. There's going to be challenges. We're going to learn from it. We're going to butt heads with people, but we're all going to become better and stronger as more of a team afterwards. You're going to find that too. Attitude is huge for all that we do. If you want a ticket or a means of success, one of the ways to get there is to have that positive attitude, is to be able to keep finding something to be thankful for, something that's a positive, even in the midst of very challenging and maybe overall negative times or projects or people. That is where the value of spending some time being thankful is worthwhile. It's going to change your attitude. It can be just ridiculously small. I was sitting there the other day and I was thankful for having a mechanical pencil where I didn't have to go run across the room and sharpen it. I was like, wow, this is pretty cool. It's nice that I can do this and I don't have to stop. Very minor, maybe very much a stretch. You may say, wow, you're really hurting for some positives if you're looking at a mechanical pencil. But that was just a minor thing. It was something like, hey, this is cool. This is a minor win. In projects, it may be that that thing that has just been just dogging you for a long time, you take another step forward in it. Maybe there's one little piece that now was a problem you couldn't solve or something was broken that's now fixed. It may be that that coworker or boss or underling or whatever it is that you've been butting heads with. You connected on something like you found that you happen to have the same, I don't know, favorite football team or you talked about a TV show that you actually had a decent conversation about something meaningless like that. Or maybe you just got through a discussion about the weather lately and there was no tension. Sometimes it's you can take small things, but you can build on those. This goes back to the idea of incremental and momentum. If you start the day with a positive attitude, if you're looking forward to things, if you're finding things that are positives and you do that each day, even if it's just one little thing and then something new the next day and something new the next day, that will build. And at some point you'll realize that, wow, I've actually put together a pretty long list of positives. And in the same way, if you start acting like things are going better maybe than they are acting is not. If you start focusing on where things are going better, as opposed to where they're failing, then you'll have that feeling of, hey, at least it's not hopeless. At least it's not a complete train wreck. At least there's something that I'm getting out of this. And when you do that, even just a little bit each day, the fact that you do it each day, it builds. And you can look at past days and go, hey, you know, yesterday I ordered my lunch and it was actually the correct order. I didn't have any problems with it. It could be very small like that. Maybe something like, hey, I got to work safely. I wasn't in a car accident. You may have to stretch a little bit. Maybe your life is just not full of very many positives. But when you start looking for those, it changes your perspective going through the day because that's now going to be in the back of your mind. You're like, hey, maybe there's a right around the corner there is a positive that I'm going to be able to take from today. And that is what your thankful attitude can lead to. We talk about work. We talk about effort. We talk about focus. We talk about living every second, squeezing all you can out of every minute and making sure that you're not just sitting there killing time, but that you are doing something with that time. You are giving it the respect it has because it will not occur again. And part of that is having that positive attitude. It goes to things like being hopeful as opposed to anxious or worry. And yeah, there's plenty to worry about. We could do literally could do an entire series. Heck, we could do a 24 7 news cycle because so many people do. That's all about worries and negatives and fears and all the stuff that can go wrong and all the stuff that has gone wrong and is going wrong. And we could rehash all of that. But we could also do that with positives where things have have gone forward, where things have progressed, where we have had victories, where we have seen struggles and pain and frustration from the past disappear as we have moved forward. Yeah, if you want something to be thankful for, you could be stuck a few hundred years ago and maybe not even that long where there is no electricity. There is no running water. There is no communication with people is not would be completely foreign to your experience. There's no podcast. There's no Internet. There's no email. There's no phone. Other than the people that are in your your neighborhood, your household, your neighborhood, you may not talk to people or have any form of communication to them more than maybe if you write letters once a week or something like that. That alone is huge. Our ability to communicate and share and be known and to know others is way beyond what anybody has had in history. That in itself is a blessing. If you have an interest, if you have a struggle, there's somebody else out there and you can connect to them. You can share in their joys or you can commiserate in failures. And sometimes you need to do a little both. You know, you don't need to be a Pollyanna and always just, you know, ignore the negatives. Those are but those are going to be easy to find. They make themselves known pretty well. The positives we tend to skip over, and I think that is part of our challenge, is that we spend a little too much time trying to address weaknesses and pain points as opposed to embracing strengths and joys. So on this day of thanks, think about that. And that's the challenge this time is give yourself a top 10 list. I'm not going to go with three this time. We're gonna go all the way to 10. We're gonna go double digits. Just sit down, whatever it is you've got, you know, pencil and paper or if you want to be a spreadsheet person, throw it on a spreadsheet or WordDoc, whatever. However you do it, even if it's on your napkin while you're sitting there eating lunch or dinner, scratch down 10 things for you to be thankful for. Maybe a stretch? May not. But if it's a stretch, then maybe you need to think a little bit more, maybe push it to 20 and find a way to get yourself with a little bit more of a positive attitude. Try that for a while. You try that for 21 days. Just a positive attitude. It will change your life. If you haven't done that before, I guarantee it. And anybody that's ever done it will tell you exactly the same. You want to go see Ted Talks and things like that. There are tons and tons and there are books and all kinds of stuff about how that can help you. And so now I give you something to be thankful for, which is a little bit shorter than normal episode. I'm going to let you get back to it. I don't want to take up too much of your day, too much of your time. I want you to go out there and enjoy it. And whether you're not thankful for it today, maybe you can be thankful for it tomorrow because at least you had some time to rest and chill and relax. That being said, I'm going to take a little bit of time off as well and be chill and thankful and rest. But as always, we will come back and go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week. And we will talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to Building Better Developers, the Develop-a-Nor Podcast. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon, anywhere that you can find podcasts. We are there. And remember, just a little bit of effort every day ends up adding into great momentum and great success. Thank you.