Conclusion

The robbed that smiles steals something from the thief.

Shakespeare, Othello

There is something in the human psyche that enjoys being miserable. We like listening to sad songs and watching sentimental films. It has been estimated that more than 40,000 books have been written about the end of the world. Every time the end of the world is predicted and it doesn’t happen, it only confirms to the believers that it is their faith that has saved us. The ‘disconfirmation’ makes the faith greater.

There can be a tendency to drift towards a negative attitude and a series of disasters and upsets can cause a setback. If you have spent most of your adult life being a pessimist, you will not be able to change your attitude overnight. You may need to check yourself constantly to make sure that you are not lapsing into your old, grumpy ways. Putting the principles of positive thinking into practice takes vigilance and self-awareness until it becomes second nature. Remember: negative people give up too easily: don’t allow the things that go wrong to confirm that you were right all along. Persistence is all part of being positive.

While writing this book, we were burgled and my laptop computer (with nearly half of the book completed) was stolen. And no, it wasn’t backed up. The house was ransacked and the last pieces of my mother’s jewellery were stolen. I was angry and raged at the injustice of it all (I had stayed late at school helping students finish their GCSE coursework while the burglars were at work in the house).

By the next day I had calmed down, gone out and bought a new computer, and started all over again. That’s life. No one can sail through life with nothing bad happening to them. It is how we deal with unexpected events that matter. There is no point ranting and raving and deciding that the world is against you. Some things you just have to accept and move on. If you are a positive thinker you can see something hopeful in even the darkest times. This book isn’t the same one that I wrote before the burglary; it is different and the experience certainly made me more aware of my own levels of anger (most of the situations in Chapter 7 are ones that happened to me while I was writing it).

If you have become a habitual negative thinker, it’s difficult to change – and it won’t happen overnight – you’ll have lots of slips along the way. But it is possible.

Like most things in life, there will never be an end result when you will say: ‘That’s it. I’m a positive thinker.’ But there will be many times when you realise that you are happier than you used to be: you have learned that your way of thinking and seeing things is entirely up to you. You can choose to be miserable, negative and pessimistic about life and things that happen to you. Or you can welcome life with all its messiness, upsets and triumphs as something to celebrate – because that’s what life is.

Decide now that this is your life and you are going to live it in the best way possible: by looking after yourself, being involved and kind to other people and having a positive frame of mind which welcomes everything life has to offer you.