Have you ever run into people who can’t say or do anything positive? Maybe it’s people at work or someone you know who decries everything in the world going on around them. They’re the pessimistic/glass half-empty crowd who have to tell you what’s wrong with the world. And of course, if you don’t agree with them, you’re part of the problem too.

Now unlike these people, I wake up everyday realizing how many mistakes I’ve made in my life, but I still get up and go to work like everyone else and I generally feel like I’m in a good mood. I think the thing that sets people apart are their attitudes.

For me, it’s giving thanks that I live in a such a country like ours. One in which if I want, I can bask in everything it has to offer a person. If I choose to live in a state that all four seasons like Wisconsin, I choose that. If I’d like have sun year round, I can move out west. If I don’t like the politicians running for office, I simply don’t have to vote for them. If there are things about myself I don’t like, I can go about and change them and not fill out some form or wait for some bureaucrat to give me permission. I can make a million dollars a year if I set my brain to it or I can continue to do what I do now and still not feel like I’m downtrodden.

But then there are pessimists. The negative ne’er-do-wells who have in their daily planner in life to do nothing but bitch and whine and complain and will let you know that everything sucks in the world. According to them.

While you may be the type of person who doesn’t go through life like that, these people bask in the filthy tepid blackpools of despair. Why, you don’t think the economy is crashing? Well, you’re just some rich person who doesn’t know what’s happening in the world (even though you probably make the same as them). You don’t think every single customer service rep has it in for you? Why, you’re just fool who doesn’t know what’s what and can’t comprehend the true nature pf injustice and cruelty in the world when you try to return a skirt at Target or Wal-Mart.

Strangely enough though, the same people who go to Wal-Mart are in bed with those who hate Wal-Mart. The very same people who argue big box stores are evil, their brothers-in-arms probably are there every Sunday, stocking up on groceries or things for their families.

Now of course, not everything goes according to plan. Hell, you’re talking to a guy who wanted to play professional football, be a director and even be real estate agent. I planned for those things in my life, but life doesn’t always follow your own rules. That’s why I think being optimistic has its advantages. You don’t have to go through life care-free and yippy-skippy, ignoring everything going on around you and just keeping up that optimistic smile you might have, but you don’t have to go along with everyone else these days and beat the dead horse of negativity.

Everything is related. I want to lose weight and I can go down two paths. One, keeps me in the comfort zone of not doing anything. Keep shoveling food down my gullet and not doing the painful exercise, but hope one day I pick things up metabolically speaking of course. The other is trying to curb the food intake, increase the exercise and keep it going. Pessimism creeps in when you feel like you’re never going to each that point where your flabby gut will never go away. But when you make that turn, that optimistic side roars back you think things will get better.

And they always will be.