…and vice versa.

Recently, I was dining with two friends who, like me, want to get in better shape and lose weight. We weren’t talking about weight loss specifically, but when our meal arrived, Amy made several comments on what she can’t eat, what she wants but gave up, and even what exercising she wants to do but can’t. She was focusing on the negative, on her can’ts. This is typical for Amy; she focuses on the negative in most situations.

This time, it struck me deeply. My other friend Mary and I focus on the positive; we talk about the good foods we’re eating, how much healthier we feel, and how much fun we have exercising. We chatter excitedly about our progress and our goals and what keeps us motivated. We rarely complain, and when we do, we end on a positive note to remind ourselves that we’re doing what we most want to be doing.

The results are clear: Mary and I are losing weight and gaining tone and health. We’re enjoying the journey, making progress, and feeling good and happy.

Amy is not making progress. She hasn’t set goals and isn’t reaching toward them. She’s focusing on what she’s missing rather than on what she’s gaining, and that makes all the difference.

Focusing on the positive brings the positive to you.

When I complain about my knee aching, it aches sharply and my attention is captured. When I complain about my shoulder, it takes a monumental effort to shift my focus to something else. When I complain about how hard it is to exercise, I lose the desire to exercise, making it far more difficult to get up and do. When I complain about all the food I’ve given up, I miss it and crave it, and don’t want to eat healthier things.

When I take care of my knee and shoulder, they ache less and demand less of my attention. When I focus on how good I feel during and after an exercise session, I get excited about it and enjoy it fully. When I talk about all the good foods I eat now and how they make me feel, I crave and anticipate them, and enjoy eating them.

However, I used to be Amy:

“I have this health problem, I can’t get in shape!” “I can’t get healthy or thinner; my genetics make me heavy!” “I can’t exercise; I’m injured!” “I can’t be vegan! I need to eat cheese!”

That was me. I spent 15 years there; I focused on the negative to the eclipse of positivity. Trapped in victim mentality, I lost sight of my ability to change my focus and remained stuck in that place of can’ts and give ups and missing outs. I spent 15 years making excuses, blaming, complaining, avoiding, and putting off. I spent 15 years blind to personal responsibility.

It took a lot of change to bring me to a place where I usually focus on the positive. The biggest step in my process was also the simplest: saying “That makes me happy!” whenever something makes me happy. I started saying it because Pace said it, and I found that it made me feel good when I heard it. I tried saying it, a few times at first, and I found that it helped me remember the good things that happened in my day more clearly. It gave me positive things to focus on and talk about. I liked having positive things to share with Pace; she responded far more positively to happy events than to depressing ones, and our conversations grew longer and our connection deeper.

More than that, though, was my internal state. I felt better. I felt happier. I started smiling and whistling and humming. I would say “That makes me happy!” to everyone who did something that brought me any measure of joy: clerks, cashiers, co-workers, friends, family, strangers, waiters. Anyone! And I found that, by sharing the joy they’d given me, they felt happier too! It’s a positive upwards spiral!

Once I felt that joy, once I realized how that one little thing brought such big happiness, I wanted more. I started on a path of self-work and self-discovery, shaking myself out of the victim mentality that’s so common in our society. I took responsibility for myself, my actions, my thoughts, and even my feelings. I shifted my focus from negative to positive. I’m gentle with myself when I fall back, but don’t tolerate it for too long. When I get injured, I take care of myself and work with my body instead of letting it incapacitate me. I changed my habits. I changed my perspective. It hasn’t been an easy journey, but it’s certainly been rewarding and life-changing!

If you are how I used to be, like Amy is, if you feel excuses forming or live in a world of can’ts, try starting with something small. Make a little change, take a little step. Try focusing on the positive once or twice a day, and write it down or talk about it. See how it feels, and see if you want more.

It’s all in how you look at it.

Though we are communication educators, Pace and I are not infallible.

Yesterday, we had a major miscommunication with my brother and mom (hi, Mom! Hi, Tony!) We have major life plans in the works with the four (five, including the Boy) of us – we’re buying a duplex and moving into each half to be near each other. Right now, they live in Dallas and we live in Austin, putting four hours of travel one way between us. Needless to say, this makes communication about such a major undertaking a bit tricky.

We’ve had lots of back and forth. Pace and I are incredibly excited, and our excitement is contagious and tends to burn through all the things Mom and Tony have to deal with on their end. No one’s doing anything wrong, but one minute it’s “right now, let’s move!”, and the next it’s “wait, wait, not right now!”. A lot of miscommunications about the urgency and possibility of the move have happened.

All this culminated yesterday. Tony wrote me an email after he and Mom had a long discussion. The email, from my perspective, was a long list of reasons why they were backing out and not moving to Austin in the foreseeable future. They listed all the things that were blocking the move from happening, clearly stating the reasons behind each block.

I cried a lot, and Pace and I spent several hours talking about what we needed for ourselves, and started tentatively making alternate plans. I wrote a response email, saying that we understood that while they want to move to Austin, it’s not a good thing or even a possible thing for them. I reassured them that I wasn’t mad, that I understood their position, and that we would go forward with what we need to do and hopefully at some point in the future we could make a move together happen.

An hour or so later, Tony replied, utterly baffled. He and Mom had absolutely not been backing out, and were super-confused as to why we were.

I called him in tears. We’d both completely miscommunicated and misunderstood each other. They intended to list the things they were thinking about, the things they needed to work through or deal with before they move, and we’d perceived it as backing out, and our response made them think we were backing out. The whole thing got muddied and confusing to all of us.

Since this is the eleventy billionth time this has happened, you’d think I would’ve learned by now that communicating via email on major things is never a good idea. Oi. It’s far more likely to result in hurt feelings and miscommunicating than any other medium, and when so many people are involved, the phone isn’t much better.

We decided to put all conversations regarding the move on hold for a couple of days. Tomorrow, we will drive up to Dallas to spend a couple of days talking in person, which is far less likely to result in such a major misunderstanding.

Recently, Kyeli was upset because her installation of AVG told her that she had to upgrade to a pay version or else she wouldn’t be allowed to use her free version anymore. She was angry, and felt like she had been betrayed by AVG. It turned out to be a false alarm, but some of the hurt feelings persisted.

The same thing would have happened even if AVG had had a disclaimer on their site for years, saying “We are giving this away for free, but as of July 2008 we will begin charging.” Enough users wouldn’t read it, wouldn’t know about it, or would forget about it, that their feelings would still be hurt.

Kind of like the Zero/One/Infinity rule, there’s a big difference between free and non-free. People are far more likely to be upset by a change from free to pay than by a price increase. This is something we’re currently talking about a lot for The Usual Error. We want to give a lot of the material away for free via lots of media, and we also want to make The Usual Error be our career. And so we may end up charging some nominal amount for certain products or services that we might have otherwise given away for free, just to avoid the AVG Effect.