Todays Challenge:

Pick three friends or family members you see regularly.  View their actions and gestures through a positive lens, assuming their goodness and witnessing their best intentions.

Oh God!  I read this in the morning and realised that day 13 really is unlucky…  Don’t misunderstand me I love being judgemental (but in a positive way) and assuming goodness and best intentions – Please can you make it harder for today….!!!!!

No only that but as I am writing down my daily challenges, does that mean to follow them through, with the best and most honest intentions I have, single out three friends or family….  What if they don’t want that or more importantly someone else gets miffed because they thought I should have picked them?

Thinking… thinking… thinking…. which I had an entire day to do, prior to writing this.

Okay, I should pick my wife, but, I have three kids and she has two, the maths doesn’t work – someone close to me misses out…  Okay, go to friends.  Do I have a best friend – yes?  But do they know that and what about the others who think they are my best friend?  What if I write about someone who is not my best friend, saying they are my best friend, knowing that my best friend will realise I am doing it to make my not-best friend happy, but they both get confused and come to my house, and a fight starts, and they become best friends against me and beat me up and I have to go into hospital and get a catheter….

Being grateful is very risky.  Plus, I am not a real ‘best of intentions’ ‘ give them the benefit of the doubt’ type guy,  although there is a friend of mine, not my best friend – or maybe he is, who uses the phrase ‘But, there is no malice in the guy…?’  This is a phrase that has often made me look a people quite differently – yes, they may be stupid, misdirected, careless, etc etc… but, without malice there, I think, I can always find  forgiveness or at the very least a measure of understanding.

Perhaps I don’t need to pick any of my friends or family, but just look at things generally by:

• using a positive lens to look at things
• assuming goodness
• witness best intentions

So today has ended and I have not really fulfilled my ‘Gratitude Challenge’ – I have not identified the anointed three…

But, today, I have received a little bit of bad news…. and I have accepted that ….

(I am working on a separate blog post called “Better at Accepting Bad News” but haven’t written it yet so can’t make a link – although if there is a link when you are  reading this I have done it, twice…?)

In consideration of the above, I looked at things today through a positive lens (much to my wife’s surprise!), I assumed that there was a resemblance of goodness in the repercussions of my bad news and… I know we are not sorted yet with my bad news but, I am sure that the best intentions of everyone will ensure a good outcome… somehow….