"I Feel Great!"

I've an increasing interest in Appreciative Inquiry (AI), which you know if you follow our Journey to Center Blog.

Lately, I've been focusing on being more appreciative in my everyday conversations and stating what is good in life rather than focusing on what isn't. It takes practice. For example, how often do you respond, "I feel great!" when someone casually asks "How are you?"

Not many people walk about in life, like my friend Arthur, responding to the question "How are you?" by saying: "Too blessed to complain!" and meaning it.

When you listen to the conversations that occur around you, what do you notice?

For the most part, I hear people talking about problems. The focus is usually about what's wrong - with family, friends, coworkers, and ourselves. It's fashionable to be "working on" some aspect of our mental or physical state, and we're used to telling people about it (I am anyway).

But why is it so easy to talk about what's wrong and more difficult to talk about what is right in our lives, work and families? Perhaps there is an underlying belief, as Martin Seligman puts it in his book "Authentic Happiness," that positive human emotion is somehow inauthentic; that happy people aren't as smart as the rest of us; or maybe we just don't want to stand out from the crowd.

Renowned M.D. and clown, Patch Adams, has said, "The most revolutionary act one can commit in our world is to be publicly happy." I have to agree. It takes a bit of courage to say, "I feel great today. I feel blessed," and mean it.

We'd love to hear any examples you have of being publicly happy and any ways to increase awareness of all there is to appreciate in life.

In the meantime, I'll sing a minute of "Put on a Happy Face." Click here to listen!

Good ki!
Judy Ringer