Dear LPG,

I want to talk about those mornings when you get up, open your eyes and decide that there is really nothing to get up for.  When I was part of the work force this hardly ever happened because even though I was not always opening my eyes on a world that promised positivity and activities that were sure to make me feel good, there was the motivation that everyone has during that part of their lives to keep them focussed.  I am talking about finance. 

Once the mental cogs are set in motion for a worker, the ultimate motivation is often monitory.  In that situation it is often the truth that if you don’t get up and get going you will be late for work and that could lead to losing your job, and ultimately result in the loss of your home and all the other creature comforts that go with it.   I have to say that I look back and think of that as such a negatively positive reason for coming back to reality.

But after years of retirement, when most of us no longer have those constraints it can really seem as if there is nothing worth getting up for.  At the moment, many of us still have the added restrictions that having to spend so much time alone or at least stuck at home dictate.

Someone recently set me a challenge that I would like to set every LPG reader who has, often without even realising it, become one of those people who takes their first look at each day and decides that you could just as well stay in bed and skip the whole thing. 

The challenge is to have a notebook and pen by your bed and use it every morning to write down three things that are positive in your life.  The trick is not to repeat yourself.

At first finding new things to jot down seems particularly difficult but it gets easier as the mornings pass, and once you get started the really little things begin to count too; things like the fact that you can see, and you can breathe, and you can choose exactly what you want to do with each day.  Then there are the talents that you have always had and perhaps don’t use any more; your ability to play an instrument or use a computer or tell stories.  We then come to those things that are important to you; your house, those things of intrinsic value like that outfit you wore on a day when something special happened to you, or perhaps that song that does it for you when you hear it or your favourite television program…  and the list goes on….

The only thing I would add is that you have to be true to yourself because no one else needs to see the whole list except you and your conscience, but I find that bits of mine tend to spill out when I am talking on the telephone, especially when I am talking with friends who are practising the same habit. It gives you yet another topic of conversation and comparing notes often helps to enrich both lists. 

If we are honest we have so many positive things in our lives in comparison with so many others, even though yet others will have lists which first appear much more impressive than our own, and starting the day by focusing on just a few of those little items which we so often take for granted does make a difference.    Have a go… 

PK, Telegraph Hill

Just in case you are really stuck to start with PK offers some suggestions from the internet…

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