Today, we’ll have a free write, without a topic. I am going to write. I am going to write. I suppose I have two mottoes for this year. 1) I am going to write. 2) I will think positively.

A few weeks ago, a friend lent me How Full is Your Bucket? It’s a book by Tom Rath, one of the authors of the Strengths Finder and those subsequent books. Dan Clifton had studied, for nearly 50 years, the effects of positivity on health, and has found much anecdotal and surveyed results: what you think and what you encounter matters.

I’ve read through page 60, and I just started the book on the bus this evening. Peppered with facts and stories, in just the first 60 pages, the message is clear: we need to be nicer to each other to survive as a race. Beginning with a horrific story about American Prisoners of War, these men were isolated, relegated, made to feel completely hopeless. The consistent theme that was omitted from their lives was simple support from one another. Their captors successfully brainwashed them into thinking only negative thoughts to the point that a dramatic amount committed suicide, regularly.

So, what does the opposite look like? That’s what How Full is Your Bucket? details.

Well, goal number two for the year is to think positively, and now I have the proof about why.

So, how full is your bucket? How can we be more positive to each other? I need to begin by getting off the computer and paying attention to my husband.