Do you Dive Right In?

Yesterday, I took youngest child to swimming lessons for the first time. Though it was only his first lesson and he didn't know what he was doing, he was quite eager to try out the diving board. In fact, at the end of the lesson, when the teacher said it was time, he climbed up the board and walked to the edge, smiling. But then, before it was time to jump, he seemed to realize that the pool was beneath him, that even though the teacher was right there, the pool could be scary. So he sat down at the edge of the board and refused to move.

Usually youngest child has no fear. He's the kid the who dives head first into literally everything, the kid who terrifies me around playground equipment, steps, and anything moving. So his moment up there on the diving board surprised me, and I have to admit, made me a little happy. I was terrified for him to jump off the board not knowing how to swim.

Today I thought about it: was my reluctance for him to jump, and his reluctance, a form of pessimism? Are fear and pessimism related?

I also realized that a lot of things I do in my life are like youngest child's reaction at the edge of that diving board. I stop and wait. I assess the situation. I'm cautious. I have fear. In younger child's case, I found his fear to be smart -- even optimists shouldn't dive right in to everything blindly, right? But in my case, I realized I've been avoiding working on something specific lately because I was worrying that I wouldn't be able to do it. Each day as I've opened up the document to get to work on my revision, I've been specifically ignoring the part that needed the most work. In short, I've been standing at the edge of that diving board for weeks now. Not today, though. Today, I took a deep breath and started with that section first. And you know what, once I started working on it, I actually started to feel better about it.

And eventually, younger child jumped too, when the teacher came up to jump along with him.

What about you? Do do you dive right in or do you stop and think?

Is Optimism Contagious?

My dad, who informed me the other day that he's been religiously reading this blog (hi, Dad), also informed me that in his world, the business world, he thinks both optimists and pessimists are necessary to balance one another out. No business can be successful, he said, unless there's an optimist to dream big and a pessimist to be the voice of reality.

So that got me thinking about something similar: if any good business partnership needs some kind of negative/positive balance, then is this also true of a personal relationship, a marriage?

I've mentioned before how my husband has been my "optimism" police through this journey, and also, how he himself can be quite guilty of flagrant pessimism, quite often in the form of sarcasm. So what does this mean for our relationship, now that I'm being more optimistic? Can an optimist and a pessimist co-exist together in harmony? How about an optimist and an optimist or a pessimist and a pessimist?

My optimism is still new, but I have to say that being more positive has made me feel happier. And when I feel happier I think I'm a nicer person, and in turn, I think that's made my husband happier and thus also more optimistic. Yesterday morning, he even did something uncharacteristically positive -- He walked out of the house to leave for work, then turned around and came back in, just to tell me to have a good day. It was one tiny moment, a blip in my morning rush of getting the kids ready and out the door, but after he left, I actually felt that I was going to have a good day.

So maybe optimism is contagious and now we're both becoming fledgling optimists. How about you and your significant other? Do you think an optimist and a pessimist can co-exist in harmony?

In Which I Decide to Love Mondays

Today is Monday. And if you're like me -- then you generally hate Mondays. On Monday it's always hard for me to wake up early, get back on schedule -- everyone experiences this, I'm sure, to some degree. But usually my first thought when I wake up on Monday comes with a pit of dread in my stomach -- and that is that the weekend is over, and it's five more days until another one, until a break from work and school and schedule. And I already feel exhausted.

But this morning, I made myself think something else. Not that it's the end of the weekend, but that it's the beginning of a new week. I love beginnings -- who doesn't? Because beginnings are full of promise and possibility. Today I'm thinking of Monday as a beginning. I'm thinking of a long week filled with the potential for good things to happen.

I guess this goes back to the old adage of whether you choose to see the glass half empty or half full. This week, I am choosing half full. How about you?

And the winner for last week's contest, the $10 iTunes gift card, is Stacy! Stacy, e-mail me your address to jill(at)jilliancantor.com and I'll send it right out to you. And be sure to check the right sidebar for this week's contest!

Change of Plans

Yesterday, I woke up with a lot on my to-do list. It began with the intent to exercise first thing in the morning -- I've been making a conscious effort to try to exercise every day, since I read this helps with a positive attitude. So I got up, put on my work-out clothes and sunscreen, but that was about the extent of what I got accomplished. Because shortly after, older child woke up sick.

Instead of doing anything I'd planned yesterday, we spent the entire day at home, watching movies, doing puzzles, and playing blocks. And for the majority of the day, older child wanted to do something he never wants to do anymore: just hang out and cuddle with me on the couch.

Usually, I find myself frustrated when don't get the things done that I set out to for the day. But yesterday, I didn't. Yesterday, I took a break. And though I felt bad that older child was sick, I didn't feel bad about my undone to-do list. Sure I spent the day in my work-out clothes (that I never put to use) and we got take-out for dinner (okay, really, I will use any excuse to get take-out for dinner), but I got to spend the day at home wrapped in those increasingly rare quiet moments with my kids.

Have you ever had a change of plans that turned into something positive?

And don't forget -- today's the last day to leave a comment to be entered to win the iTunes gift card. I'll announce the winner on Monday!

Charlotte or Wilbur?

Since I was already talking spiders this week, it seems appropriate to add that older child and I are now in the midst of reading Charlotte's Web. This is one of the first books I can really, truly remember reading as a child, and one of the first that made me fall in love with reading, and then, writing. And I can tell older son is loving it too, by the way his eyes light up each night as we go to read it.

But being that I am now looking at everything in terms of optimist vs. pessimist, I've also noticed this: Charlotte is an unwavering optimist. She is kind, reassuring, and above all, convinced that things will work out well. Not only this, but also, she takes action to make sure that things do turn out well. Something else I learned from Seligman's book was the fact that learned helplessness is a common trait of the pessimist. Charlotte, though a tiny spider, is certainly not helpless. Wilbur, the pig, on the other hand is about as big a pessimist as they come. I'm actually starting to find his whining about being bored and helpless a bit annoying. And this is not something I remember from reading it as a child -- I remember only a cute little pig!

So I guess my point is this. If I had to choose, I'd much rather go through life as the person who is not helpless to help herself and her friends, the person who takes action and makes good things happen. I'd much rather be a Charlotte than a Wilbur.

How about you? And have you re-read any childhood favorites as an adult and seen them differently?

How Well Can I Argue With Myself?

Over the past few days I read the book Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman. I learned a few interesting things, but one of the main things I got out of it is that both pessimists and optimists have good and bad things happen to them -- only, optimists handle everything better. Optimists are happier, live longer, healthier, less depressed. Who wouldn't want to be an optimist with that line-up?

I also learned that being an optimist doesn't have to mean never having negative thoughts or just responding to the world with blind and foolish positivity. It seems it's all about the way you react to these thoughts and whether you let them consume you. Seligman's advice was to either distract yourself from negativity or dispute it. In other words, it seems you can argue yourself out of being a pessimist through logic. Well, that seems easy enough, right?

I'll admit that I'm most guilty of pessimism when it comes to my writing. Sometimes I'll sit down to write and think things like Well, this will never work. No one will ever want to read this. This is never going to get published. You get the point. Seligman used an example in the book about a woman who was dieting, ate a little junk food, began obsessing over the idea that she'd ruined her diet and then just gave up and ate a tub of ice cream. Okay, I'll admit that I would do something like this, too.

So today's challenge is this: not to banish all self-doubt or negative thoughts, but to dispute them. Every time I think something negative today, I'm going to make myself take a few seconds to argue myself out of it. Can I do it? Can you?

Spiders are Nice?

I wrote a few times last week about oldest child, about his willingness to make friends, and his shiny optimism. But I haven't written yet about youngest child. Youngest child is still a toddler, an expert tantrum-thrower who loves the word "no." Some days I spend the majority of the day negotiating how I'll run simple errands or even pick older child up from school without him breaking something/hurting himself (or me)/throwing an embarrassing screaming fit in public/or just generally refusing to do whatever he's supposed to be doing at the moment.

But yesterday morning I took youngest child to the park. I watched him laugh and smile and climb and yell at another little boy for taking his shoes off. And then, as is often prone to happen, he did something that horrified me. He held something in his closed fist, and then opened his palm and showed it me: "Look, Mommy, a spider."

A spider? I should mention here that I am terrified of spiders, and that my immediate reaction was to automatically assume it was a black widow that youngest child clutched in his hand, and thus, freak out. I yelled at him and told him to put the spider down. Then I grabbed his little hand to see if the spider bit him and told him not to ever pick up spiders again, since they bite.

"The spider didn't bite me," he told me. "It was a nice spider."

"No," I argued with him. "It wasn't a nice spider. Spiders aren't nice."

"Yes," he argued back. "Spiders are nice."

He could not be convinced. Even hours later, when my husband came home, he told him about the nice spider that he'd met at the park. So I did a little Googling and learned that the majority of spiders are, in fact, not harmful to humans, that only a few species of spiders bite humans.

Hmmm. Was youngest son was right? Chances are it was a nice spider. But still, it could've also been a black widow. So I wondered, is this kind of pessimism okay? Or is younger son already a glass half full person, while I am still verging on glass half empty?

How would you react in this situation?