11-10-16 Dealing with Negativity

Whether it’s our personal lives, our businesses or our political beliefs, we all have to confront negative situations from time to time, things that don’t come out the way we wanted.

The challenge I feel is learning how to look for lessons and positive outcomes we might not have seen previously. I believe looking for these positive messages makes all the difference in how we see our lives and the world.

Many of us (but not all) were devastated by the election results. The easiest response to hearing news we didn’t want to hear was to be angry, or full of grief or disbelief, or to blame ourselves for not seeing what was going on in our country.

The evening of the election and the day after, it felt as though many of us might never get over our feelings of grief and loss.

Every month I publish an email newsletter, “Progressives on Whidbey,” which is a compilation of progressive news from many sources that I find or that others send me.*

The day after the election positive comments began to surface. In the November newsletter, I am including many of these positive ways to interpret and better understand what happened.

There was an excellent film at our Clyde Theater this week, “Queen of Katwe,” that told the true story of a young Ugandan girl who learned to play chess and became a chess champion (which included some losses as well as wins). I heard from someone today who said “Politics is like a game of chess.”  The girl in the film loses a major match and is miserable. Her teacher comes over to her and tells her, “If you lose a game, you reset the pieces and play again.”

Maybe all of life is like a game of chess.

*If you would like to added to the newsletter mailing list, just send me your email: carolyntamler@whidbey.net.