Be Happy, Be Safe!

Good Morning Team!

I hope that your new year is off to a good start and you’re more than ready to face the possibilities that this particular day in that year will bring. What is so special about today? Just about everything….! Since you are reading this, you have been given a chance to make what you will of it. It’s truly up to you to decide. Now I know that there are certain chores or duties that may be scheduled for you today that you might not be looking forward to, but you are ultimately the master of what your reaction to those will be.

We all face bad situations, sometimes on a daily basis, personally as well as professionally. And it is all too easy to let those ‘negatives’ keep us from enjoying the ‘positives.’ Sure, I know that there will be things that happen that make it impossible to be happy 100% of the time. But what is possible, is recognizing that they have an effect and then trying to not let them color our overall mental state. We can all attain a higher level of positivity by altering our focus onto what is truly good and that can help us see that there might just be some good in that bad situation.

While I am not qualified in any way to speak to how you do this for yourselves, one of the things I feel assists me in facing whatever the day throws my way is in just trying to be happy. I actually try and wake up happy! After all, I did wake up, that’s a good thing, am I right? It may sound overly simplistic right this second, but I have learned that I am much more prepared to face the bad, and maybe even a little better at everything else that I do, when I work at maintaining a positive attitude. Abraham Lincoln is credited with saying; “Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.” He figured out that it’s mostly under our own power to control. 

You may be wondering how this can possibly relate to safety. It happens that I firmly believe that safety is a mental state and that if your own is more positive than negative throughout your day then you will automatically make better decisions where safety is concerned. For myself, I know that when negativity rules me I have had a tendency to be more apt to take risks or maybe just fail to understand that there was one at all. If I am honest with myself, I am pretty sure that in a high percentage of cases where I had any type of accident, they occurred when I was having (read as “allowing myself to have”) a bad day. If this is at least partly true of the other 7.7 billion people that I share this planet with then there you have it.

In a nutshell, no one has more power over your own happiness, or safety, than you do. If you are truly unhappy in any given moment, be extra vigilant about how it might affect your safety. Don’t let that moment become worse by taking risks or chances that might affect your wellbeing. If you should feel overwhelmed or consumed by something bad, take a break and find a quiet place to think it over. Try and understand the reason and see if there isn’t something good that can be focused on instead. Consider reaching out to loved ones, trusted friends or co-workers to discuss it and get a different perspective about. Don’t hesitate to seek help from qualified mental health professionals if you consistently find that you are unhappy. It might take some work, but you’re absolutely worth the effort!

Finally, for those of you who don’t know this about me, telling a really dumb “dad” joke or pun is one of my most favorite ways of being happy. No matter the reaction I receive, whether it be a groan, eye roll, polite smile, or outright laughter, I am often at a high level of happiness while doing so.  For those of you most often assailed by my propensity to tell them, you have my greatest thanks for allowing me the opportunity, as well as my sincerest apologies for the pain you have suffered from hearing them in the first place! Below is one of those jokes, read on at your own risk!

“I bought a thesaurus from an online book store the other day. When it arrived, can you imagine how I felt when I opened it to find that all the pages were blank?”

“I really had no words.”

Be happy and be safe.

Sincerely,