The Power of Positive Thinking

I didn't make any New Year's resolutions.  No lists.  No promises to myself.  No grand statements or gestures.

I did, however, decide I wanted my outlook on life - the little things and the big things - to be more positive.  

Relentlessly positive.

That's the phrase I stole from a recent read of Seth Wickerham's book, "It's Better to Be Feared."  A well sourced and very good book, by the way, about the nearly 20 years Tom Brady, Bill Belichick, and Bob Kraft spent together with the New England Patriots.  While I am not a Patriots fan by any stretch, I am a fan of professional football and especially of the history of the game.  And, at least in recent years, the history of the NFL cannot be written without spending a significant amount of time on the Patriots. 

To be sure, Tom Brady is a strange person in many ways.  Eccentric, even.  However, he's also managed to sustain excellence in his play for longer than any NFL quarterback in history and, at 44, he shows no real signs of slowing down.  Like so many other sports fans, I've found myself wondering how he does it.  What is his secret?  

Pliability?  I guess, from a physical standpoint.  Drinking water, water, and more water.  Diet.  That's a given.  Maybe Brady won the genetic lottery.

What I've spent more time thinking about, though, is Brady's mental approach to his craft, to his life.  I'm not as interested in anything. Brady has written or the "Tom vs. Time" series or "Man in the Arena," because all of that, to me, is packaged content, produced by Tom Brady or largely influenced by him.  

Seth Wichersham is an investigative journalist and a damn good one.  He wrote the book without contributions from Brady, Belichick, or Kraft.  Instead, he sourced it with hours upon hours of interviews and research.  Real journalism, the old fashioned way.  Remember when that was a thing?  I do.  

That's a long way of saying that I was interested in what Wickersham reported about Brady's mental approach rather than what Brady said about it in content he was involved in producing.  

What I learned Tom Brady has, almost always, a positive attitude about his work and his life.  All optimism and very little, if any, pessimism.  

Relentlessly positive. 

Sure, he takes losses and failures of any kind hard.  He's extraordinarily competitive, as are all of the great ones.  Jordan, Kobe, etc.  But his emotional makeup and his attitude is always positive and upbeat.

In my life, I tend to drift toward pessimism.  In a thinly veiled effort to convince myself I'm not a pessimist, I claim to be a realist.  While I'm most often in a good mood, outgoing, and able to make those around me smile and laugh, on the inside, I often expect the worst.  I want to change - or try to change - that aspect of my personality, not for anyone else, necessarily, but for me.

I think and I hope that being relentlessly positive will help me be more present, in the moment.  I hope it will help me appreciate, more, the little things in life, and not to sweat the everyday irritants.  A takeout meal the restaurant screws up.  A mistake by my staff or attorneys at work.  A difficult lawyer in a case on which I'm working.  

I also hope that having a relentlessly positive outlook gives me a better sense of perspective on what matters and what doesn't, at home and at work.  I hope it gives me more patience, because that's something I feel like I need, also at home and at work.

Lastly, I hope being relentlessly positive helps me worry less about the future and what is to come.  About the health, safety, and well being of my family and mine, too.  I hope it makes me less afraid that I will get sick or that growing older is such a frightening thing.

So, that's the deal for 2022.  I want to be more optimistic.  I want to approach life with a positive attitude.

Relentlessly positive. 

And why wouldn't I, with this family?