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 July 8 - 11, 2010

Professional development

Looking for the silver lining

Ever had a bad day? Made a mistake that you couldn’t believe? Forgot something important? Lost your patience with a patient? Even the most professional people have rough days and lapses in judgment. When this happens, it’s essential not to dwell on it but instead to pick yourself up and brush yourself off. Here’s how to keep yourself going even during tough times:

Control your thoughts and find the good in everything. Balance troubling things with the good things that also exist. When you make a mistake, choose to learn from it. When you forget something, develop a system so that it won’t happen again. Refuse to beat yourself up and use mistakes as learning opportunities. You’ll thrive as a result.

Focus on the future: you’re to spend the rest of your life there. While it’s important to review mistakes for the lesson in them, it’s not productive to replay the error over and over in your mind. Recognize it, learn from it, and then commit to moving on.

Realize it takes more energy to be happy and positive than it does to be unhappy and negative. Happiness takes effort. First, you have to decide you’ll choose contentment over discontentment. Then, you have to act every day to remain true to this commitment. Those who are unhappy are often unwilling to do the mental work it takes to remain upbeat and positive.

Focus your energy outwardly rather than inwardly. Self-reflection often becomes a negative, downward spiral. When you focus on yourself instead of others and how you can help them, you often only are able to see what’s wrong with your life rather than what’s right about it. By noticing others and their respective plights, you’ll often find something to be thankful for in your own life.

Set goals. It’s easier to feel energetic when you have specific goals you’re working toward, rather than simply plodding through life each day. And goals allow you to see progress as you complete the baby steps necessary to achieving larger objectives. In essence, your baby steps can actually become silver linings as you measure where you are and where you want to go.

Look at the big picture. It’s easier to see silver linings when you look at the big picture rather than viewing life through a narrow lens. Sometimes, the narrower the focus the easier it is to see current frustration and disappointments, rather than the overall success and achievement of one’s life.

Change what you can. Karl Menninger said, “Attitudes are more important than facts.” This is a great quote to keep in mind when search for the silver lining. Our attitude, which we can change, is more important than the facts about a situation, which we often can’t change.

Recognize that what you see is what you get. If you train yourself to look for the silver lining in every situation, you’ll become skilled at finding it. If you only look as far as the storm cloud, that’s all you’ll see. The choice is up to you.

Mary M. Byers, CAE, a professional speaker and freelance writer. © 2009, Chicago Dental Society

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