One of the secrets to happiness is ... finding the silver lining in anything.
If you find yourself weighed down by the burden of multiple stressors in your life as I've been of late, let me share with you that one of the easiest coping skills you can hone is to practice the basic tenets of cognitive therapy. You can change the way that you view a situation faster than you can manipulate all of the variables affecting you. And -- you can most certainly change your outlook faster than you can change the behaviors and actions of others.
In my quest to look for that lining o' silver in anything, I realized the other day that we might be raising a generation of people with advanced lip reading skills now that profanity is so prevalent in prime time TV. I mean, sure, it's bleeped out. But it's really just human nature to look at the screen and figure out what they are actually saying -- and that's not so difficult. But if these skills are translatable to something practical, then kudos/mazel/congrats to all of us!
[Warning: this next paragraph is read best if you hear the voice of Andy Rooney in your head.]
But sometimes, you find a silver lining where you least expect it. For instance, like in my box of Sugar Corn Pops? If all of my other cereals have a nice clear plastic bag that lets me see in to the sugar laden treats, why do the Pops come in a lead-lined package? From what am I being protected? Is it really safe to eat these flattened, smooth, bumpy bits of milled corn? Because, to be honest, eating them is also one of the secrets to happiness.
QUICK PRIMER ON COGNITIVE THERAPY:
http://counsellingresource.com/types/cognitive-therapy/
QUICK PRIMER ON LIP-READING:
http://www.wikihow.com/Lip-Read
QUICK PRIMER ON SUGAR CORN POPS:
http://www2.kelloggs.com/Product/ProductDetail.aspx?product=558
QUICK PRIMER ON ANDY ROONEY:
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/andy_rooney.html
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