Last Sunday, I started a series of weekly posts that revisit in turn each of the 12 ideas contained in a Tony Schwartz post, "Turning 60: The twelve most important lessons I've learned so far". Here, I'm turning to the second of Schwartz's observations, "Notice the good", in which he claims:
"We each carry an evolutionary predisposition to dwell on what's wrong in our lives. The antidote is to deliberately take time out each day to notice what's going right, and to feel grateful for what you've got. It's probably a lot."
Here, Schwartz reminds me of "A book of jubilations", a post I wrote at the beginning of July. I had just finished a half year of posting something every day, a nice run that had started to expose "my occasional despair for things publishing."
It doesn't help to avoid reality, but (as I noted at the time) "harping on what's not working gets old, fast." Since then, I've tried to find more positive examples to bring to the blog, ones that focus more on solutions to the problems we face in publishing.
The good news is that I've been able to do that. The better news is that I feel more sanguine about the business, largely as a result of shifting some of my perspective. Maybe it's just that simple.
