Sedikit Dari Teman

So, several days ago one of my best friends called me, and we talked about several stuff. Among the things that we were talking about, there was a topic about “positive thinking.”

He told me that last time he read my blog about the snowball effect, then he said that he got an idea that could improve the positive thinking method, whenever that snowball is about to come.

Before that, here’s the example of snowball effect (taken from the book “Don’t sweat the small stuff”):
You might wake up in the middle of the night and remember a phone call that need to be made the following day. Then, rather than feeling relieved that you remembered such an important call, you start thinking about everything else you have to do tomorrow. You start rehearsing a probable conversation with your boss, getting yourself even more upset. Pretty soon you think to yourself, “I can’t believe how busy I am. I must make fifty phone calls a day. Whose life is this anyway?” and on and on it goes until you’re feeling sorry for yourself.

Now, not everybody have this kind of problem, but I certainly do, and as I began to recognize this problem (of course by reading the book), I was getting better and better at avoiding them. Now, his idea might help me even further.

Here’s his idea:

Since snowball effect is about several negative thoughts that come consequently, we need to stop it before it’s getting bigger and bigger.
My friend’s idea is to counter this snowball effect by having more and more positive thoughts about our selves whenever we start to feel sorry about ourselves.
Now, it’s not easy to suddenly remember good things about ourselves. So, my friend offered an idea: makes a positive card!

What is a positive card?

He said that it should be a card that has the size of a credit card such that we could put it in our wallet and thus, we could have it ready whenever we need it. This card will contain positive things about one self. Now the effect won’t be too great if we fill it our selves (but one can certainly do that). We can always ask our best friends or just friends to make one for us, and maybe why don’t we make them one too; just like what people usually do in friendster: exchanging testimonials. Only this one is handwritten and very accessible.

By remembering the things that we’re good at or our positive sides, we might avoid being sorry about ourselves, we might avoid the snowball effect. Thus, we reduce the chance of being depressed. Many unpleasant incidents were caused by depressing attitudes and depressing attitudes are very contagious (: being scolded usually makes you want to scold someone else). So, by avoiding being depressed, we indirectly make the world a little bit more peaceful – and thus, make this world a better place, Yahoo!

“What a great idea”, I told him, “can I post it on my blog?”
“Sure” he said. “As long as you don’t put my name on it”
So, instead, I put the picture of his laptop, hehe (above).

Me and My lucky green hat, on a sunny day.

Nb: Most of the time, despite its weird quality, my title got certain reason and not just randomly chosen. This time, I used the title “Sedikit Dari Teman” because this friend on the title is the same friend that I was talking about on my older post "Sedikit Untuk Teman."

Side Note:
Now, I just suddenly got an idea, why don’t I make those positive cards to all of my friends that I can identify their positive qualities, and then send it to them, plus the short explanation about the snowball effect, the positive card and positive thinking in general!
Oh man, maybe I really should do it, it would make everybody’s day better isn’t it??

ADDITION:
Fellow readers, help me improve the positive card!
Post your ideas!

:-) have a nice day people!