Is Your Glass Half Full?

Would you describe yourself as a person who is glass half full or half empty? The glass half full is usually described as someone who is optimistic and happy where half empty look at life in a negative/ pessimistic way. The choice on how you look at life is up to you. I can personally say I have lived life with the half empty attitude and half full attitude. When I started living life with the half full attitude I started to appreciate life and realized how much of my own life I lost due to the negative attitude I had. The choice is a personal one we all get to make. There are so many things that happen to all of us that are out of our control however we can choose to allow negative events continue to impact us in a negative way or you can begin to fill yourself up and live life with the glass half full.  It is a pretty depressing life when your looking at so much in a negative way. Would you rather surround yourself with someone who is living life with a full glass or empty? Obviously full glass people are going to be positive and probably make you feel good to be around. Where someone living life with a half empty glass will probably bring you down. People that live with a half empty glass probably notice people starting to walk away from you. It is one thing if your just having a bad day and venting to your friend, but if becomes consistent who is going to want to be around you. Now let me be clear of something there is a big difference in someone that is clinically depressed and someone that just has a bad attitude and outlook on life. Someone that is clinically depressed needs to see a doctor and figure out what is going on. Someone that has a bad attitude is not going to attract a crowd instead lose friends or have trouble making them.

I recently was having lunch with a friend and she was telling me how I am unique that not many people can do what I accomplished. I disagreed with her. I looked at her and said you can do anything you set your mind to and as long as you have the determination, motivation, and positive attitude to get accomplished what you are going after and not give up when you hit some road blocks along the way. With the right attitude, determination, motivation, and full glass you can accomplish what you set your mind to.

I returned Friday night from my trip to Austin, Texas Friday where I spoke to a crowd of 600 people for Texas CASA conference. CASA stands for Court Appointed Special Advocate for kids who have been abused and often removed from home. The advocate is someone who is a support person in their life during the court proceedings. It takes special people to do what these amazing volunteers do for abused kids. After my speech I was signing books and there is a constant conversation I am coming across from many people I meet at the events I speak at. “How can you be so positive after the horror I experienced as a child?” Well the best way for me to answer that is I tried the negative path living life with the glass half-empty and I soon began to realize how much of my life I was giving away and the self-destructive path I was going down. While I did not choose to be raped and molested as a kid I did have a choice on how I responded in the aftermath. For many years I lived with a half-empty glass. Actually it was more then half empty it was nearly completely empty. I finally came to realize I was choosing this life for myself and had an awakening and began to turn my life around and little by little began to fill my glass up and plan to never look at life with the half- glass empty attitude again. So how do you live your life  with a glass half full or half empty attitude. Remember the choice is ultimately yours.

Signing books in Austin, Texas Friday

I choose not to stand behind the podium when my speech actually began and instead right front and center since I don’t use notes and only need a podium to place my diary and other resources I use on.

What a line there was during the book signing. It went on for an hour.

Thank you to Barnes and Nobles for coming on site to the conference and selling my books. They ordered 100 copies of each of my books “Stolen Innocence and Living For Today” my publishing company accidentally shipped 200 copies of each book but good thing they did because I signed more then 100 copies of each book and was still signing when I had to catch my flight home so I briefly signed roughly two dozen more copies to be placed in the store.

Next it is off to New York a week from now to speak at a state conference and introduce Erin’s law in New York during a press conference with two New York Senators. Anything is possible when your glass is half full! 🙂