I have more time for the positive things in life...and less time for the negative

Is it fair to say that we have all settled now into new, personal, daily routines? Does your day-to-day existence now feel ‘normal’?

How far away does the previous normality now seem, and what would it take to go back to it? I think lots of us have found new ways to exist, stay active, stay effective and even thrive.

At the end of last year, the prospect of life as it now is would have seemed so bizarre as to be laughable, and yet it is no joke at all.

How well would you say you have coped, and are coping now? Will we one day look back and talk warmly about resilience and stoicism? I think we might, and we will have earned the right to do so too.

For me, the biggest changes have come in my immediate surroundings. With the loss of quite a lot of work, my day-to-day existence has changed by not having to be up every day of the week and at a very early hour.

My daily mileage on the roads is now – literally – non-existent, and I speak as one who used to clock up the greater part of 1,000 miles a week.

Possibly in denial of it at the time, I’m now sure that it was slowly damaging my body and mind. My carbon footprint was pretty diabolical too.

Now I lead a simpler, less rushed life, and although I have a lot less in my pocket to show for it, I’m pretty sure that my quality of life has been enriched.

Like many, I’m self-employed. A lot of the work that I would otherwise have been doing over the coming weeks and months has either disappeared for good or disappeared for the time being.

My challenge, therefore, changed into being able to bring in sufficient cashflow to bridge the gap.

At the same time, because of the way in which the demands of work changed, I now have had the opportunity of taking advantage of a commodity that I previously had very little of.

That commodity is time.

I used to be fond of saying that I would do things “when I have the time“.

Well now, I do. Being home-based, I now combine working activities with domestic ones.

I think I’ve become a far more effective person as a result.

Now I merge my ‘To Do’ lists, the challenge being to retain a business-like attitude.

It requires discipline, but the benefits are clear. I think I’m more positive too. I don’t have the time for negativity.

Would I have ordinarily chosen this way of life? Probably not. I have always had one eye on the quality of later life.

But if I were to drive myself to the point where my life became foreshortened, what would have been the point in struggling to achieve an income that I never lived to enjoy?

There will always be the debate of whether you are a glass half-full or a glass half-empty person. What is your attitude towards life?

Many of us would like to think that we are the former, even though we perhaps sound more like the latter. Which is the reality?

Only in our heart of hearts can we know. But perhaps, through the challenges now being set us, we will be able to look back in due course and really see.

It would be easy to say that such a view is overly simplistic, or even woefully naive. I call it getting on with life and trying to turn a negative into a positive.

Why wouldn’t I?