Viewing Life Through Yellow Tinted Glasses

When I was a teenager I had a pair of round yellow glasses.

I loved them.

Whenever I looked through the yellow lenses the world looked brighter. It was a happier place, just with a slight change of color perspective.

It’s no wonder yellow is one of my favorite colors.

I didn’t think much about those yellow glasses after I went away to college.  Stress took over, between maintaining friendships, relationships, school full time while working a job or two, then two or three jobs during the break.

Life was busy and stressful. I forgot about looking at life through the yellow lens.

My emotions were creating distress in my mind. I was treating the people in my life less than admirably. My habits were starting to affect my life in a negative way.

During that time my boyfriend proposed to me. The day of my college graduation we moved to a bigger city. We were starting a new life together. We were married and life was blissful until he got news that he was going to be deployed to Iraq for 15 months.

Victim or Victor

I was crushed. My heart sank.

He was in the National Guard, why was he being deployed?

I didn’t know a whole lot about the military, but I learned quickly. I was a soldiers wife, and now I was going to get the opportunity to experience what that really meant, first hand.

Before he deployed we sat down with other families to listen to the Chaplain speak. His goal was to help us prepare emotionally for the challenges ahead.

This was exactly what I needed.

The Chaplain spoke about being either a Victim or a Victor of your situation. You can spend your time in a constant pity party and be a victim, or you can take charge of your situation and make the best of it, controlling the things you have control over.

Immediately my perspective changed. My life looking through yellow lenses was starting to come back to me.

Finding Control

To keep myself in the information loop and take control where I could I became the leader of the family readiness group. Working in a job filled with poor management and miserable people wasn’t helping me, so I started a new job. To give myself a better support circle I joined a few support groups and made some new friends.

Thanks to this perspective shift I started to understand what living a positive focused life could mean for me.

It doesn’t mean I’ll never have a bad day, feeling sad, angry or overwhelmed. My world view is positive focused for the most part, but I don’t ignore the emotions that leaving me feeling less than happy. I do my best to find the things I can control in different situations. Looking through life through those yellow tinted lenses helps me locate the positive in each situation, no matter how deeply it’s buried.

Once I learned how to be a victor in my life I became happier. The challenges life throws at me are more bearable, not matter how bad they get.

Just put on those symbolic yellow lenses every once in awhile and see what happens. The more you do it, the faster you’ll change your perspective and start looking at things in a more positive light.

How do you maintain a positive perspective on life? Share your ideas in the comments below.