After being away for week, I picked up a monumental stack of mail and decided to scan a news magazine. Ten minutes later, I wanted to cry. Keeping up with the news is important, but how do I do it without becoming depressed by what I read, the pictures I see, and the stories I hear about war, financial disasters, riots, government leadership? It is challenging to make sense of it all and to avoid a bleak perspective. It reminds me of Martin Seligmans research in Positive Psychology that found that many people who entered a particular profession were pessimistic and that the nature of the profession seemed to encourage negative thinking. After perusing atrocities across the country and the world, it is easy to become cynical.

Three principal causes of discouragement include pessimism, a belief system of limited choices, and a win-lose mentality. Pessimists view bad events as pervasive, permanent, and uncontrollable while the optimist sees them as local, temporary, and changeable. More than a half empty versus half full philosophy, catastrophic thinking is a no way out mentality that sees situations as desperate and unsolvable. When choices seem limited, there is a sense of hopelessness that I have to live with the limitations that present themselves, that I have no power, and that my opinions do not matter. In a world where everything is a win-lose proposition, there is little room for hope. No wonder I was depressed after reading the news. Powerless to do anything about the events, afraid that they would last forever, and panicky that winning was impossible, I had joined the ranks of those destined for unhappiness. Drowning in my thoughts, I wondered what I could do.

I start by being aware of my thinking. Events are temporary and changeable. There are ways to make things win-win and there are unlimited choices. Even bigger than this is the knowledge that I can draw on inner resources that offer good to humanity. The words of Abraham Lincoln ring here. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. It is faith that better angels of our nature exist and increase the bonds of affection.

Angels appear when I put aside fear, anger, resentment, guilt, and shame. So I choose to look for good qualities in others rather than remain blind. Wisdom, knowledge, courage, love and humanity, justice, temperance, spirituality and transcendence exist in people everywhere. I can remind myself that most people behave badly when a need is not being met and then spend some time discovering what that need is. Once I know the other persons inner truth, win-win potential materializes. If I let my own negative thinking and emotion rule, I block the art of possibility. I may be only a cockeyed optimist, but it brings much more joy than the alternative and makes reading the news much more pleasant.