In our daily lives, it’s so easy to focus on what’s not right—burned toast at breakfast, the slow leak in your car’s back tire, that looming project deadline at work that defies progress. Positive psychologists say it’s our innate negativity bias—built in to help us ward off threats to life and limb—that makes it so easy to worry or stress about challenges large and small.
Yet one of the most important lessons I’ve learned in my five years building Live Happy—and many more before that—is that living a rich, happy and fulfilling life is about looking for, appreciating and savoring what’s good in our world and investing the time and effort to make those things even better.
So, this month I launch my new blog, “Find the Good,” where I share a few high points from our readers, partners and recent news reports.
The Critter Grit Award Goes to…
The #mprraccoon! In case you missed it, this tenacious 2-year-old female raccoon scaled a St. Paul, Minnesota, high-rise building in June after maintenance workers tried to lure her from a ledge about 20 feet above the ground.
Her death-defying 25-story climb to the top caught the attention of Minnesota Public Radio reporter Tim Nelson, who gave a name and a cause to the critter who would just not stop, except for brief adorable pauses with her whiskers squished up against office windows.
The Minnesota publication mspmag.com collected the best tweets from her viral adventure, including this one that spoke for us all.
And this very concerned Tweet from actress Debra Messing.