A tenet of the City’s work philosophy is ‘Choose Your Attitude’. This philosophy is taken from the book FiSH! by Stephen Ludin, Harry Paul and John Christensen. The book uses the work habits of an actual fish market in Seattle to show that any work environment can improve customer service, build trust and teamwork, and increase employee satisfaction by adhering to four principals: Choose Your Attitude, Make Their Day, Play, and Be There.

Each habit is important in its own right, but without choosing your attitude, it is more difficult, if not impossible, to be able to make their day, play, or be there.

The character trait of positivity has the same foundational effect. Strata Leadership defines positivity as “Maintaining a good attitude, even when faced with difficulty”. Positivity could also be defined as “Choosing to maintain a good attitude, even when faced with difficulty”.

Has anyone known difficulty recently, with or without COVID? There are always difficulties and that is when we have to recognize positivity as a choice. Positivity isn’t dependent upon circumstances, it isn’t dependent on things going well, and it isn’t dependent upon achieving utopia; it is a choice to maintain a good attitude, regardless of circumstances. And, the more challenging we find our circumstances, the more intentional we have to be. It’s easy to get discouraged; it’s easy to get frustrated; but the key is recognizing when these emotions and feelings are impacting us or our relationship with others, and our choice to be positive.

We all experience negative emotions and feelings; at least I know I do; and focusing on the character trait of positivity helps us recognize and address those emotions and feelings before they affect us and others.

I would like to close by recognizing two members of the Character Council for their positivity and the impact it had on me. I think I may always remember specifically the September Character Council meeting that Dr. Amy Fichtner and Chad Balthrop attended. September was the Character Council’s first in-person meeting after COVID began. What struck me about Amy and Chad not only attending, but actively participating in the discussions, is that they both could have easily decided they didn’t have the energy or weren’t in the right mindset to attend. At the time of the September meeting, Amy was navigating a tremendous amount of controversy surrounding the schools meeting virtually instead of in-person. And, at that time, Chad’s dad was in ICU on a respirator, with all indications that he was not going to survive COVID. Yet on that morning, they both chose to be a part of something outside of themselves, never giving any hint or indication of the burden they were carrying. This is positivity in action, which is a great reminder to me, because I often fall short.

We can all take a lesson in positivity from someone in our life, and maybe we can be the example of positivity in someone else’s life as well.