The small, inner me often looks at situations and has amazing ideas on things I’d like to say or do, but then as I think about them, they begin to seem childish and naïve and I keep quiet. I listened to that inner voice once when I was walking down Fifth Avenue, and New York City was covered in a magical layer of snow. Can I lie down and make a snow angel on Fifth Avenue I asked myself? Sure I answered, this is a once in a lifetime chance. So I made a snow angel, and someone walking by thought I was having a seizure—after all adults don’t do these things! My inner voice has lots of cool ideas on living with vibrancy, but my adult voice immediately hushes this nonsense and I go about my grown-up world. A.A. Milne said in part, in his poem on being six: “But now I am Six, I’m as clever as clever, So I think I’ll be six now for ever and ever.”
With a world filled with worry and separation, depression and anxiety, there’s a lot of merit to looking at things through the eyes of a child. A child focuses on the moment and expects the next moment to work out well. “Expect good results,” says part of one of the quotes in my new Shortcuts to Success book. Expecting good to happen is not blindly putting your head in the sand, it’s working, preparing and then programming yourself to anticipate that, regardless of the circumstances, things will turn out well. Our attitudes are contagious and impact the outcomes in our lives. And all you have to do is watch any six-year-old to know we can learn a lot about optimism, confidence and the power of believing in our abilities to be clever, forever and ever.
