"Brilliant!", "Fantastic", "Great" is the response I always try to give to the question "How are you?" and it always seems to confuse some people who would clearly prefer it if I said "I'm OK!"...

When I gave this response recently to a colleague he asked me how I can always answer that way. "Life ISN'T always brilliant, fantastic or great" he said to me and of course he's right. My life, like yours I suspect, isn't always great. In fact, sometimes life can be dreadful. But most people don't want to hear about the things that are going wrong in my life. It's not that I live in a world where everything is always brilliant and I expect everyone else lives in that same world. I live in the real world where we all have difficulties, awful days and where things often go badly. I have colleagues with whom I share the ups and downs and they share their lives with me. I am grateful to have people like that in my life. They are the ones I know I can call when my life is falling apart and they can call me too.

However, I believe that I have a choice each day. I can look for the brilliant in everyday and be grateful for it or I can focus on all the stuff that goes wrong and the tragedies that surround us. I choose the brilliant and the everyday magic. And that makes my life great, even in the face of evidence to the contrary.

What are you going to choose?
Chris