Turning a Negative into a Positive

I've had a really hard time lately looking for the positive in life. Lately I tend to focus on the negative, which is really easy to do. Well, with some recent stresses at work, my boss challenged me to look for the positive in what I've been doing. I basically told her I would try, but not to count on it. It turns out she proved me very wrong in my thinking, and I am glad she did. Here is the story:

One of my four jobs is a swim instructor. I've been teaching swim lessons for a couple of years now. I usually only have time to teach in the summer, but because I am now a college graduate seeking a job with my degree, I have some more time to put in more hours at my current workplace. I taught lessons this past summer and had an absolute blast doing so. I decided that I would make some time to continue teaching into the fall. Once in a while with swim lessons, you have to teach some classes that are a challenge. Usually, I embrace a challenge with full force and see what I can learn from it. Now, I have never really had a swim class that I could not handle or control until this set that just ended yesterday. All four of my classes were completely out of control. Kids were fighting me as I tried to control them, and parents were giving me nasty looks as I trid to tame their out of control children. (I feel like there are alot of parents these days that do not discipline their children. The way some kids act in public now days I never would have dared to act when I was a child.) I finally had it with my classes and had to turn to my boss. When I talked to her about it I was of course negative and told her I wanted to turn in my resignation notice for my swim instructor job. Honeslty, I really was going to do just that, but she actually told me I should not do so. Instead, she gave me some tips, gave me assistants to help control my classes, and actually sat on deck to ward of the nasty parents. She also gave me a challenge. Not only had I been negative about work, but I had been negative about life and the huge rock wall I feel like I have hit. My boss challenged me to find one positive thing about each one of my classes, and I had to report back to her. I told her I will try, but I probably won't be able to find anything. She basically told me I would be surprised and left it at that. Now, I'm not going to say that all my classes suddenly changed and were happier for me, but I did learn a huge lesson from one child in one of my classes that changed my attitude for the better.

I had the opportunity to have an autistic boy in one of my classes. At first I had to figure out how to work with this boy to teach him how to swim his strokes. It was very difficult. He had a really hard time comprehending my instructions, and I had to learn to change the way I teach in order for him to be able to have the same advantage and opportunity as every other child in the class. I worked hard and was able to succeed at that. As I came to work every day grouchy and mad at what I was being asked to do, this little autistic boy came to the pool with a huge smile on his face, yelling "hi teacher!" to me across the pool deck. Everything I asked him to do, he was so excited to try, even though some swim tasks were very difficult for him. Not once did he get discouraged or down because he couldn't do something. He practiced extra hard, and really did leave my class a better swimmer than he was just two weeks ago. This little boy taught me that yes, we all have our setbacks, but that doesn't mean we should hide from our challenges. We should work harder to conquer the challenges that arise in our lives. Looking for the positive things in my swim lessons did change my attitude, mostly because of this boy. He would often be doing a skill with me and when finished would yell "I did it!" Another experience I had with this boy was when he finished something that was pretty challenging, and as I started to swim to the other side of the pool to help another child he yelled after me "teacher, teacher! I give you hug!" I turned around to see him coming after me in the water to give me the biggest hug. His mom was so incredibly proud of him. I'm really greatful for people that the Lord puts into our lives at certain moments to make our lives better. I'm also so glad I finished out this swim lesson set. I really did learn a big lesson from both my boss, and the autistic boy I taught. I think I'm going start trying harder to change my attitude about life. I really am in a good place right now, and I am going to start recognizing that every day.