"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!"...

Especially at the moment as we face the perfect storm with more cuts coming and Education Leeds contract coming to an end and uncertainty for many of us about the future and our jobs. My life, like yours I suspect, isn't always great. In fact, sometimes my 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, family tragedies, financial worries, accidents and illnesses and where things often go badly. I hope that like me you have colleagues with whom you can share the ups and downs and who share their lives with you. 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 bad things are, I believe that I have a choice each day. You can choose to see things positively and be an optimist or you can choose to see things negatively and be a pessimist.' Since I discovered Investment in Excellence every new day, whatever anyone throws at me, I choose to be positive. Each time something goes wrong or mistakes happen, I can choose to live under a black cloud or I can choose to learn from it. I use affirmations and visualisations and I choose to learn from everything that happens to me. Every time someone comes to me moaning and complaining about what isn't working, what is going wrong and what has happened to them, I can choose to accept their negativity and go under with more and more problems landing on my desk or alternatively I can point out that when you are working at the cutting edge things go wrong, things get screwed up and that we need to look at the learning striving for excellence provides and the opportunities we have to improve what we do and provide better services for children, young people, their families, schools and the Council. I choose to be positive, to be optimistic and to be a learner! And that makes my life great, even in the face of evidence to the contrary. So as we struggle with the future what are you going to choose?

I know what you are thinking... it's not that easy... but it is. Life is all about choices and when you cut away all the rubbish and clutter, everything is a choice. You choose how you react to situations. You choose how people affect your mood. You choose to be in a good mood or bad mood. You choose the attitudes you take into each new day. It's your choice how you live your life. I choose to be positive!
Chris