Trust me.

When the repairman has the innards of your refrigerator strewn across the kitchen floor, the last diagnosis you want is the one with the “C” word.

“Compressor,” he sighed, shaking his head sympathetically, dangling a fistful of melted wires. “You’re better off junking it and buying a new one.”

Whoosh! Another five hundred bucks off to the big defrost cycle in the sky.

As painful as that was, the real sting came from living without the fridge. By the time the deliveryman plugged in our new one, we’d been drinking from the tap for three days.

You’d be surprised at how fast you can fall in love with a major appliance.

Even though the new icebox is indistinguishable from the old, you can still catch me giddy-faced, happily inhaling frosty air wafting from the purring new machine. Fresh from the perspective of going without, what pleasure it is to have!

I didn’t feel that way about the old one at all.

Yet the change didn’t arrive in the new fridge, it arrived in me.

When my attitude toward the appliance improved, so did my experience of it. The mere action of opening the refrigerator door transformed from mundane to marvelous! Better still, I’m now experiencing the same marvelous feelings from other appliances. Other people. And other situations.

All from the use of another “C” word.

Choice.

Attitudes are a choice. And everything we experience is colored by the lens of attitude. Choose a negative lens and we focus on the negative, creating negative feelings. Choose a positive lens and even opening a refrigerator becomes a wonderful experience.

In affect, we choose the type of world we live in. Few realize that an optimistic attitude is actually a proactive force — a positive panorama that not only keeps negative feelings away, but ensures positive feelings must occur — stacking the deck in our favor before events even unfold!

Opening the new refrigerator for the hundredth time, a thought jolted me. Without the death of my refrigerator compressor, I’d have never discovered my built-in happiness compressor.

Suddenly, I realized just what a bargain that $500 had been.

Mike Johnson is an energetic writer and entrepreneur. Learn more about Mike’s offerings at www.MikeJohnson.biz