I find this time between Christmas and the end of the year a very special time. A time for reflection on all the good and bad that happened throughout the year and a time to think about and plan the next year.

I’m a positive person and I think positivity is something that you can cultivate, like a habit. It’s not easy, it’s something that requires some discipline, and a lot of mental courage.

How many of you have days or weeks, or sometimes even months, when you feel despair and you feel like your problems are so big that not only will you never get past them, but no one understands them. The truth is that a lot of those problems are only inside your head! Have you ever looked back into your distant past and remembered times that you thought that everything would come to an end, that the world was going to finish as a result of bad times you were going through or bad times the world was going through and laughed, thinking “Oh my God, I really exaggerated?!”.

Well, most probably some of the problems that you are having now are also figments of your imagination. The truth is that the only real problems that we have are health related. Because when you are sick, understandably, then you have a serious problem.  However, all other issues I’m sure can be resolved if you really stop and think about them. We’ve all have hardship in our lives, we’ve all had difficult moments, and with love and friendship, and hard work and perseverance, we manage to somehow pull through.

In this time between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, I like to think of all the times when I’ve applied that to myself, to my team, to my friends and my family, and also the times when I failed. Because there is no success without failure, as I always say.

So, in preparation for the New Year, I challenge you all to do this little exercise and write down times when you failed at practicing a positive philosophy in your life. Times when you thought “well, had I been a little bit calmer, had I been a little bit nicer, had I been a little bit more understanding, had a little bit more empathy, maybe things would have gone better!”. Something as small as a little argument with a stranger, a waiter, an airline stewardess, hotel manager, these little things, because we forget that these people also have lives and sometimes a little fight in the distant past can come back and bite you in the present!

Thus, in order to be part of a bigger game, I challenge you all to start practicing positivity as an exercise, the same way you would exercise your body. The same way you would go to the gym!

So, for all of you in 2016, let’s start exercising positivity as a new way of life!