Farm to Family Connection - Commentary

FARM TO FAMILY COMMENTARY
---Select commentary from a weekly column by Curt Arens published in the Cedar County News, Hartington, NE

January 2007

The Power of Positive Speaking

Dear Friends,
Have you ever joined in on a meeting or coffee group somewhere, walked over to the coffeepot and poured yourself a cup, sat down and listened to the conversation that was going on before you got there? Have you noticed where the conversation was going?

Perhaps the comments being made did not concern you, but were negative or derogatory toward some individual in town or down the road, or the folks involved were complaining about something in their community or school. Maybe the comments were negative in general, about the weather, about crops, about livestock prices or about the neighbor’s dog. Have you ever wanted to pipe up in the middle of the conversation and say something positive, against the current tide, but were too timid to do so?

I think everyone has been in this situation. It is fun to witness what happens when someone invokes positive thinking into a very negative conversation. Most often, everyone is so surprised that anybody had a different opinion than that of the current conversation, that they are taken back.

A positive word or two is usually all it takes to change the tide, to make people realize that it isn’t so bad and that things might be looking up.

We farmers are notorious, as one person once told me, for "losing" our crops several times during the growing season. If it is dry in the spring, I hear people say, "Well, our pastures are shot and there goes the oats and alfalfa crops. If we don’t get a rain tonight, we just as well kiss it all goodbye."

Now, that is pretty defeatist. I’m not an agronomy major, by I’m guessing that there is no particular day where everything is absolutely lost. Of course, we’ve all been through severe drought and had terrible crops, but to believe that every spring reeks of impending doom is negative thinking for even the worst skeptic among us.

I think it is probably our human nature to think negatively. It is our defense mechanism against really bad things. We hope that if we expect the worst, that the worst won’t come. "Expect the worst and hope for the best," I’ve heard folks say. It is no doubt good advice for us to be prepared for drought, pestilence or financial ruin, because if some unexpected things happen, preparation will help us out.

At the same time, it takes courage to stand up and be positive in the face of all of this. It especially takes a unique courage to say something positive around the coffee table about our friends, neighbors, families, community, churches and schools, when everyone else is speaking in the other direction. It is tough, especially when we wonder what our peers will think of us if we speak our own, unique opinion.

Most of the time, however, someone else in the room is probably thinking the same thing. Suddenly, the conversation changes to the positive. "Maybe our town isn’t so bad after all. Maybe the weatherman predicting rain tonight will be right for once. Maybe the sky isn’t really falling."

It doesn’t necessarily take courage to think positively. Actually speaking positive things in the face of so much negative chatter these days is what takes real courage in my mind.