The Glad Game Turns One Hundred

“In one minute you can change your attitude and in that minute you can change your entire day.” — Spencer Johnson

One of my favorite movies growing up was Walt Disney’s Pollyanna made in 1960.  That movie was based on a 1913 novel by Eleanor H. Porter.  Pollyanna is an 11-year- old orphan that comes to live with her dour aunt.  No matter what happens to Pollyanna, however, she plays the Glad Game she’d learned from her late father, a missionary.  The Glad Game has one rule:  find the bright side in every situation.

This turn-of-the-century novel was so popular that Porter quickly wrote a sequel. Sequels by other authors continued to be written right up until 1997.  Over the years there have been board games and several movies, the last in 2003.  Isn’t it interesting that so many people over the last century have been captivated by the idea of the Glad Game?  We don’t hear much anymore about the Glad Game; instead, we hear about having an attitude of gratitude.

Candle in the Darkness
Pollyanna played the Glad Game amazingly well.  When she received crutches one Christmas from the missionary donations barrel instead of the doll she really wanted, she was glad that she didn’t need to use the crutches.  When she first arrived to live with her Aunt Polly, she had great difficulty turning around the bleak thinking of a town that had been run for years by her rich, domineering aunt.  Slowly, however, people began to see the gladness in the world as they too learned to play the game.  In the end it was the townspeople that rallied around Pollyanna when she had to face a personal challenge of her own, and she could no longer find it in herself to play the Glad Game. 

Indeed, if someone had told me during my darkest moments to find gratitude, to see the silver lining, or to play the Glad Game, I wouldn’t have taken it well.  When my husband died, I would have resented anyone telling me to do that; but I do know that a quiet, small part of my mind, my spirit, was finding things to be grateful for.  I had a family who loved me, a roof over my head, a job, wonderful dogs to cuddle with and more.  These things could not release me from my grief, but they were a candle in the darkness. 

If gratitude can be a candle in the darkest of times, just think what can happen when we learn to have an attitude of gratitude each day of our lives.  As we bring more gratitude into our lives, we’ll find that those around us will begin to mirror our attitude.  As we give our attention to the positive, so too will they. 

It may not always be easy, but instead of grounding ourselves in feelings of frustration when we encounter a challenge in our day, we can turn that challenge into a puzzle that needs solving and an opportunity to grow and learn.  When we encounter others whose mood is gray, we can choose not to buy into it.  After all, we each get to decide what mood will color our day.

What Do You Choose?
So think about it.  What’s the first thing you say to yourself when you wake up in the morning?  Do you groan, “Oh, I have to get up and go to work,” or do you say, “Aren’t I lucky.  I feel good today and I can get up and go to work.”  I have to admit I may start out saying the first one, but with practice I have learned to quickly change my thinking to the second.  In that split second I change my thinking, and I change my day.  I can even change someone else’s day.

Many people choose to keep a gratitude journal or even to record their positive thoughts of gratitude throughout the day to review later.  If you are new to this, you may be surprised at just how many things you have to be grateful for.

Finding gratitude is a powerful tool for making our lives more joyful.  As we put our attention on the positive, that is what we will attract into our lives.  The first step is to be aware of what we are saying to ourselves.  Is it positive?  If not, play the Glad Game.  We may feel silly at first. (Pollyanna’s new friends certainly did.)  At times, we may also find it challenging to see the positive side of a bleak situation.  In these cases, be creative…think of it as a game.  Pollyanna did and she changed a whole town.