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It's Monday again. It's hard to keep a positive attitude when the alarm forgets to go off (that darn forgetful alarm clock), the expressway is backed up all the way to your driveway, and you spill coffee on yourself trying to turn the car around and take a different route to work.

Some days it seems like life is out to get you. These are the days that it's most important to stay positive. Dealing with all the stupid little things in life without going crazy is 80% of the battle.

So help me stay positive. Tell me how you overcame obstacles in your life recently. Something as little as not burning your toast this morning to big victories like winning a new client over or resolving a major conflict at your business.

Tell me about it, and help me stay positive the rest of the week. Either post a comment below or use our contact form.

If Randy Pausch can stay positive, anyone can. It goes to show that mindset means everything, and it really is a choice that you can make to have a positive attitude. He set the tone early on yesterday at his farewell lecture at Carnegie Mellon University.

"If I don't seem as depressed or morose as I should be, sorry to disappoint you."

Dr. Pausch is a 46-year-old computer science professor who has incurable pancreatic cancer.

Read about him at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall.
-Confucius

The best way out is always through.
-Robert Frost

The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible.
-Arthur C. Clarke

Constant dripping hollows out a stone.
-Lucretius

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.
-Francis Bacon

If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door.
-Milton Berle

If you don't know where you are going, you'll end up some place else.
-Yogi Berra

Many an opportunity is lost because a man is out looking for four-leaf clovers.
-Anonymous

You can't build a reputation on what you're going to do.
-Henry Ford

and one more...

Winning isn't everything, but wanting to win is.
-Vince Lombardi

Scientists say it takes 21 days to form a new habit (or break an old one). Think about that. If you want to change your life, or your attitude, you can do it in 3 weeks. You just need to keep the streak up for that long.

It's harder than it sounds. 21 days can be a long time if you're trying to kick an old habit. So what habit are we going to try to break?

Complaining.

You don't realize how much you complain until you make an effort to catch yourself doing it. People complain about everything- and the most trivial things. The price of gas, the phone system at work, their credit card bills, some item on the news- everyone's got something to complain about. So here's the experiment.

Stop complaining. That's it. Do it cold turkey. A group of people in Missouri even made a program out of it. You can request a purple bracelet for a small donation (to cover shipping). Why do you want a bracelet? The goal is to stop complaining for 21 days straight. Here's how it works:

1. Put on the bracelet
2. If you catch yourself complaining, switch it to the other hand and start over
3. When you reach 21 days, you'll find that you're a happier, more positive person.

That's it. You're a creature of habit. If you can pick up the habit of being positive, and not complaining, the world will be that much better. Think about it on a grander scale. Over 5 million bracelets have been requested. Think about a world with 5 million fewer people complaining all the time. Why not make it 5,000,001?