LIVE YOUR BEST LIFE: TEN INSPIRATIONAL LESSONS FROM MANDELA'S LIFE

LESSON SIX: NEVER LOOSE YOUR SMILE

The value of positivity

People say that a smile speaks volume and reveals the true state of a man's heart. It conveys not just a happy disposition but also a readiness to accept possibilities and a generosity of spirit. For a man who had endured a lot of hardship in life, Nelson Mandela had a truly remarkable smile. It was a radiant smile that conveyed a warmth and openness that even more fortunate men could hardly boast of. It was a smile that even watching from the screen or from a book cover, you still felt its compelling warmth. From his experiences, one would expect him to cut a more severe disposition yet Mandela was more inclined to smiling than not, he radiated an enjoyment of people and life in general, something that was truly remarkable for a man of his experience.

Mandela's smile spoke of a man who had endured hardship but still strong enough to rise above it with optimism and faith for the future.

Nobody's life is perfect. Some days will always be harder than some and sometimes no matter how much you try, life will throw up challenges and disappointments. The ability to look on the bright side and keep your happy going is instrumental in living a really great life.

Choosing to be positive and optimistic will ultimately help you become the person you want to be. A positive attitude is the fuel that drives achievement. It gives you the push you need to act in the direction of your desired ends. Positivity is a mindset that is set towards seeing opportunities everywhere and so predisposed, you will find them. When your heart is open to good, you will invariably experience it.

It is important to note that being optimistic or positive isn't about living in denial or just simply repeating platitudes (I am beautiful! I am a success! Etc). It is about acknowledging and accepting the facts of reality as there are and CHOOSING to look for the positives and opportunities for growth. Life is about choices; your outer experience is a product of your inner choice.

Often people are more inclined to seeing the worst of everything and this is the leading cause of depression, unhappiness and dead dreams. What will happen if instead of seeing things as bad, we choose to see the best in everything? That will be truly radical and I have no doubt that it will transform our lives.

A deliberate choice

The world maybe going to hell and you can still decide to see beauty in it. We see a mother who lost her child to cancer start a charity to help other kids suffering from the disease. A father whose sons died from street violence decides to start a young people's sport club or arts group to give other young boys an alternative to hanging out in the streets. Any of these people could have chosen to play the blame game or focus perpetually on their loss and eventually become old, sad and bitter people. But they chose to see their great losses as opportunities to do good and all around the world, millions of people like them make the choice to see the good in all of their bad experiences.

Victor Frankel lived through some of the worst experience that a human being could ever have. He lost everything during WWII when he was sent to a concentration camp yet he came out happy, grateful and forgiving. One of his major conclusions was that no matter what was going on in our lives or the challenges that life throws, we can choose to make our inner world one of beauty and possibilities and that is all that really matter.

Living your best and being all that you can be will not be done unless you deliberately choose to be positive. Until you believe that something is attainable, you will not get it. It is possible to be all you dream of being and to live the life that you hope to live, you just have to believe it is possible.

An ongoing process

Also, being positive is a lifelong commitment. It is not something you should do some times and then decide to quit doing after a while. You have to CONSTANTLY challenge yourself to stay positive, to challenge the negative thought patterns and make decisions for a better life based on a can do perspective.

The good thing about it is that like any other habit, the more you choose to stay positive, the easier it becomes to do. When you deliberately and consistently choose to look on the bright side of things, your mind becomes trained towards the positive and the more natural and instinctive it becomes for you. A positive attitude is something you should adopt as a lifelong practice. Look for the best always and in all things.

Being positive means you are evolving

Natural life is constantly evolving and changing and the ultimate goal is an advancement of the species. Species develop and specialize as a means of adapting better to their environment and surviving longer. Life is about doing better and becoming better. You cannot do this if you do not see that it is possible. Open yourself up to the opportunities for growth that challenges bring, see problems as opportunities to move forward and give yourself the permission to do so.

After many years in prison, Mandela's focus was not on what he had lost, he did not dwell on the injustice or the years of oppression that the blacks had endured. What he did was to encourage people to look towards a new and better nation where everyone was free. His absolute faith in the possibility of forging a truly rainbow nation was the magnet that drew the nation together and kept the fragile peace needed at the time. He used his personal challenges and the challenges of the country to inspire them to do better.

I remember the smiling posters that were the trademark of his political campaign in 1994. I was very young at the time and remember catching a glimpse of that smile and thinking to myself, that this was indeed a happy man and if I were South African and I would like to vote for him. Mandela had suffered great loses, fought many wars as it were, suffered oppression, lost loves and buried children, yet, he believed in the beauty of life, living and the human community. And he wore that smile all through his life teaching us that life may throw us many curves, but if we stay positive and ride the waves, we will grow to be all we want to be.