Expanding Your Conversational Top Five

The other day I was hanging out with a few other moms while we watched our little ones interact on a group play date. The thing is, these play dates really seem to be less about the kids, as much as these outings are an excuse for other moms to relate to one another, compare notes about child development, and to complete a general sanity check-in. So as we were sitting there talking, one of the mothers brought up an interesting game (for lack of better words) her and fellow coworkers were playing. Essentially, the idea is that we all have a list of roughly the top five topics we can boil our everyday conversations down to. I can't really remember her list specifically, but I can imagine it wasn't much different than my list: (1) My daughter; (2) My husband; (3) Fatigue; (4) Stress; (5) School (most people probably could probably find something else to substitute easily into these fields for their own lives, such as their crazy coworkers, money, health, etc.).

So this list made me really think about how we as humans get into a rut in which everything on our list is always the same. Keep in mind, this isn't a list of the most important things in our lives, it's a list of items we converse about the most. I also noticed that the majority of the items on the tops of our lists (I have checked in with several people now as part of an unofficial experiment) are negative things: Stress, being tired, lack of money, etc. This is actually kind of interesting when you start grilling others about what their list might say, or, making your own private list for others vs. what they say, since we tend to mirror the attitudes those around us. Even better, try to think of what others in different aspects of your life might say about you: Are you different at work, home, school, etc.? My husband's list was interesting to me, for example, because I don't hear him talk about me that often, but I was on his list. Hmmm... My list for him? Our daughter, Money, Sports, News, and Work. Interesting...

So what do we do to make these lists have a more positive feel? This may possibly have something to do with the diversity of our "Top 5" list or maybe the thing to do is what pretty much every self-help book that exists suggests: "Focus on the positive." Complaining is negative and negativity generates/attracts more negativity and the next thing you know you are swimming in a cesspool of negative thoughts. In my quest to discovering how to be a happier and a livelier person (this is my new quest by the way), I think I may be onto something here. I think I will try to diversify my "Top Five" list.

It makes sense...We diversify our stock portfolios because we don't want to put all of our eggs in one basket, so it stands to reason that this same philosophy would apply nicely to life as well. We also don't throw all of our money into stocks that are in the negative, so why do we put our thoughts there? I have decided that in order to increase my happiness value I am going to focus my time and energy on a "Top Five" that is more suitable to who I want to be. Then, each day I am going to go back through the day's conversational activity and generate a "Top Five" list to see if I am adequately choosing more diverse and positive conversation that is more congruent with the new happier life I want to live.

I am hoping that by diversifying my thoughts and conversations, I will decrease my general boredom throughout the day as well, but also, by monitoring my “Top Five” I will: (1) Decrease my boredom and the boredom of those around me from listening to me; (2) Diversify who I am as a person and the things I do; (3) Learn to see the big picture of my life, rather than focusing on the same few things; (4) Have a better perspective of how others see me; and (5) Become happier by focusing on the positive.