By John hope bryant
Being Miserable is a Choice. Delete It.


My personal hero and mentor, civil rights icon Ambassador Andrew Young, taught me how to laugh -- at most everything. Most of all, he taught me to laugh at myself.

He and my mentor (the music icon) Quincy Jones taught me to never come down with a case of what they call 'seriousness.' Too much 'seriousness' is a disease and it kills (the spirit). Never take yourself too seriously. Doing this will keep you young too.

Take life seriously, but rarely yourself.



This life lesson came in handy yesterday.

I travel something like 500,000+ air miles a year, but I still fly commercial almost all the time. So you would think I would be good at making scheduled flights. I'm so-so at best, but that's really all my doing. All my fault. I tend to be good at what I want to be good at.

I missed a scheduled flight yesterday, and I'll admit up front that it was partly my fault. Okay, it was all my fault. And in the midst of this 'slow-moving-travel-train-wreck' yesterday, I had to stop and just laugh at myself.

I had after all brilliantly managed to create 100% of this drama for myself, thank you very much. Circumstances were not perfect, but I still had to own it all.

Let's begin with what I could not control.

Yes -- traffic in route to the airport was horrible. CHECK. But of course I should have expected that. When is traffic NOT bad when you need it to be good?

Yes -- the TSA security line at the airport was even worse than the freeway traffic. CHECK. But who ever thinks of a TSA security line as 'free flowing?' That's a gift.

Note to self: If I had simply left earlier for the airport, that would have solved everything.

I didn't plan yesterday's travel well, and for a moment, I did look around for someone else I could blame. I did want as many people as possible to come to my all-access pity-party. But in the end I found only myself.

And that's alright, because I successfully jammed a whole lot of passionate experiences and rich moments into one simple Sunday morning and afternoon. I have no regrets. These were all my decisions.

I had a chance to be miserable, but I chose to be happy instead.

Last night I was standing in a jam-packed security line, knowing full well I would not make the flight ahead of me. And not knowing when the next flight would take off, or whether I could even get on it when it did. Yet, I was still fairly relaxed about the whole thing. These are what I call "High Class Problems." More on HCP's later in this piece.

As for the other 100 or so otherwise intelligence people standing with me in line last night, frankly most of them just seemed to be on some level of 'miserable.' And this, you need to delete from your life. You just want to hit your own personal delete button and choose to feel something else. You could actually feel their negative energy.

Making matters worse, this sense of emotional misery was seeping out and spreading about the terminal area -- in that moment; from passengers in a pre-check 'fast-check' security line, to the TSA agents processing them through security. People just seemed basically unhappy with their lives.

The reality is, if you live in the United States of America, or most any developed country in the world -- your and my daily challenges are in fact luxuries for most people.

Next, I went to get rebooked for another flight, and a professional gentleman wearing a suit came up after me, but with an obvious scowl on his face. He was not a happy camper, and he spoke without words. And I guess he needed to, because when the agent working with me spoke to him, he said not a word in return. He just seemed determined to be in a bad mood.

And unlike me, at that moment this man had a confirmed travel ticket, in business class, a confirmed flight, and a departure time.

I was on my way to speak at the Clinton School of Public Policy in Little Rock, Arkansas, on my book “How The Poor Can Save Capitalism” and the work of my philanthropy Operation HOPE, and this travel drama would interrupt a fairly tight and pre-determined schedule.

But I created this mess, and now I had a new opportunity --- to write a completely new ending to my drama. And so do you, as you start your week.

What I and most everyone else in that airport were experiencing what I call “High Class Problems.” That’s right, High -- Class -- Problems. No one is missing a meal here.

No one was dealing with the very real problems of living and surviving day to day in Haiti. Or surviving the very real human tragedy of Syria, or the Sudan.

No one was dealing with the repressive human assault being distributed far and wide by groups like ISIS in parts of the Middle East and Africa.

We were just dealing with first world air travel drama. Or whatever else you wish to call it….

“Most of my friends, most of the time, are simply managing through a series of High Class Problems. The reality is, we are blessed by even our problems...”

And so, whether you are navigating yourself through an international airport today, or managing office politics tomorrow, or dealing with a less than inspiring boss or supervisor in the normal course of a professional life, understand that drama is as predictable as death and taxes. We might as well adjust our attitude to accommodate for it.

As I said in my last piece for LinkedIn Influencers, life is 10% what life does to you, and 90% how you choose to respond to it. What’s your response to life going to be?

Maybe you cannot control outside events (mostly you can’t), but you can totally control your response to outside events. That should be comforting.

I have trained myself to find the silver lining in most everything that happens in and to my life, and to find the joy, the lesson and the opportunity (for growth) in even the most painful and frustrating events. This is my wish for you, today.

“When you are being run out of town, get in front of the crowd and make like a parade…."

I finally got on a flight, and the world hadn't come to an end as I suspected. And I found real value in my circumstance too.

I was able to stop for a moment and smell the roses, so to speak. I wrote a note to a few special friends, did some reading, caught up on some work �” and wrote this for you!

You may laugh at this �” but really where would we be without our problems? No one invites them, but without them you literally have no personal growth. Remember, rainbows only follow storms. You cannot have a rainbow without a storm first.

How you choose to live your life is a choice.

Everything -- is a choice. Even having a miserable attitude about first-world problems �” is a choice.

And if you make this particular choice, don’t then complain that people you care about then begin to avoid you like the plague.

The universe has a perfect accounting system. Whatever comes around, goes around. When you extend a hand to the world, in time the world finds a way

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