My sister and I are sitting on a beach in Portugal. In front of us, two boys — about eight or nine years old — are playing. A smaller boy — maybe three — walks up to them and tries to join in.

But he is clearly not welcome.

When the little guy asks them something, he is completely ignored.
When he helps with the sandcastle, they start over a few meters away.
When he lays down his towel next to them, they turn their backs.
When one of the older boys casually drops a piece of paper on the ground, he picks it up and says in his tiny voice,
“Here you go, you dropped something.”

All afternoon he keeps trying.

My sister and I admire his persistence.

At the end of the day, the two older boys walk away. And the little one happily calls after them:

“Thanks for playing!”

My sister and I look at each other. We don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I think we did both. We felt so sorry for him — and apparently, he had had the best day.

Perception is everything.

And the beautiful thing is: perceptions are not set in concrete. You can turn them. They determine whether you have a lovely afternoon or a miserable one.

Perceptions are the labels you stick on something — good or bad, pleasant or painful, kind or unkind, beautiful or ugly, rejection or acceptance.

No one makes you angry, sad, happy, or joyful. Your perceptions do. Making someone else responsible for your emotions is easy. Deciding how you feel is less simple. But if you want real influence, look at the perception behind the emotion. That’s where your power is.

I don’t think the little boy was consciously aware of any of this. But what he showed that afternoon was that you decide whether you had a good day or not.

And that applies to everything. (Yes, really.)

“The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human can alter his life by altering his attitude of mind.”
— William James

In the photo, taken by my sister Annamaja, you see my nephew Jim.