Spinning it in Port: Positive Outlook Makes All the Difference

I know you think this blog will be about the amazing Spin Facility at ... but it's not. You want in on that action, just get on a real bike and ride over there. It's a fantastic way to while away the long nights of winter. 

No ... I am talking about spinning, the art of taking a different view of things, particularly challenging (bad) things and then broadcasting your view about until the world starts to appear better, or until you get your agenda accomplished. 

I was listening to a coach at my sixth-grade son's football awards banquet. The team had a pretty (poor) record and the coach was taking care to walk around this point before a passel of dads and moms, gathered to see their boys. He explained to them that they were beginning and worked to build a case for it being wonderful to have so far to go until they get to the point where the varsity team went — one game shy of state victory. His tone was positive as he explained that they had so much ahead they were going to learn and that the teams they played provided intense lessons, and what not. And, of course it was all ... true. Or valid. 

Port needs some Spin Doctors. There are what we used to call "problems" here. Back in the day a person might look at the 29 percent or so unoccupied space downtown, all the "for sale" or "for lease" cards in windows, and say something like "Whoa — where's everyone headed?"

I say, come on boys and girls — let's not rain on our own cancelled parade! Let's spin this! So we could advertise broadly that Port is a city with 29 percent possibility! Twenty-nine percent opportunity abounds in Port!

You know those realtor ads that say things like, "Bring your imagination to this dollhouse," when they are talking about a tiny teardown? We should take our lead from them! 

What else do we spin? Some people claim the local business is down about 25 percent. I wish I had done that well. I say, avoid the word "down." It's such a downer. Never helps a thing ... just makes everyone sad. It's like the grey paint of the vocabulary. 

Instead of saying, "We took in 25 percent less than last year and may become extinct soon," we could spin out, "At years end, we will have reached 75 percent of our goals!!!!" This still sounds weak but look at those exclamation points. Four of them. You start smiling at the fourth. A grin starts to break at the corners of your mouth. 

Unemployment can be spun as "Fun Job Search Going On!" Instead of high unemployement, we can reveal that a lot of our population is engaged in a fun initiative to find new and exciting jobs! Yeehah!

You put these facts together and, right here in Port, we have a city loaded with opportunity, headed toward ever higher bars (the goal sort not pubs), in which folks are engaged in exciting quests to exercise their competencies! 

Now that is a town you can write home about. That is my kind of town.