Your attitude is like a box of crayons that color your world. Constantly color your picture gray, and your picture will always be bleak. Try adding some bright colors to the picture by including humor, and your picture begins to lighten up.

Your attitude colors everything, always

We talk a lot about thinking positive, but this quote nails something more specific: attitude isn't just about outcomes, it's about the actual texture of your daily life. Two people can face identical situations—a delayed flight, a rejected idea at work, rain on a Saturday—and one person's world looks genuinely different from the other's. Not because their circumstances changed. Because they picked a different crayon.

The humor part is what makes this practical rather than preachy. It's not saying "just be happy." It's recognizing that the quickest way to shift your own perspective is to find something funny about the mess you're in. A bad meeting becomes tolerable when you notice the absurdity of it. A frustrating day becomes bearable when you can laugh at yourself. Humor isn't an escape from reality—it's a way of holding reality without letting it flatten you completely.

The tricky part is that this isn't automatic. Your brain has strong habits about which crayons to reach for. But Klein's point is that the choice exists. You can notice when you're defaulting to gray and deliberately grab something brighter. It won't change what happened. It will change how you actually live through what's happening next.