If you watch the news, read the newspaper and are worried about the future of your children, town, country or world, well then I don’t know how you survive. Really I don’t. We live in dire times, the whole world over. Even just looking at reality will make you negative. Negativity is nearly impossible to beat.
Our family spent some time with people at an event over the weekend, the men my husband chatted to were surrounded by an atmosphere of negativity. My husband came away from there negative and depressed, and it took him a good long while of choosing positivity to overcome it.
So by saying this am I advocating ignoring reality, sticking our heads in the sand and living in blissful ignorance? Not by any means. But I am saying this, negativity makes it worse.
The reality is what it is, some things you can change, some things you can’t. Assess, and then change what you can.
Limit how informed you are. It is good to know a little something about what is going on around you, but read it and then move on. Don’t look at 10 news sites on the same bit of news and then ponder it for the rest of the day. There isn’t much you can do about it, so you are wasting precious mind space that you could be using constructively instead.
Surround yourself with positive, energetic people. Every conversation you have that is negative pulls your spirit down a little.
See life and all its challenges as an opportunity to grow and make a difference.
Read a book about a missionary, or someone who survived World War ll, and instantly realize that your life really is quite wonderful, and that human beings are really quite phenomenal, and that you have by no means reached your limit yet – there is still chocolate available on the shelves! Better still, volunteer to help someone a little less privileged, you will soon feel better about your own circumstances.
Choose life. We have to actively choose life. Negativity and death is thrown at you all day long, you have to counter it. If you don’t, it will kill you slowly. Deuteronomy 30:19 I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live;