Want Good Out, Put Good In

I was driving to a client’s office today, listening to the news, which may or may not have been a good thing. As I arrived and walked into the building my mind was filled with the words and phrases I had just spent an hour absorbing. Most of it being news items about horrible things happening. There was passion, anger, fear and even prejudice all over every story. It wasn’t until the last story that someone actually sounded happy.

I sat down and got to work, with ideas swirling around in my head that were not going to help me get today’s work done. I remembered why I do not watch the news, listen to the news or even pay attention to the news. It took me a while to get back to being me, which meant pushing out all the information swirling around my brain. Do we need news, sure. Do we need to choose when, how often, and how much we absorb, indeed! Am I woefully uninformed – absolutely! And I find I am much happier because of it.

We are our thoughts. What we think about all day impacts and controls our behaviors. If we think negative thoughts – anger, fear, prejudice – then we will create and act with those underlying elements impacting our life. If we choose to think about positive things – hope, possibilities, options, opportunity – then we build and exude a life filled with those life affirming elements spread through our world. Sounds simple, yet the hard part is controlling our thoughts such that we can choose how our life goes by what we think about. Control what goes in and we control what comes out.

So today I am working hard to cleanse my thoughts of the negative and fill my mind with positive. I want to be positive, happy, hopeful AND someone who spreads that mindset everywhere she goes. To fuel that habit, that attitude, I am going to work harder to only put in the good stuff and slough off the negative. Which means on my drive home no news, only upbeat music or ideas. Control what you can, what goes in, which will help you control what goes out. Want to be more positive and happy, put in more positive and happy.

Note: There are people who call me ‘stupid’ for not following the news. I actually had someone call me naive and ignorant because I do not keep up on current events. I smiled and told them I appreciate their opinion. I then let them know that if it is important enough, someone will tell me about it. I didn’t know Queen Elizabeth died for two days. In those two days nothing changed in my world, and when I found out I was sad and had a moment of remembrance on her incredible reign. As far as I know England was still up and running even though I was late in being informed.