Day Fifty-Three: Negativity is Contagious

Try as I might, every morning I wake up and attempt to be optimistic. Granted, it's not the first thought that pops into my head (it's usually, "ugh" when the alarm goes off), but as I'm making my bed I try to pick out the positive points of the day. For example, this morning I was positive about it being Thursday. I was also a little negative that it was ONLY Thursday, but it's a good start. I was positive about breakfast, because I love it. I was positive about it not snowing outside, which is a rare occurence these days in such parts. I was also positive about the idea that tonight is I am not held down by an appointment, and can go home and eat a nice, leisurely dinner as usual and putz around the house, go to the grocery store, or do what I felt like without rushing somewhere else.

But somehow as the morning progressed, I got increasingly negative. The people on the phone made me negative. People I communicated with made me negative. And while some of them definitely had specific reasons to be negative, I still got negative just the same, from a combination of that and just growing generally annoyed by little things. Then, it became only Thursday. It wasn't snowing out, but it was cloudy. My breakfast had worn off and I'd gotten hungry. I was thinking about not being able to spend my weekend as I liked. I started thinking about how the afternoon would probably seem to drag on for days. I wanted six chocolate chip cookies in the middle of my negative spell. And then I mentally smacked myself.

Just because others were negative, it didn't mean I had feel their negativity, too. I tried to ignore the people who are pointlessly negative, and help those who are upset for good reason. And when it comes to myself, I'm trying to be at least 60% positive all the time. Usually, I'm pretty good at being optimistic, but for some reason, I feed off the negativity of others and become negative myself. I usually take the mood of whoever I am around at the time, which is completely unhealthy and one of the reasons I don't want a roommate. I don't want my mood affected by a stranger. But negativity really is quite contagious. If one person is negative and brings down someone else, they could bring down two more people, and in no time everybody's pissed off. It's no way to live. So try to stay positive.