One of the most difficult things you’ll soon discover as you try to implement this positive philosphy is that unfortunately we live in an extremely negative world and each day we are constantly surrounded by an air of negativity.
Therefore, in the interest of your personal mental and physical health, it is of paramount importance that you are always on your guard 24/7 around the clock with regards to the harmful effects of negativity.
The most deceptive and dangerous negative influence can come from family and friends, who in their defence might be well meaning and quite often don’t realise how destructive their negativity can be. In all fairness, while this is no excuse, they are just like the majority of the population, and no one has educated them regarding the errors of their ways. They just like you, fall victim to the negative influences quietly at work in this mad world of ours.
The important thing is that you are aware of these negative factors constantly at work in the environment. Let’s give you a few simple, practical examples of what I mean by these highly destructive negative influences:
Without doubt the people you mix with have a huge effect on your life, so choose your friends carefully. However, when it comes to your family and colleagues, you have less influence, but being aware of those that represent a negative influence is vital. Then, it’s a case of reducing contact with these negative people as much as you can. In terms of negative friends, the clinical advice is to cut them out of your life, full stop.
If you are anything like me, you were raised to believe that listening to or watching the news on television was so important in order to keep abreast with the most important events and developments in this world. Reading newspapers was also recommended.
While staying informed might be beneficial to some extent, one should be very much aware of the fact that primarily the dose of daily news we are subjected to is highly negative and potentially destructive.
The warning, therefore has to be to take great care as to what is allowed to enter your mind!
Next time you tune in to the latest news or when you next pick up a newspaper, make a rough note of the percentage of its content which is negative. Being exposed to such negativity can only have a destructive effect on your mental and consequently physical health, leaving you feeling bad and depressed.
Therefore, the simple advice would have to be to stop or at least reduce your intake of current news, whatever the medium, and instead focus on filling your mind and life with positive material which will inevitably leave you feeling a hundred times better.
Aled Evans
Better Mental Health 