Picture the scene – you wake after a good night’s sleep to a bright sunny morning. The birds are chirping and you feel a sense of contentment with the world.
But then the kids squabble. You meet another mum at the school gate moaning about the school’s poor communication. You bump into someone on the way to work who wants to gossip about someone else’s failure.
By the time you have arrived at work, you wonder what happened to the feeling of contentment that you woke up with.
You may not experience this kind of thing every day, but we all know how it feels when negativity leaves you feeling angry with the world. We can’t always avoid this negativity, but we do have a choice in how we respond and let it affect us. For example, you could choose to suggest a positive action in response to the school’s lack of communication, or choose to challenge the negative gossip. We can rise above negativity and bring something positive.
Jaime Thurston challenges us to ‘go high’:
“Stooping to the level of those around you will have a negative effect on your mind and body, and add more toxicity to the world. Choosing to ‘go high’ will boost your feel-good brain chemicals and you might even convert a few negative people along the way.” Kindness: the little thing that matters most
You may not have woken happy with the world; you may have already started the day feeling negative. I have found that choosing to be thankful even for small things can help to reset my brain to a more positive mode, a choice to rise above my own negative feelings.
So take the challenge to ‘go high’, whether this means rising above other people’s negativity or your own. Choose thankfulness, choose to focus on solutions not problems and most of all choose to be kind!