Tips for Cutting Negativity from Your Life

A healthy person has to trim some things out of their life at times. Think about the attitude you want to have in your life. More than likely, you’d like to be a happy person who enjoys daily living. It’s important to make that a conscious decision, but you might have trouble making this happen if you have a lot of negativity in your life. To make your positive attitude plan a reality, you need to remember the you may need to cut the negativity out of your life.

Life Tool Box

Through this series of blog posts I am going to help you to continue to assemble your Life Tool Box. The tool box will be filled with lots of simple living skills. When you are having a rough time in your life, just look in the Life Tool Box and find the best skill to help you that day.

Each week I’ll continue to choose one common home improvement tool to represent one of these life skills. By the end of each blog post, you’ll understand exactly why you need that tool and how you can use it to improve your daily life.

Let’s Add the Saw

When used carefully, a saw is a powerful and important tool. You must handle it with care because you can easily become hurt. But when used with skill, it has a vitally important role in building highly useful things like furniture and homes.

In order to build and create, you must sometimes cut and trim. You wouldn’t throw a bunch of 2×4 pieces of wood together and call that a wall, right? A carpenter has to carefully measure each piece and cut them to make sure they fit together properly. If there are any bad spots in the wood, those pieces must be trimmed off. Your wall won’t hold up and could rot away if the saw isn’t used on each piece of wood.

You might have a stressed-out coworker who frequently complains throughout the day. Maybe your spouse has been noticing more aches and pains as they get older – and tells you about it at every chance. Even your friends might grouse about their neighbors, their dog, or whatever’s going on at the moment.

So how do you grow as a positive person in a negative world? It’s a simple two-step process. Cut out negativity and add more positivity. Let’s take a look at a few tips on doing both things.

Cut out Negativity

1. Identify friends and coworkers who tend to complain a lot about nearly everything. You probably know more than a few.

2. They probably make negative comments about a lot of the same things. Learn to catch on to the most common topics, triggers, or situations.

3. When they bring up one of these issues, find a way to quickly change the subject or step away for a moment. Even better, make yourself scarce before they can bring it up.

4. If these tactics don’t work, you may need to spend less time with them overall. Negativity is exhausting and you gain little from giving it a lot of attention.

Add More Positivity

1. If you feel you need to listen to your friend for a while, quickly turn the topic into a positive direction. Offer suggestions of action that can help them solve their problem. Teach them the “three step formula to get unstuck” form a previous blog I wrote.

2. Make sure you fill your bookshelf, iPod, email, or TV set with positive uplifting things. Wherever you spend the most time absorbing some form of reading or music, be sure it only adds to your joy and optimism.

3. Spend more time around people you can count on to bring a smile on your face. Those are the people that will help you fill your cup every day.

Make Big Changes

Sometimes you have to use a powerful tool like a saw to make big changes. When a piece of wood gets sawed in two, it will never be the same. However, it might also mean that those two pieces become part of a beautiful chair or picture frame. They had to be cut and trimmed to become something better.

Like a carpenter trims pieces of wood to fit together, you may have to use a saw to cut the negativity out of your life. It can hurt and it can be difficult to trim away relationships and interactions you once enjoyed. But if negativity is bringing you down, you need a powerful tool for change.

Tell me

How have you cut the negativity out of your life? Was it difficult or did you find that it felt much better?

 

 

Dr. Ines K. Roe has been helping women in transition rediscover themselves for over 20 years. If you’re  been feeling unfulfilled, are frustrated with your sense of accomplishment in midlife, or simply need guidance on your path to holistic well being, consider her ecourses.