I can not believe it is already hump day! So many things have been happening this week and I am extremely excited for some of the amazing opportunities starting to arise. Over the past couple of weeks I have been diving deeper through these rosé chats. They have become one of my favorite and hardest posts to write.

Something that has been weighing heavy on my mind this week is positivity. Our attitudes are such a powerful thing, more powerful then we may truly be aware of. To be completely transparent, my attitude used to be extremely affected by the people I was around. This may be the case for you as well, whether you know it or not.

Once I became aware of this I had to make a choice. What was this choice you might be wondering? Well I had to make the choice to learn when to listen to others and when to block them out. I love being there for people, listening to my friends and trying to help them whenever I can. But, I also love being positive, and sometimes these two do not go hand in hand. I learned this lesson the hard way about a year and a half ago. I found myself becoming cynical and not pausing to appreciate the little blessings in life. Instead I was worn down and felt emotionally drained 24/7. I had become someone who was carrying the burdens of those around me. Their negative attitudes and complaining had a direct impact on my attitude towards life. Weird right? Here I was trying to help those around me and instead I was being drug down.

I’ve never been that great at compartmentalizing. It is not how I was wired and in this situation it was creating a snowball effect. My desire to help those I cared about was stealing the positivity in my life. Instead of listening, giving advice and carrying on with my day; I was internalizing their emotions. At first I did not realize what was happening, but slowly as things in my life piled up in combination with the burdens I was taking on it felt overwhelming.

So what do you do? Do you just stop listening and helping your friends and family all together?  Well you can. You do not have to listen to anyone’s problems, you are not their therapist. But the reality of the situation for myself was that I truly couldn’t see myself living life through surface level relationships. So I had to come up with a plan and this is what I did.

• I would listen, give advice when asked and then forget about the situation. This was not an easy change, but I realized at the end of the day these issues were not my own.
• If the same issue continued to come up without any change I would ask the person why nothing had happened from the last time we talked. This gave me the opportunity to discover if they truly were dealing with something or just wanted to complain.
• I accepted the fact that no matter how positive I was, or how hard I tried to provide a solution some people just want to complain. This reality sucks. But there are some people who will never be satisfied and will always have something negative to say. But the great part about this, that is their burden and not yours.

I try my hardest to live a positive life. I love the feeling when everything seems to be going your way and no one can get under your skin. But I have accepted the reality that I will spill that coffee on my shirt, run my toe into the side of a table and have days where it seems the world is against me. I have also accepted the reality that it is my choice to react to every situation that comes my way. Will I react in a positive way every time? Heck no, I am not perfect and that would be freaky weird.

The main purpose of this post, is to try and challenge you. Lets all try and go through one day speaking nothing but positivity into our lives and those around us. Just give it one day, a mere 24 hours. Who knows, it might even turn into two days, a week and before you know it we could have all created a trickle of positivity throughout this world.