Don’t allow somebody else’s emotional compass to pull you in a direction that you don’t want to go, a direction that makes you feel uncomfortable and produces negative emotions in you. There is an undercurrent of dissatisfaction in many places and a negative emotional atmosphere spreads like wildfire, if you let it. You are feeling great one minute and sad, irritated, or unsettled the next.
We listen to the news and there isn’t often anything positive or heart-gladdening there either. I’ve actually stopped listening regularly to news bulletins. Is it just me or do people only enjoy hearing bad news and watching disasters unfold? Of course we need to know what is going on in the world around us but there doesn’t seem to be much balance. There really is a lot of good happening but the media seems to like to keep that hidden from us.
Have you been here?
You walk into somewhere and you can cut the atmosphere with a knife. There is nothing positive going on. Alternatively, someone arrives is your space and again you can feel the cloak of negativity that they have brought with them.
These people are everywhere. They are like the walking dead. Complaining has become a national sport and we all must take some responsibility for trying to stamp it out.
I used to allow other people’s moods to take me down with them. I would respond in kind because I thought agreeing with them was the polite thing to do. I allowed my emotional compass to become misaligned with my true direction and a hated how that was making me feel. Time for change. Enough is enough.
The minute you give in to someone’s negativity you are on a slippery slope south. When you click in to the fact that these individuals are affecting your own way of feeling and being, that’s the moment to take action.
Get back on track
Keeping our emotional compass pointing true north keeps us in a healthy emotional state but it takes work because naysayers are all over the place and can be very powerful. They pop up when we least expect them, so always be on your guard.
Recently I was taking the tram home. Next to me a lady began her critique of the shoes that a girl opposite had been wearing. The heels were too high, the toes too pointy, sure to break an ankle… Didn’t I agree? No I didn’t. That’s the fashion. I always wore high heels when I was twenty. They always made me feel wonderfully feminine. When I asked her what shoes had made her feel feminine and sexy when she was younger she almost fell off her seat. But I had succeeded in my aim of making her think. She actually smiled and told me about her first pair of ‘grown up’ shoes. She had taken me halfway south on my emotional compass and I was not about to go there. I like to think that I took her a little way north too.
Please keep the comments coming.
Vivien
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