One of the worse things you can do for your positive thinking is to watch, listen and read the News. I have deliberately not watched the news for over five years now.

I believe that all the negativity from the news media, leads people to think that the world is such a dreadful place and that there is a mugger around every corner. In which case, we should be mugged at least 300 times a year.

Friends of mine always states that they have to keep in touch with what is going on in the world and they don’t feel ‘connected’ until they have a coffee and have watched the news on TV. I just call it an addiction.

When I finally gave up watching the news it was like I had tried to give up drugs. I had the cold turkeys and felt that I was missing out on something. However, I quickly began to realise that there is more positive stuff going on in the world.

Don’t get me wrong there will be more natural and unnatural disasters that we will not have any control over and the most I can do is to be giving of my time, prayer and money to help those made homeless and lost families in need of water, food, and shelter. It is important to help others whenever you can however you can.

There will of course be those who say that the world will end in 2012 or that the earth will reclaim what it needs to survive. They say to expect more disasters and misery leading up to and in 2012. I’m more optimistic and I tend to throw out that mumbo jumbo stuff as pessimistic nonsense. There is no doubt that we need to be kinder to the world and each other. We really don’t need a pending disaster to tell you to love each other as we would love ourselves. The real pain is not being able to tell those people we have lost how we love them.

There will always be someone who will tell me what disasters I have missed on the news. I never get over the surprised look on their faces when I say that I didn’t hear about that particular incident.

Spending time watching the news is really wasting time. I do believe that we can spend our time more productively than to swamp our minds negative news. As I say, someone will always find away to bring the negative in to a conversation. I do turn it around and ask what they are doing to help those in need and how we can work together to make a change to the positive. It is hard to get someone to look at the positive in every situation when they are tuned in to seeing the negative. I know that it is hard when you have lost love ones to suddenly start to see the positives. I just think that we need to recognise that in our grieve, we need to be strong and show respect to those we have lost, by living life to the full and giving to life in the full.

I throw down this challenge. Give up the news for the next 30 days and pay close attention to how you are viewing the world after 30 days. I can guarantee that you will see more positives in the world than you ever did.