Positively Inspired

As I’m sure many of you reading this are aware, it’s not easy to stay positively inspired day after day. Personal issues aside, we are assaulted constantly by a barrage of bad news and negative influence through local and national news outlets, murky moral messages sent through our popular entertainment outlets and through the actions and attitudes of people who struggle under the weight of a society more predisposed than ever to the perverse and to playing up the bad in spite of the good that exists all around us.

Let’s be honest. The fashion of the day is cynicism and despair. It’s worn on the faces and attitudes of those around us like an emotional straight-jacket. We get up in the morning, turn on the radio or TV and proceed to willingly allow ourselves to be strapped in to the binds of a world gone bad as described and, dare I say, even promoted through a monetarily motivated media machine. You can be sure this beast is bent on keeping you strapped in to the sensationally negative news that fuels the engine of sound bites and sixty second marketing moments that punctuate the chaos dished out in sickeningly larger portions. We are treated to an ever increasing smorgasbord of sensationalism being peddled as informative and important.

 The solution of the media market is more of the same. Their major backers, the corporate interests, who pay for the dynamic sound bites and visually appealing interludes, have figured out that it’s pretty darned lucrative to tell you to pop a pill or purchase a product to make it all go away. Sadly, the commercials have become the relief between the servings of mayhem and horror, bad news and bickering that has become the norm for what we call news and entertainment.

Fortunately, there’s a solution available to anyone brave enough or bold enough to implement it. Turn off the noise and distraction that permeates your thoughts and controls your actions and feelings. I mean this literally and figuratively. Don’t listen, look or otherwise participate in the feeding frenzy at the trough of a corporately controlled machine that calls itself news and entertainment.  What pray tell are newsworthy about two political pundits verbally pounding each other while ignoring issues that will solve problems instead of creating more? What’s entertaining about sitting down nightly to feast on negative programs that disgust and play up the seedier side of humanity? These things we are being fed by those that control the airwaves and our minds serve to kill us physically, socially, mentally and spiritually through stress, despair and fear. They play to our weaknesses, not our strengths.

Turn it off. Turn it all off. It’s killing us as a society, as families, as humans who have a need to care and trust and love. The fashion of the day is lust, greed and fear, and it comes in the form of an emotional straight jacket that we don every time we allow these negative messages to come into our lives.

If you want to be happy, content and fulfilled you must make a decision to be so. No one forces you to watch and listen. We all do so because this is what we are taught is normal and acceptable, and after all, everyone else does it, so it must be okay, right?

So how does one stay positively inspired in a media world bent on dragging us through hell?

Here’s a list that will point you in the direction of creating an attitude and personality of positivism.

• Turn off the noise. Make your new habit one of freedom from the electronic leash that keeps you tethered to negative news and programming. Instead read a book on how to personally improve yourself and those around you. Take a walk and enjoy the benefits that exercise will give you physically and mentally.

• Don’t participate in the negative talk and actions that permeate many work places. It’s no wonder so many people hate their jobs when there isn’t any other reason to be there than to make enough to pay for those pills and products that you’ve been convinced you must have in order to fit in. Be a positive influence by making it your goal to share something uplifting and positive each day you come to work. A smile is often enough to let people know you are out to make a difference.

• Set goals to change your life for the better by helping others change their life for the better. Volunteerism is a great way to begin this journey. If you wish to feel better about yourself, start by helping others feel better. Become a giver, not a taker. You will be amazed at the results.

• Look for positive solutions to problems. When you do you will be contributing to the well being of our world. You may also find that the solution you come up with is one that others have passed by and never even noticed. This is how progress is made. In fact it’s the only way progress is made!

• Be determined to succeed and being the change you desire in the world. Everything starts with individuals, like you and me, who decide to take it upon themselves to create a better world. It’s not some other person's problem. It’s ours, and until we admit it and make the transition from being victim to leader, nothing will change or get better.

• Accept responsibility for your thoughts and actions. None of us are perfect. We all make mistakes. It’s when we compound those mistakes by not allowing ourselves to admit our problems and not accept help in solving them that we stumble and fall.

• Be tolerant of those around you. Not everyone understands the value of being a giver instead of a taker. Lead from the middle and do it by being the best example that you can. Set the example of tolerance, integrity and honesty and never waver in your mission to help others discover the virtue and strength of these three characteristics.

• Share goodness and spread it where ever you go.
• Listen before you think, think before you speak, and always speak to share honestly and openly out of love, not anger or fear.

Today’s news and entertainment appear to be designed specifically to serve the economic and political purposes of those who have a controlling interest in the airwaves. Fortunately most of us can still choose whether to be a part of it or not. We can even choose to fill those same airwaves with our own brand of positive information and share it in a spirit of love and concern for the well being of our fellow travelers in life. That’s what I’m hoping to do here.

Turn off the negativity and choose to stay positively inspired. If you truly want to be happy in this life this is your first step to realizing that goal.

#michaelddavis

"I simply write what I feel, because it matters to me. Hopefully some of it will resonate with and matter to you as well" - MDD