Saturday, May 16, 2015

No #news is good news.

Last week as I travelled to the #USA on a business trip, I had several hours to kill and I decided to pick up the newspaper and do some reading. I like to keep up with what’s going on in the world but usually I do this through watching the news on either #BBC or #CNN.

I’m not sure how many of you read daily #newspapers but I was astonished at the incredibly amount of depressing context and news gathered together in a handful of pages. This particular newspaper, the #DailyMail, seemed to concentrate on everything that has gone wrong in the world! Literally from cover to cover all you had was negative stories focusing on the most depressing outlook. These stories ranged from anything in #Politics (which is always depressing) to all sorts of personal issues of people’s tragic lives.

I understand that what sells is sensational stuff and people want to read things that are far from their reality, but why would you want to put yourself through such a depressing time reading such negative stories? I honestly felt like giving up on the world after I put the paper down, it seem a terrible dark place. I don’t know if it was particularly this week but everything seemed to go wrong form events such as the riots in #Baltimore, the glooming #elections in the UK and the #earthquake in #Nepal but all of these an other non-world shattering stories filled the pages, one after an other, with more and more drowning sorrows and negative connotations. I swear that the editors of the paper where going for all negative news.

As I placed the paper on the pocket of my seat I felt excused as if I’d just been to the end of the world and back, travelling through dark waters and mysterious forests! I closed my eyes for a moment, I needed to find some peace within me, I was feeling down, tired and in a right odd mood. I began to think to myself, I had an 8-hour flight, it was a Saturday, I had left behind my family after a short 18-hour stopover at home to change my suitcase, I was still excused from my previous trip and I knew that after this week I had also a fly to my next destination with another 18-hour visit at home to hand over my dirty laundry and get clean shirts… MAN! I was feeling just like the newspaper, negative and full of bad news!

Most people that know me would agree that I am a fairly upbeat person and I always see the positive side of things. I was excited to be going to the USA and the Saturday flight was giving me an opportunity to meet an old friend for dinner before heading to my meeting on Sunday. I also love travelling and I have never been put off by tight schedules or crazy o’clock departure times I tend to do. And even if I just see my family for one day, I try to make the most of that time together. I believe that everything in life is an opportunity so you grab that opportunity and go along with it. So why was I feeling all of the sudden so down? It didn’t take me that long to figure it out!

For years I have been training people on the power of positive and negative thinking and how you can easily be influenced by the external world, and those around you can also change your moods. Someone gives you positive energy by his or her attitude and you feel energised, someone shares his or her negative mentality and it brings you down! Having read so many negative stories in the newspaper had a massive effect on me and had sent me to a deep negative place I was struggling to get out of. It was a strange feeling, as if I had just sat down with the most negative person and they had showered me with all of their negative power. I guess it was just that, except that instead of a person it was the written word! As soon as I realised this was what was keeping me down, I quickly searched for positive influences, burying the newspaper in the nearest bin. I turned to one of my favourite sitcoms “The Big Bang Theory” #bigbangtheory and I was out of my dark hole in no time, feeling both good and inspired (I wish I could write comedy like that) bring my spirits up.


I am sure reading newspapers is an essential part of our lives, and perhaps I picked up the wrong newspaper, on the wrong week, but one thing is for sure, I’m sticking to watching the news on TV to get my daily up-to-date dose of what’s going on in the world and I’ll leave the tabloids for those who enjoy getting depressed on a daily bases!

No comments:

Post a Comment