I'm not a very tolerant wife. Poor Jamie. He's allowed to moan about something once, then I nip it in the bud. I don't like feeding the beast of negativity.

'For goodness sake, shush, you've said that already. Let it go.' I'll say. There's only so much negativity I can handle, and only so much 'there there' I'm prepared to extend to my love. I'm not one for repeated stories that are purely speculation. You don't know for sure that things will be that bad, and most of the time, the best strategy is just to deal with it - roll with the punches, and find the small joys.

To be fair, he's more a realist - he will read about something and understand what might happen, which can be something that is bad, like this war in the Middle East. I've learnt to trust his viewpoint as he's often annoyingly right. But often his negativity will come from anxiety - so I remind myself to be compassionate first, before telling him to shut up and stop moaning. To be fair, he does the same to me.

I think we both intellectualise negativity - we know it's not good for our mental health, and we know the psychology of it. The more you repeat a negative story, the more it becomes your world view. We can change what we think about the world by changing the stories we tell.

Take a very basic example. Last night, I had an awful sleep. In the past, I would have woken up and started speculating about how I was too tired to deal with the day, and that it was going to be an awful day because of it. These days, I wake up, make a coffee, and stand on the back deck with the sun on my face. I don't articulate the story of how my day might be because it's very likely it'll be just fine, with a bit of tiredness. The stories we tell ourselves can impact the very smallest part of our lives to the largest - how we feel about ourselves, about others, about life itself.

I'm definitely not a Pollyanna, but I choose positivity more than anything else. There's a bright side to everything.

With Love,

Are you on HIVE yet? Earn for writing! Referral link for FREE account here