An email was circulating recently with a subject line of “life is like a garbage truck”. The email jokingly, but correctly, stated that when a person constantly gets verbal and emotional garbage dumped on them, they eventually get full and have to dump that garbage elsewhere, meaning another person.

To continue that analogy, unfortunately that garbage usually gets dumped on the easiest target, a loved one, child or spouse. Negativity is toxic and contagious, it’s also hard to avoid these days. It seems that a lot of friends need a sounding board and are only too happy to dump their trash all over you without regard as to what you are going to do with it. It’s actually very disrespectful for any person to heave their problems onto another on a constant basis and this is one thing a lot of people should understand and take it as such. However, most people want to help which is in our nature, but sometimes enough is enough and when you get to that point it’s time to stop accepting loads of trash from the toxic person.

The notion of negativity being a pandemic is interesting and worthy of thought as it does seem like we are all garbage trucks sometimes as we drive around on our collection routes while we progress through the day and look for an easy place to unload. There are several ways we can combat negativity in our daily lives however. Recognize, eliminate and change your perception.

Recognizing the guilty person or persons that are feeding you negativity is first and foremost the avenue to being relieved of negative thought. The culprit could be as simple as too much daily news, that nagging coworker, or the friend that never takes your good advice. Get away from that stuff and replace it with something you’d rather do. That is the next step, elimination, once you do some introspection and figure out who or what is bringing you down, get rid of it.

Perception is also key in keeping the pandemic of negativity off your shoulders. There will always be a war, death, famine and anything else that you don’t want to hear about, but you can’t concentrate on that. Most of us like to be up to date on the news so we can converse on an intelligent and informed level about world events but don’t make it your job to try to cure it all. There are many positives that can be better worth your while to concentrate upon and it gives off a much better feeling for yourself and toward others.

The only way to stop a pandemic is to start with yourself, sort of like staying home if you have the flu so others don’t get infected. It is a world of negativity but it can be easily perceived in other ways as long as you don’t go around accepting piles of trash all day which perpetuates the pandemic.