Negativity is Contagious

A while back I was looking at my News Feed on Facebook and reading all my friends statuses. Or would that be stati? Well, spell check says statuses. Good. So, anyway I was reading all my friends statuses and realized that not very many of them are positive. I think it’s because people tend to focus on the negative. Well, negative things are hard to not pay attention to, it’s like they wear bright colors and dance in your peripheral vision while you’re trying to do something else. There’s no way to ignore those brightly-colored-dancing negatives. Well, for girls anyway, I don’t know how boys minds work.

As I was reading these negative statuses I began to feel down too. Then I went to post my new status, and everything was negative. Now, I don’t think there was very many negative things going on in my life at that time. But everything that came out of my fingertips was pessimistic and whiny. That is because negative attitudes are contagious. I see it all the time when I was student teaching and directing. When one kid whines, other kids who usually just do what’s expected of them were like “yeah, I think this is dumb too!” then that negativity spreads like wild fire, then a lot of my theatre 1 kids get a bad grade on their assignments. Some people are incredibly good though, and they’re surrounded by a force field of good thoughts and feelings that negativity can’t penetrate. They always got good grades. I wonder where one can purchase this force field, or where it can be obtained. It must be a learned attitude that will take a lot of work to get.

Well, you gotta start somewhere! So, I have been trying to not be negative on my facebook statuses, and I have noticed that the ones that aren’t negative always get more responses from people. I wrote that I wanted a cupcake and 4 people liked it and two put a ring on it, meaning they wrote a comment.

Okay, I admit it, sometimes I do write negative things too. But that’s because those little dancers have moved in front of my computer and I can’t think of anything else. Sometimes it takes me a little while to think of something positive. But, as the day goes on, I realize I think in facebook statuses and decide what I’m going to post long before I’m even near a computer to post it. I hope I’m not the only one who does that, I would guess that’s a sign of addiction. But that helps me to find a positive status, and I try to post a new status before I read anything else on my facebook, so it can’t be influenced by all that contagious negativity.