I hear talk all of the time!  I work with people everyday of my life and in all kinds of different situations.  I get to see people at their best and at their worst.  And as I get older, I am beginning to learn some simple little truths that have the capacity to have significant impact through our lives, in our relationships and on our planet!

Last week, I heard a lady talking and everything she said was negative.  Her whole conversation consisted of her telling the other person everything that was wrong with everything and everybody else.  I know this lady and she is basically a good person, but she has gotten stuck in the rut of critical negativism and she has no idea how to get out.

I walked away from what I had heard and thought about how damaging it was to this lady, who she was talking to, who she was talking about and anyone else that might have happened to hear it.  Everything she said, she said (in her mind) trying to be helpful, but she was not being helpful.  She was being everything but helpful!

I thought about what would and could happen, if before she went out and started talking all of this negative trash talk, if instead, she decided to take my Grandmother’s advice:  “If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all!” How different would our world be, our relationships be, if we trashed the trash talk and replaced it with talk that builds up and accentuates the positive?

We live in a negative world, and if we expect or hope that it will ever be positive, then we must make this simple change:  Get rid of the negative and replace it with the positive! It’s not easy, but it is possible and it will change our lives, the lives of those around us and our world, if we will just attempt this simple change!