Have you ever noticed how watching talk shows or other programs featuring the worst behavior humanity has to offer can put you in a terrible frame of mind yourself?
It’s almost as if emotions are contagious, or can be absorbed from others. For this reason it’s good to beware what you let in, so you don’t sink to the depths of the lowest common denominators yourself.
The same can be said for the people in one’s life. I have to admit I have long had an affinity to folks who are struggling, and I find a lot of satisfaction from trying to help people out. But I have to watch this tendency, so that I don’t get bogged down myself.
And I have come to also realize sometimes people are so toxic and troubled yet hell bent on their ways that it’s best to limit your direct exposure to them altogether and to pray from afar that they will figure things out in time. They are simply too toxic!
Even the news can have this negative affect because mostly news is about what’s going wrong, not what’s going right.
It’s just so much easier to live a positive happy life when you consciously surround yourself with positive and happy people and ideas. And when you yourself are positive and happy, you pass those same emotions on to others!
Let those who have ears hear.
This is really important advice not just for romantic relationships, but for friendships and platonic interactions as well. If someone routinely complicates your life or stresses you out with an outrageous number of complaints, its important to step back and evaluate what that friendship means to you. I’m not saying abandon your friends when they need help, but surrounding yourself with the kind of life you want and the emotions you want to feel has to be a priority, too.
I never watch the local news; too many terrible stories and all of them too close to home!
Indeed Lunar. I stopped watching the news several years ago, and I really don’t miss it. I figure the news that matters most is what’s happening within 20 miles or so of where I live. Not that world events aren’t important but there’s little I can do about those troubles, better to focus on things I may be able to make a positive difference. This blog has a surprisingly (to me!) international readership so hopefully in that way I am sending out little ripples that help make the world a better place. I sure hope so! Thanks for commenting 🙂
“If bleeds it does, leads it does” philosophy the local news does use.
Life not as bad as they lead you to believe
Yes, you do have to be careful. Attitude is contagious. Bear videos help.
That’s very due Yoda. Despite falling crime rates for decades, from the news one would be led to believe crime is up and there’s danger around every corner! I suppose it’s human nature to rubberneck, so those stories get people to watch, so they do more of those stories, a vicious negative cycle. Would anyone watch a “good news!” Channel?
Watching local news dumber you it does make
Take your TV to the range and use it for target practice! The day you go TV-free will be a milestone that you will look back on for the rest of your life in the same way alcoholics can tell you the day they stopped drinking.
AT I don’t have a TV anymore and haven’t for years!
Well, that just moved you a lot higher on my list of people I’d like to meet. TV free is the only way to go.
Do you take happy-pills (SSRI’s)?
@ Toad no re: SSRIs. I am flattered! However as I have already told Ton (who wanted to trade my brother a Harley for me!) that while I am glad poly works for him, it’s not for me.
I gave up TV when they switched from analog to digital and I could no longer get PBS, the only thing I watched were travel shows on Sat. Nights. I do get other channels but they just have garbage programming. I refuse to pay for cable/dish because it seems people I know who have it pay $80 a month and there’s still nothing worth watching on. I could care less about pop culture so I am happy to live media free under my little rock. 🙂 plus it leaves me time to think and write and do other stuff I stead of getting brainwashed by TV. I don’t miss it! And my kids are also not being exposed to all that garbage either.
. And my kids are also not being exposed to all that garbage either.
A good thing this is
A fine example make you do
Thanks Yoda, I am glad you approve! 🙂
On Degoba, TV we have not
Get to know Mrs Yoda better because of this I do
Even after 800 years true this is
I have never owned a real TV. For programs like Battlestar Galactica or Blacklist, I’ll hear about them from the Grapevine and then only wait when a few seasons stack up to then stream them on Netflix or Amazon Prime. That keeps the distraction and the obsession down to a minimum. The news I get as RSS feeds through Feedly and focus mostly on crafts and international news.
This strategy mostly keeps the riff-raff out.
I too have Netflicks and Amazon Prime, but rarely have the time for watching movies w all my other interests. When I did have cable even then it was history, food, travel, and home improvement stuff I watched. I like learning. 🙂
I guess that I don’t need broadcast television anymore. All the good bear videos are on youtube. To add to that, there are a lot of documentaries.
Never stop learning.
The only time we miss television (haven’t had it for about a year now) is college football season. We have to go out to watch the games. 🙂
We also have Amazon Prime and Netflix.
The boys miss shark week on Animal Planet, but that’s just one week a year and not worth paying for service the rest of the year.
LOL about AT and Ton 🙂 Haha Bloom you’re definitely going to make some man extremely happy!!!
Anyway, I know it sounds corny, but it really does help to think happy thoughts (pixie dust anyone?) and to just do things that make you happy.
Dragonfly perhaps I am missing out but I just can’t even imagine a poly situation, or bringing my kids into that situation. Too much complexity for me. If it works for folks great, I just can’t picture it and giving it a whirl to see seems unwise in my situation. Not that I haven’t wished for a kitchen wife, and a laundry wife, and a garden wife from time to time! Lol.
I think you’re very wise! Especially to think of your children and their lives being affected by what you you do, or who you link yourself to.
LOL Sister wives… it would kind of be helpful to have women doing everything everywhere… hmmm. 😛 I’m kind of sad to say that more women competing for attention, time, etc. from one man might drive him crazy – must be a super alpha to manage that scenario. Either that or all the women would have to be extremely kind and sweet – which I’ve found to be extremely rare in real life!
I presume that polygamy will increase in the near future. Now that homosexual marriage is quickly becoming the “norm”, other alternative arrangements will arise as well. For alternative arrangements we have homosexuality and polygamy. I wonder what other derivatives of human coupling others can think of?? Any body will to speculate out loud?
At Dalrocks about three years ago there was a post about a woman opting to marry her cat.
Bloom, wait a minute. Last time I spoke to she who must not be named, she asked if I was seeing anyone. She understands my position on what she did and knows I consider us to still be married, regardless of what some family court judge said. She asked if I could see myself getting another wife and I said sure, I’m dating a bi-girl and if she ever wanted to come home to plan on all of us sharing a bed.
I think that pretty much guarantees she’ll never, ever inflict herself on me again, but even if I disregarded my own advice and took up with just one woman, I’d still have two wives. One with me and the other off in feminist never-never land collecting cats with children who now hate her.
However, wanting to get to know you IRL is not to say that I’m angling at getting in your pants/skirt/dress whatever. Besides… you probably wear a bra and I truly hate those things. Wear a bra and you’re safe around me, it’s like female body armor.
Anyway, right now I’m kind of in a weird form of detox. I just reconnected with a buddy I haven’t seen in 27 years. He used to be my sparring partner before he went to the all Marine Corps boxing team. He could clean my clock in seconds if he wanted to, had a left hook that came out of no-where. And if I adjusted for the left hook, the straight right got me every time. This morning he asked me why I kept sparing with him when he could knock me out anytime he wanted. I looked at his wife and then at him and said “because you were the only one I could go all-out with. I could go 100% and you could handle it. Nobody else was like that.” He was fast like you can’t believe. He now lives in a neighborhood surrounded by Army and Navy veterans so we caught massive shit over the weekend (interservice rivalry never goes away) but the only way the weekend could have been better was if we were blowing stuff up. I spent a weekend that was great and got to know brothers I never knew I had. (Which is why I use the detox analogy, I’m still high as a kite and that has nothing to do with how much I drank- not much)
@Dragonfly
Get to know some Christian poly families and your mind will forever be changed. Everybody wants to think of it as a never-ending orgy, but that’s the furthest thing from the truth. You’ve heard that many hands make light work? Put 4 adults in a household and the chores get taken care of fast. Income is a lot higher and somebody losing a job isn’t an instant crisis. Yes, the wives will compete, but from what I’ve seen when it’s anyone from outside the family they stand together. Loyalty is one of the areas in which they compete.
Years ago I was in 2 different poly relationships and my experience matches what I’ve seen from folks who have poly marriages. Women only think they don’t like it until they get familiar with it. Believe it or not, back in the 1800’s the Mormon women (who were completely familiar with both polygyny and monogamy) preferred polygynous marriages over monogamous marriages. That’s a published fact. That was back before birth control when children popped out every 9 months and 3 days on monogamous marriages (grin).
@Poseidon740
It’s funny that you lump polygyny with homosexuality, because that’s the straight-up feminist response. Polygyny is the ultimate patriarchal marriage. If you’re a Christian that’s a real problem because if you look carefully (Jeremiah 31:31-32) you’ll see that God said He had two wives… God does not regulate sin, he prohibits and condemns it. Yet, with polygyny He regulated it (just like farming). God took credit for giving King David multiple wives (2nd Samuel 12:8) and I could go on and on, but the fact is there’s nothing wrong with polygyny and nothing in the NT changed that.
In a marriage in which guy was married to two or more women, there is literally nothing they could do in bed together that would be a sin except for 2 things: sex while one of them was on her period, or sex with one of them for 40 days after she’d had a baby boy or 80 days after she’d had a baby girl (Leviticus 12). Other than that, there is literally nothing forbidden (go ahead, read Leviticus 18 very carefully).
@posidon “I presume that polygamy will increase in the near future. Now that homosexual marriage is quickly becoming the “norm”, other alternative arrangements will arise as well.”
I think you’re exactly right. It will increase, also possibly the age/consent laws pushed back – bringing in eventual pedophilia marriages – the Muslims already do it! 😦 Europe is even accepting their pre-teen pregnant brides and child-marriages.
@AT I don’t know if you saw Just Saying’s recent comment (maybe a day or so ago) on poly-relationships, and he basically said the same thing you did about the women competing. But he said that sometimes they’ll gang up on one of the girls… THAT girl would be me lol. I think I’m too nice to be able to fend off other women well at this point. I’ve actually lost a job before in part because a female coworker was slandering me to my male boss who had a relationship with her for years before hiring me. And he really liked me, I was one interviewee out of 10 and was his first and most desirable pick. But his “main girl” being maybe a little envious of me doing well there (I had taken over her duties and had actually done a little better than she’d been doing), and slandering me to him behind my back erased all that.
If you have any tips on how to deal with that kind of situation (women using dirty tactics to compete with you), I’m all ears.
I like to watch old movies and TV series for wisdom. Double Marriage 1937 is one example. Great quote! And Father Knows Best has some interesting info like “70% of the country’s wealth is controlled by women”.
You just have to remember to throw out the bathwater.
@ Toad my apologies for misunderstanding. And yes I do wear a bra. Lol. As I said I really know nothing about the poly lifestyle and have never seen it up close so I can’t really picture it. I do know women though, and how they can be. Maybe the man would not be affected by or see that as much but it seems to me that part could be really dicey. It would take the right folks to make it work.
I dated someone whose father was murdered because he was having an affair with a married woman. Biggest life lesson was to analyze a man and his relationship with his father.