Kill Your TV

by Jason Parker

Mix 104.7's afternoon personality

They say it takes less muscle power to smile than it does to frown, but in the daily routine that is life, it seems to take less effort to be negative than it does to be positive. Open up your senses and just look for it. Find it. Now, either change it or stay away from it. It might be a situation or a person, either way exposing yourself to constant negativity puts you on the fast track to being burnt out on people, work, school, love, faith, and sometimes even life.

Negativity is cancer. It eats away at our surroundings. The more it is fed, the more powerful it becomes. Nothing destroys the workplace environment with more efficiency than negativity. Negativity will turn going to work into a daily test of will, rather than another manageable day at the office. Negativity tends to turn things into a tuna fish sandwich. You could eat the tuna fish sandwich and that would be fine, and you could throw the tuna fish sandwich away and that would be fine as well. After all it is just a tuna fish sandwich.

Why all the philosophy? It started when I got a survey from my high school of all places. How they found me, I have no idea; I disowned them a long time ago. I guess they have the same technology as Blockbuster when it wants it's late fees.

The survey asked basic questions about how well the school prepared me for life, work, and such. The final two questions were, in order "what was your life's goal your senior year" and "what is your life's goal now". Crazy enough I learned a lesson from that because the answer to the first was "to make a ridiculous amount of money", and the answer to the latter question was "To change the World for the better." As goofy as that may sound to you, that is truly my long-term goal. If because of this article just one of you decides that you have had enough of the negativity at school, home, amongst friends, or at work and decides to do something positive about it, then my path to reaching that goal is correct and true.

I'm not getting all 4-H gooey on you and telling you that you can turn lemons into lemonade. I'm just saying that when something that isn't a tuna fish sandwich becomes a tuna fish sandwich, then stand up, put both arms out, stop the world, and put it back in a positive spin.