Dear LPG, 

I have a question for each and every LPG reader who feels a little negative sometimes first thing in the morning.  We all have those days when we blame it on the day; the days when one relatively minor thing is getting in the way of all the positives in life, or those mornings when we can’t quite put our finger on it but, we just got out of bed on the wrong side as they say.   

The question is, how do you pull yourself out of feeling low, and is it the day that is negative or is it you?   I am talking about the days when we older people look back at life and decide that there has been nothing positive about any of the days that have been lived so far. 

This is the point when I think about all the positive things that make the people around me special before trying to measure myself against them and things go even more downhill.

I have come to the conclusion that we have to remember that everyone has bad days even celebrities, the rich, and the successful.  So, if you feel really down at the beginning of the day and you let that feeling persist, you are going to get to the end of it having wasted so many things.  time with friends and things you could have done while you will allow your mind to store up more negativity as ammunition to force tomorrow into being even more negative.

I have always thought that the first step that has to be taken if you want to overcome any problem, is that you have to recognise that the problem is there.  So, if you are getting up with that negative feeling more often than you would like to and you know it, the next thing needed is a plan to get the better of it.     

Not easy I will admit but, also not impossible until you have tried all avenues of help.  The internet has some ideas and although they often assume that only the young would look there, a lot of their suggestions can be tempered to work for us older people too.

I got up with that negative feeling this morning and I feel that when that happens my goal is to make sure that by the end of the day I have done at least one positive thing, no matter how small to counteract that feeling of getting nowhere.

I have to admit to waking up with that down feeling more often than I would like lately, but when I think back to how negative I might feel first thing one morning in the near future, I hope that I will be able to find this message somewhere on LPG’s pages and see something positive I have achieved at least one day in my past.

I am no expert and feeling down is often the last thing you want to talk to anyone else about.  I have quite a big family, although none of the members live very close to me, and when they phone I feel it important to give them the benefit of my experience when they tell me their troubles.  So, I suppose the truth is that I choose to only have myself to measure my negativity against, but I have found a few internet suggestions which might act as a starting point for any readers who have woken up under an emotional shadow today…

PM, Downham

PM offers some advice to help with positive thinking…

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