I am a pessimist.

Which basically means when facing something new, I tend to look at it from the angle of: “Why won’t this work?” Or “How will this blow up in my face?”

I look at things from a negative perspective.

Pretty much Every. Single. Time.

Is that a bad thing?

Sometimes it is. I know that it has kept me from accomplishing things that I could have done if I had a more positive outlook.

Sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it keeps me from doing something stupid.

Is it wrong to be pessimistic.

Nope! God created each of us uniquely and he expects us to be who he created us to be.

Wether that’s pessimistic or optimistic. (optimistic people see the good in things instead of seeing the bad.)

Neither one in its self is good or bad if we find that middle ground. It’s when we fall into the ditch on either side that it becomes a problem.

Like extreme negativity.

If you run into an extremely negative person, you can literally feel the weight of the world on your shoulders and unless you have a strong hold on the peace of Jesus, you might walk away feeling depressed and wondering if anything is right in this world anymore.

I have a very low tolerance for this kind of negativity, in fact it infuriates me!

It’s depressing. It’s annoying. It’s hopeless. It’s toxic. It’s suffocating. It can ruin your entire day. And honestly it’s NOT FROM GOD!

I believe that this negativity, this depressed spirit is from the devil himself. He uses it to take down the negative person and anyone who comes in contact with them.

The battle of the mind.

How does a pessimist keep from falling into the extreme negativity ditch.

I don’t have the answer to that. I really don’t.

So why am I blogging about something that I can’t even give you the answer to?

I have no idea. Most of my blogs are brewing in the back of my mind for awhile before I post them. This one however, was burning a hole into my brain for less then a day and it felt like it simply needed to be blogged.

So on a whim and a prayer, I started typing.

I don’t have any solid answers, but I do have my own experience.

1. Don’t give the devil an inch.

I’ve heard it said, if you open the door an inch for the devil, he’ll wiggle his foot in and before you know what happened, the door will be wide open.

The mind is a tricky place and I believe it is the one place where we are most easily deceived.

2nd corinthians 10:5 says: …and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

What does it mean, “to take captive every thought?”

To me it means to get rid of that negative thought, to nip it in the bud and throw it out before it even has a chance to grow and wreak havoc in your thought life which then spills over and ruins your physical life.

That comment she made…. STOP. Stop that thought right there. It doesn’t matter how she meant it. I am a child of the king. Her opinion has no power over my life. And honestly? She probably didn’t even mean it the way I wanted to take it. The way the devil wanted me to take it!

The way everything went wrong yesterday… STOP. Stop that thought right there. It doesn’t matter how badly your day went or how much you messed up. Everyone is NOT against you! You are NOT a failure just because you messed up. You are a child of the king. And he is a God of mercy and grace. Find your identity in Jesus and don’t listen to the lies of the devil.

Live in the moment.

Yesterday is gone and we have no control over what happens tomorrow.

So why look back?

Let it go. The hurts. The worries. The pain. Let. It. Go. Don’t bring up the things people said or did to you 10 years ago, or even just last week. Just let it go. Bringing it up again does no good. It does however bring back the pain you experienced in the moment, which the devil will then try to use to plant bitterness into your heart. Forgive them and let it go!

Don’t dwell on the future and think about all the bad things that could come up or happen.

Got that?

That one word, ‘could’ is pretty significant, because it means it might not even happen.

So why would we spend our time worrying about the ‘coulds’ of the future when we have absolutely no clue what our life will be like? Besides if we worry about the future, we can’t enjoy living in the moment.

And if we aren’t enjoying the moment, we are ruining the present just because we are living in fear of a future that we have absolutely no control over!

Got that?

Just keep it simple and live in the moment.

When others paint depressing pictures.

This one…

This is the hard one for me and I have no idea how to handle it.

To be completely honest…

I’m pretty sure the way I do handle it, is not the way I should be handling it.

What I do know is this: I can not have the peace of Jesus and a negative thought life. It is one or the other. It’s that simple.

I have learned that in order to keep a positive outlook on life it must start with a positive thought life, and to keep that positive thought life, I have two simple rules.

1. Don’t give the devil and inch.
2. Live in the moment.

I have also learned that I can give no one the right to change those rules. In other words, I will not join someone else’s pity party. I will not join someone else in worrying about the future. I will not join some else in reliving past hurts.

It’s not worth it.

Living in the freedom and peace of Christ brings joy to my life.

Living in a negative atmosphere brings confusion and misery.

In closing I will admit: I am still a work in progress… I have made lots of progress in walking away from letting negativity control my life but it’s still an area of weakness for me and far too often I find myself sliding that way again.

So, here’s to all you negative people becoming positive!! 🙂