If you can't say anything nice; don't say anything at all

Do you sometimes want to get those 'glass half empty' people and shake them until they rattle, or is that just me? I'm not Mrs Positive by any means. At times, I can be found wallowing in my own vat of self-pity with the best of them. On the whole, I try to regularly remind myself how lucky I am and I only have to hug one of my beautiful children to remember how wonderful my life really is.  I am also prone to haing a bit of a moan.  Not all of the time, but there are occasions when a little moan in a sympathetic ear, just makes you feel a bit better about the world.

But there are some people who cannot see the good in anything. It may not be deliberate, life does throw some terrible things at us and it affects us all in different ways, I realise that. And we all have off days. We all have doubts. We all have concerns about things. But do we always have to voice them? Do we always have to bring everyone else down?

Why can some people only see the negative in any given situation?  If you have a genuine concern over something that someone has told you, yes, you should tell them.  I'm not saying that you shouldn't.  But there are ways of saying things.  Try and give some positives about the situation and then voice any concerns you have.  Or simple leave it.  We are all adults at the end of the day, I make decisions and sometimes, they are the wrong ones.  When that happens, you carry on and you learn from those mistakes.

This weekend has been a brilliant example of this. I decided to respond to a journalist request. My husband and I were interviewed and photographed and we will be paid a nice amount of money. It has never happened before, the article was about our relationship and the children were ecstatic about being in a national newspaper. The money from the article meant that we might be able to afford a break away during the Easter holidays. All good.  Or maybe not!  I thought nothing of it and most people I spoke to thought it was unusual but a great thing to do.  Some people however, deceided to point out the many possible negative outcomes fo the situation, most of which were highly unlikely, but it was enough to plant a few seeds of doubt over what we had done.   This has caused a great deal of stress for me, having taken the whole thing on in the first place and it resulted in the situation escalating to the point where my husband and I had one of the biggest rows we have ever had in ten years of marriage.

I often say to my children; don't say anything if you can't say anything nice and I'm thinking that this is a good message for some adults, too.