Wanted: Happy people (shiny not a necessity)

I'm throwing this out there for everyone to see and while I'm not at all proud of it, it's true and I'm going to own it - I'm a negative person by nature.

There. I said it.

I was raised in an incredibly negative household. No one took responsibility for their actions, apologized if they did something wrong or said something wrong or upset someone in any way, or just admitted if they were cranky or in a bad mood. "It" (whatever the issue was) was always someone else's fault. I grew up thinking that was just how it was. I married into a family just like my own. Oh! the negativity! Again, thought it was normal.

I divorced in 2001 and almost immediately met my husband Brian. His family was and still is a breath of fresh, POSITIVE, HAPPY air for me. Unfortunately, while it was and still is refreshing to be around that kind of happy attitude, it didn't really envelope me until recently. I spent the first 6+ years of our marriage as a VERY negative and cranky person - we've only been married 7 1/2 years. How sad is that?! It's sad for my husband, my children, my friends, my husband's family and God most importantly - my family didn't notice a difference. I'm not at all surprised.

I believe God laid it on my heart that I was making the lives of my husband, my children, my friends and myself miserable. I had SO! MANY! BLESSINGS! to be thankful for and I took every one of them for granted.

Recently, I've started to pay close attention to how my body feels around negativity. I'm actually uncomfortable. I feel heavy (and I need NO help with that!). It starts to take over all of my thoughts and feelings and just makes me downright miserable. I can only imagine what it does to the people around me.

I'm learning every day how to deal with negativity and the crankies. I know crankiness is inevitable - I'm sure I'll come down with a bit of it myself from time to time - I'm not that naive. But, I'll own up to it and deal with it.

As far as others are concerned, I've decided to remove as much of the negativity as possible from my life. I know there are people close to me that I can't and won't remove - BUT, I can choose to ignore the attitude and comments that come out of their mouths. I can remove myself from situations that involve negativity. I'll just turn it off :)

From this point on, I'm surrounding myself with happy (shiny is not a necessity!) people - people who are positive about life, people who know they are blessed, people who don't take the true good things in life for granted. I want them all around me - in bloggy world, in Twitter land, in real life.

So, if you are happy and you know it (sorry, I couldn't help myself), let's be friends :) Please leave me a comment and introduce yourself - talk to me. Tell me about yourself. Find me on twitter, I'm Tina aka Mommy23boys.

I'd love to be a positive, happy person for you, too!