Hello, welcome back for season two of the Excel Stillmore podcast.

I am your host, Chris Emerson, and I'm here to encourage you with tips and strategies

to help you deepen your faith, build stronger relationships, and do the most with your life in Christ.

Thank you for joining. Let's get started.

Welcome back. Today, maybe the title gives it away. I want to talk to you about being positive versus negative.

The comparison between an optimistic person and what happens in their life and how they get to that

point versus someone who is pessimistic and how that bears out over time. I'm actually going to introduce an article with some

scientific backing on the repercussions of negativity, and I hope you'll find it helpful, and then

near the end, I find it interesting. This article, in no way attached to the Word of God, has three clear suggestions on how to become more positive, more optimistic, and they just so happen to jive nearly perfectly with the efforts we're trying to make in the Excel Stillmore journal or any kind of journal that you are using

where you dedicate time to very specific things on a regular and daily basis.

So you will be getting some encouragement from me on that.

Before we get to the article, I have to tell you, this has been a big deal for me for a super

long time.

I just really struggle being around negative people.

I know life isn't always fair, and there are lots of things that could have turned out differently,

but I just don't get it.

I mean, here we are living in the greatest country in the history of the world. We have the

most technological, medical advancements of all time. Sure, we still have to deal with hard things like

sickness, accidents, disease, death, etc. Economic ruin, job loss, poverty. I get that. That's terrible. We have all of that.

But we are more equipped to handle that. And there is more hope for a solution to that, or at least

management of it, than anyone that's ever lived anywhere. If we cannot find the optimistic view of how we get to live our lives here and now,

well, it is just time to do some reevaluation. And I hope that the medical data I will be sending

...