Some days are not easy days. The news shows are filled with bad news. Shootings happen daily and fill the nightly news. Politics causes more conflict than I can remember. Even the weather causes conflict between those who believe in global warming and those who don’t.

Each new typhoon brings out both sides with strong, strong feelings. Debate surrounds the pros and cons of even medical procedures such as immunization and healthy eating. Even our home life can have too much drama and negativity filling the hours together.

All of us have negative thoughts from time to time. If you have negative thoughts a great deal of the time, it is worth looking into. If every time you turn on the television or your phone you are into the conflict-of-the-day, these overwhelming negative thought can not only impact your happiness and well-being, but also impact your health.

The end result is developing a very negative view on life. You can even begin to look for the bad things rather than the good ones. So what can you do to change things? Here are a few things that may help?

Stop spending too much of your valuable time on negative information. You want to know what is going on in the world but you don’t want to know it with all the details 10 times in the morning and 10 times at night. There is a time to move forward.

Look around and see the beauty that surrounds you. Take the time to look at the mountains and the beautiful clouds and appreciate what you are seeing. It is no wonder that therapists trying to help people deal with anxiety use pictures or memories of beautiful landscape scenes to help patients relax.

Enjoy your life. If you have children, make sure you appreciate watching them grow and change. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. If you spend all of your time with them being unhappy, you all lose.

When you go to the store it can either be an enjoyable experience or a forced trip to pick up food that you need to have. We all need to make trips. If you decide to make your next trip an enjoyable experience it will give you time to smile at others or maybe say hello or at least “thank you.” Look around and enjoy the experience by appreciating the many choices you have. Notice how artistically the produce is arranged to encourage you to buy the food you see.

If the weather is bleak, look for the positive. When it is cold it is a great time to crank up the fireplace if you have one. If you don’t, watch your children enjoying the frost outside or even the rain.

If you have a medical problem, look for the minor amounts of improvement you can make. If your blood sugar is high, celebrate when it is lower. If you are trying to lose weight, be excited and happy when you see any positive change.

Share positive thoughts with people in your family. When is the last time you complimented your partner on how handsome he looked or how beautiful she is? Have you been excited to see the way your child is learning at school or how he has recently written a special paper for language arts? We all need to hear positive comments and to feel valued by one another. Just because you are busy or not especially happy can cause you to forget to comment to others

in the family to show them you notice them and they are important. This helps make people happy. Even taking the time to pet the dog makes the dog happier.

You have more control over your own happiness than you realize. Start today to make the positives in your day more noticeable to you. You shouldn’t ignore the negative. Certainly you can talk about what needs to change in life to make it better. But make sure that it is a limited amount of your focus in life. Let the positive be the primary focus in your life.

Look around. Pay attention to the beauty around you. Focus on your family and how to make it special. You need the positive in your life to help you get through the rougher times that face us all.

Have a happy day.

Cynthia Martin is the founder of the First Teacher program and former executive director of Parenting Matters Foundation, which publishes newsletters for parents, caregivers and grandparents. To reach current First Teacher Executive Director Nicole Brewer, email nicole@firstteacher.org or call 360-681-2250.