About two weeks ago I was having a coffee with a friend in Somerset West and the rain was pouring outside.

There weren’t enough chairs and so people were sharing their tables, a very common practice in Europe but still something quite new for South Africans.

As is the case in many of these coffee shops there were a few newspapers lying around and there was one right next to me.

A lady sat down, picked up the newspaper and started reading it. We continued our conversation and when we were finished and getting up to go the lady turned to me and said “Would you like your newspaper.”

“No, I laughed, it’s not mine but seeing as I have not read it this morning, is there any positive news in there?”

She replied by saying that there was absolutely no good news at all. I could never accept that, and started paging through the newspaper and managed to find three articles which were in my mind positive.

You see every story has two sides and we choose to look at which side we want to be associated.

If you feel like you are drowning in negativity it may be that you are just absorbing too much of the bad stuff.

We have enough to worry about in our daily lives to still worry about all the news items that are thrown our way. Korea, the US, fuel price hikes, corruption and crime.

It goes in but it has to come out as well.

So this week, make that conscious decision to let in more of the good stuff than the bad stuff.

There is an old saying garbage in, garbage out. Try it, it’s free and does not hurt a bit.