I used to be a very negative person. I’ve blogged about my pessimism before. And in some ways, I still am pretty negative. And it’s time to change that.

I always embraced my negativity and called it just me being opinionated and bitchy, and hey, what’s wrong with being a little bitchy? But in recent years, I’ve become more aware of myself, my surroundings and realized the negative effects that negativity brings.

There are just some people that I don’t like to be around. And it’s because they have this dark cloud of negative energy surrounding them…and I don’t want to be someone like that anymore. I’m a big believer in energy and its effects on our health–both mental and physical. My acupuncturist talks a lot about energy and even the psychic I went to see for fun at the fair last year said I have a ton of negative energy. So, I decided to do something about it.

One main catalyst of this shift was when I started writing for SLR Lounge. I’ve been a part of the photography community for five years now, and I know how critical, bashing, and negative the industry can be. For the most part, I’ve tried to stay away from it (unless directly attacked) and take the high road. (Not trying to pat myself on the back but I just have had too much drama in my own life to worry about getting mixed up in all that). But as I started writing, one piece of advice I kept getting was that I would get haters, and I should do my best to produce great content and ignore those that can be downright mean. Well, I got to experience firsthand what they meant. I wrote a few articles and yep, got some petty and some downright mean comments.

Now, I have fairly thick skin, I’d like to believe and I also think everyone has a right to have an opinion and to be able to voice it, but I think people need to be kinder to each other in general. Which means, it needs to start with me. So this weekend, I tried to not only be kinder (like smiling and saying hi to people at the airport when I usually keep to myself), but also more positive as well. Like when they made me check my luggage, I decided to be glad that I didn’t have to find overhead bin space and bump people around the aisles. Some people weren’t so positive, dropping f-bombs and yelling at the flight attendants.

I feel like positive energy breeds awesome things happening, and I am excited to see where my new positivity will take me. And yes, I now will work on seeing the glass as half full.