My wife is finishing her degree this year in organizational leadership. Her favorite professor holds a doctorate in industrial psychology and she signs up for as many classes with him as she can. What she really likes about this professor is his positive attitude towards the students he teaches and his confidence in the material. One day, when discussing the power of being positive in class, this is what she learned.

Language is not just based on what comes out of our mouths, but includes everything we do with our bodies. Negative people can operate negatively without ever saying a negative word, although they almost always can't help themselves. To overcome one negative form of communication (whether verbal or otherwise), a person has to have five to seven positive forms of communications just to keep things level. That's a lot of work for people who are basically positive.

The nature of positive people is to just not bother with the negativity because they know it is easier to just go about living their lives and leave the destructive people to deal with all the chaos and pain that they create.

Take a moment and do some honest soul searching. When you're about to say or do something negative, do you try to stop and think about the consequences that will surely follow? Most people don't. If you're a positive person, can you really feel good about letting negative people be destructive just because it might mean some work on your part? Regardless of what side you fall in this matter, both sides have work to do. The question is: are we willing to do the work, or just continue on as always with nothing changing in our lives, our businesses, our churches, our relationships?