Bad News, Fake News, Where is the Good News?

Hey, it’s Leigh Ann Betts, founder of The Bust Your Busy Badge 30 day challenge. And welcome to what’s up Wednesday. So what’s up this week?

Well, this week, so many people are focusing on bad news. There’s just too much focus on bad news. Which we’re finding out some of it is fake news. And it’s just making us feel terrible. Its making us depressed. And it’s effecting our well-being. And hey, I am like the first one to say, I’ve been involved in it, too. It’s made me feel bad and put me into a place of fear and kind of been all consuming.

So, hey, why don’t we talk about good news for a change, right? Are you in? Are you interested? Please say yes if you are interested in hearing some good news today. Because I have a couple things to share.

So, generally, my what’s up Wednesday, it’s about I’m responding to something that’s come up during the week. So, I was in Mexico last week. And we brought our devices with us and basically still continued to do our daily ritual of checking into the news and that type of thing. And by Day 3, we said, what are we doing? It was starting, the news we were choosing to watch was starting to spill into our conversations, and starting to affect the down time we were having on our holiday. So my partner Grant and I decided, hey, let’s either avoid it all together, or if one of us does read something, that we don’t talk about it. So we made the conscious decision to do that.

Interestingly enough when I got home, I was talking to one of my best friends and she was saying the same thing to me. She was like, man I just have to put Facebook aside. Because its making me way too depressed. So she made the choice to turn it off because there was so much focus on the bad.

So I guess I just want to say a couple things about that. You know, in Feng Shui, there’s the yen and the yang. There’s the two opposite sides. It’s the law of polarity or duality, the pair of opposites. So things like masculine and feminine, black and white, day and night, good and bad. If we’re only focusing on the bad news, like there’s going to be good news, right? Where is the good news? There’s good and bad news right? So let’s focus on the good news.

And I’m a firm believer in what we focus on expands. And, you know, if we’re constantly looking for evidence of terrible things happening, we’re going to continue to find them. And the opposite is true about good news.

So, it made me curious about looking into good news. Because I’ve never really done that on social media. And on the internet. So what I basically did is, I went into Facebook and I punched in “good news” and I found a whole bunch of different groups, I don’t know who just joined, but hello. Thanks for the thumbs up.

Anyway, let me know, whoever’s joined, what you feel about good news and bad news and what’s going on in the world that there’s a focus on all of the terrible things. So, basically what I just wanted to say was I was curious about looking in and I went into Facebook. And I found like the top three good news pages. And the top three, meaning the largest number of subscribers. I subscribed to them. I checked them out. I got them written here. Good news network, Huff post good news and Hooplaha, which I thought was a super cute name. I kind of perused them and I saw some of the good news stories. And some of the stories were ones I was already aware of.

But, I am making a conscious choice to subscribe to those. So it might be something you want to do. And then I went into Google and punched in “good news” and there was like a whole bunch of different media sites that came up. So, I thought it was really interesting. So maybe check that out as well. And, I just got a couple of other notes I wanted to mention here.

I’m generally almost always a glass half full kind of girl, so why not share a couple good news stories that are coming out. One locally here, and one that came out of the US.

Just in this last week, Parks, Canada and a whole bunch of committed citizens in my area, in the Rocky Mountains in Canada, have just relocated 16 plains bison to their home range in the Banff National Park. This is just like a super huge, big deal. Because they haven’t been there to roam in over 140 years. And they are known as this Keystone species. And what that means is many other species rely on them to have a balanced eco system. So it’s super cool. So total thumbs up to Parks Canada. And all those people, those citizens that got together to make that happen! Because now we have the bison roaming again. So woohoo. Love it!

And then, the second thing that is really good news is hats off, big shout out to the citizens of New York on the subway car that saw hate graffiti. And they took it upon themselves to come up with a solution to take action. They, one guy said that you can use the Purell, that hand sanitizer, to take off sharpie. And people started working and they did it all together. So, way to go New York! Like, that’s awesome!

So what we focus on, expands. So if we’re only focusing on the bad news, that’s what we are going to continually get in our reality. So let’s start looking at the good news. If you have anything to share, hey Rochelle, how’s it going? I’m sick, so, well I like to be in my took all the time, and I got back from Mexico and I got sick, so unfortunately I’m cold and drinking tea.

Anyway, this is a good news story. So share it on your Facebook page if you feel compelled. Maybe people could start shifting and realize we have a choice on what we choose to put our attention to. The other thing I just want to say is, if you really, really are gung ho and super psyched about more good in the world, then you know what? Why don’t you create good news? And what I mean by that is, (thanks Rochelle) be good news. And what I mean by that is, do something good for people in your community. Do something good for people in your family.

Maybe there’s new parents in the neighborhood and maybe make them a meal and take it to them. Maybe your favorite barista guy, every morning that you see, just tell him how frickin awesome he is and how he makes your day and give him like a high five! I have a favorite crew that I go see over at Beamer’s and Canmore.

I got a couple other things. Like right now, we got so much snow here, so go shovel your neighbor’s walkway. Or if you are in a warmer climate, hey, mow their lawn or something. If you got the lawnmower out already. That’s really cool. People really appreciate that. That’s a good news story. Some guy is going to go tell everybody, hey, Joe my neighbor frickin mowed my lawn today. And he’ll tell two friends and so on and so on and so on. I don’t know if some of you remember that commercial, but I do. Shows my age.

Or, you are dropping your kids off to the bus stop, stop and give a shout out to that bus driver that brings our kids to and from school safely, every day. Yeah. So I don’t know. Do you guys have any other ideas? I would love to hear! Rochelle, anyone out there that has good ideas of how we can start being the good news? Or you know, how we can start focusing on the good versus the bad. And I would love to hear from you. If you have a good news story, just post it below and let’s share it. And good things are happening out there, people! Let’s like, be a part of it!

So until next week, see you later! Thanks for joining me!

Photo by Roman Kraft