We are all familiar with the “If you can’t say something nice…” adage, but how often to we put effort into leaving our lousy thoughts out of what we say?

Last week I was angry. Angry at someone I care a great deal about. Angry at the choices they had been making. Those choices felt unfairly selfish to me. When I voiced my anger to my friend Emily, she helped put things into perspective. Emily reminded me that the person I was mad at wasn’t necessarily being selfish; they were being human. Each decision they made was done so because they thought it was the appropriate choice for them.

Of course, Emily was right and I needed to quit being so judgmental.

This week, as I was taking a drive with my friend Chelsea, she was lamenting the overly critical nature of one of her family members. The nature of their hypercritical haptics was exhausting her. We came up with the brilliant idea that people should quarantine their fault finding fascination. The quarantine of unfair judgment and social criticism would be a great way to cure the world with kindness and understanding.

Sometimes we can’t help ourselves from the whole “Nothing nice to say” scenario, but we can always work to keep our nitpicky notions at bay. We don’t always know all the details behind a situation, and we haven’t necessarily walked a mile in the shoes of those people that seriously stress us out, but we can a take step back before we jump to conclusions about the actions of others.

As we work to keep a pandemic and our daily anxiety under control, let’s quarantine our fastidious fussing and petty predispositions too.

Put energy into increasing your acceptance and compassion towards others. Remember that being judged never feels good, and our goal should be to make the world a place that feels accepting, understanding, and inviting. Yes, there are going to be times when others make choices that hurt or anger us, but we can’t allow that kind of disparagement be the downfall of our ability to see the good in everyone.

By: Melanie A. Peters

P.S. I do not have any medical proof that quarantining negative energy will improve your health, but I do know from experience that putting away anger can make your outlook much healthier.