How Can You Be Positive When Everyone Around You Is Negative? (A Lesson from the Biggest Loser)

Down 30 pounds & staying positive

How can you be positive when it seems there’s so much negativity and so many negative people around you? It all depends on your focus.

Eleven seasons of The Biggest Loser had passed before I saw my first episode.   I’d heard of it, here and there, from friends at work, but I’d never watched it.  That’s because I don’t watch much TV at all.  That said, I do enjoy some entertainment on the treadmill, which is what I do whenever I’m taking a break from P90X or wanting to supplement it.  I like 90-minute sessions on the treadmill, so that’s usually one movie or two episodes of a TV series.

After I’d listened to Jillian Michaels’ Master Your Metabolism and then her heavily peppered Law of Attraction book, Unlimited, I decided to check out her other work, including the TV series she’s best known for.  So I watched Season 10 and found it to be very inspirational, enough so to watch one more while I upped my 90-minute push on the treadmill.

“You’re downloading another season?” my 18-year-old asked as she looked over my shoulder.  “Which one?”

“Season Six.  You know–THE season.”

Obviously she didn’t know, but even a non-viewer like me had heard about Season Six of The Biggest Loser and how it was so much more about game-playing and snarky comments.   Even though it was at a difficult time in my own life when I couldn’t have cared less, I do remember hearing talk at the water cooler about Vile Vicky, the conniver and game player,  her puppet husband Brady, and their oh-so-negative allies, Ed and Heba.  The  season was best known for being the least Biggest Loser-like, the least inspirational, full of sniping and sometimes downright cruelty.  Yes, of all the seasons I’d heard mentioned by friends at work, the only one that brought out ire in general was Season Six.

My daughter cringed when I told her all this.  “If it’s the season that’s so full of negativity, why would you EVER watch it?”

She had a point.  We’re both big Abraham-Hicks fans and we try to stay positive.  She will walk out of a room, conversation, or movie that is negative, and Season Six was surely going to include a lot of unnecessary sniping.

I explained that I’d been told to watch it anyway, that there was still inspiration there.  And there was!

For all the negativity and the Blue Team’s obvious lack of emotional support for other participants, I realized that there was so much more going on than just the negativity and sniping.  There were several tremendously  inspiring stories going on alongside the negative ones.   I especially loved the..subplots, if you will…of Michelle and her mom (Renee), of Coleen, and of Amy.  I found them all to be very mature, compassionate, hard-working, POSITIVE people–the kind I would like as friends or at least to hang out with.

In real life (ha! as opposed to reality TV!), we all encounter negative people when we’re trying to stay positive and for everything and everyone around us to stay positive.  We can focus on them and how they mess up our otherwise positive focus and even blame them for our own failure to be/stay positive.  Or…we can choose to look at all the positive people around us, at those who are compassionate and willing to help us, at those who are upbeat and positive.  I’m glad I watched the entire Season Six of The Biggest Loser–what’s memorable for me is the inspiration of those who were positive and really changed their lives.  The negative people are just blips in my memory already, and will soon gratefully fade away.


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