Over the last few days in The Royal Gazette, there have been many reasons to be cheerful.There was a story about a young Bermudian rapper, Lil Quan, heading off to BET to take part in a competition, another story highlighted the 40 members of the Hot Peppers who are heading off to Florida for a football tournament.Then there was a story about the CARE graduates and a story about an excellent video produced by and starring Warwick Academy students.The list could go on, both from Friday’s paper and Saturday’s paper, which featured both CedarBridge and Berkeley graduations.The Island Games are coming up and there will be more success stories to report as the Island’s young athletes compete for gold.When so much space in this newspaper is given over to the negative stories about our young people it has been a pleasure to be able to highlight some real accomplishments by the Island’s youth.Sometimes it is too easy to focus on the negative, which becomes the talking point of the politicians, the blogs and the talk shows. Talk is easy and sometimes it seems that talking about a subject makes people feel as if they have addressed it.And all the talk can serve to mask the positive aspects of the community. Let us, as a community, learn to overcome the negatives by accentuating the positives.A quote from Mahatma Gandhi sums it up: “Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behaviour. Keep your behaviour positive because your behaviour becomes your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.”* Let me know what you think in 140 characters or less. Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jeremydeacon1