Martine Rolls: The power of good

There are times when things turn to custard. When it rains, it often pours. When a ship crashes and gets stuck on a reef just a few nautical miles off our shores, and oil washes up on our beautiful beaches and clings to our wildlife, it is perfectly all right to be concerned and to feel unhappy.

When our favourite stores, restaurants or service providers go out of business because we are struggling to pay our own bills, it would be unnatural not to feel at least a little bit down.

Bad things happen to good people, and unfortunately it happens too often. Life kicks us up the butt when we least expect it. It's sad but true that we are not always in control of what's going on around us.

I am one of those people blessed with a cheerful personality and I always see the glass half full. I am known for taking it too far sometimes, so I have been told to shut up on many occasions, but I often feel the need to cheer people up.

That doesn't mean I am turning a blind eye to problems. On the contrary. I will help where I can, and I'm not telling anyone to harden up if they're going through a rough patch. I'm only trying to help them look at the bright side. To help them think positively.

Our chief reporter Kate Newton's editorial that was published in the Bay of Plenty Times on October 3 was all about getting that good feeling back. The simple message was: Take a moment and think about all the things in life, and in our stunning country, that you can be happy with and thankful for.

It is spring and the trees are blossoming. The butterflies and bumblebees are here again. It's a great time to plant herbs and tomatoes and you'll love the taste of that home-grown food when you bring it to the table.

When I entered "things to cheer you up" into Google, I came across a website called Gala Darling - the radical self-love project. It's a website set up by a 27-year-old Kiwi girl who lives in New York. And it caught my eye.

Gala Darling, and she claims that is her real name, summarises her obsessions as writing, travelling, good music, shoe shopping and radical self-love. That rings a bell.

Her bio says that unrelenting devotion to positivity and magic has earned her cult celebrity status and fanatical fans around the globe. Her website has a great feelgood blog that is well worth checking out. She's been described in the New York Times as "a web-tethered gadabout", and has been named one of the 10 most influential style bloggers in the world.

I was pleased to see that I am not her first follower from Tauranga.

A story on nzherald.co.nz, written by Rebecca Barry Hill and published in the online Life & Style section earlier this year, said that Darling's website gets more than a million hits each month. She believes life doesn't have to be serious, that you create your own reality and that beauty is all around us.

"Why shouldn't you be blissfully, delectably, head-over-heels in love with yourself?" she says. Fans say Darling brings a sense of magic and joy into their lives. Cynics might say that following her advice could leave you broke. Frequent shoe shopping does that, for sure.

"I make a real effort to be positive in everything I put online," she says. "I feel like there are enough of the people who do the muck-raking and the negativity and I don't think there's any value in contributing to that."

That hasn't stopped her many outspoken critics from trashing her site as a narcissistic exercise in consumerism, and accusing her of cashing in, through podcasts and transcripts from her book project, on vulnerable young people.

But whatever you make of her online magazine, Darling has considerable reach. She is indeed a darling of the internet.

And I am sure this clever Kiwi girl feels the same when I say that optimism and lust for life makes some people think that I'm away with the fairies. If that's the case, so be it. For me and Gala Darling, it's the only way to be.