Don’t let one bad apple spoil the barrel

Quite often, as we go through life, we’ll experience moments when one person in a group, one issue in a relationship, one personal problem is so rotten that it threatens to infect the rest of your life, especially if we allow ourselves to give into the fallacy that it is representative of the whole.

In these situations you must remind yourself that you have a choice—you can either let the apple continue to rot and ruin everything or you can pick it out, isolate it, and recognize that it need not affect the rest of the situation.

Picking out this bad apple sometimes is simply a matter of compartmentalizing the situation, and being mentally and emotionally strong enough to know that it is not indicative of a widespread concern. One cloud does not mean the sky is falling.

You can expedite resolving the issue by focusing on the positive, continuing to conduct your life as usual, rather than allowing the bad apple to take over. Certainly, at some point, you must deal with the issue, problem or person, but it need not usurp everything else.

So, stay positive, remind yourself that it is but one issue, one person, one problem and don’t let that one bad apple spoil the barrel.