Drop the Negations

What really binds us to any negative emotional state in which we find ourselves suffering is this: choice.

Freedom from negative behavior and thoughts must begin with your recognition that you are voluntarily serving that which puts your own emotional and spiritual peace at risk. Notice the use of the word voluntarily. You voluntarily choose to serve that which diminishes your own well-being and psycho-spiritual health. When we adopt a negative attitude, we are boxing with ourselves. We are undermining our own emotional health. It is a personal vendetta against ourselves that negates our chances for Happiness.

If you want to stop allowing yourself to be sucked down into the quicksand of negativity, there are some things you must do beginning with taking note of how often you disable yourself with your own negative thoughts.

It is important to realize that when we think an adverse thought we bury it even deeper into our consciousness. It is a lot like being in quicksand. If you squirm in it, you will sink deeper. The same is true with negativity, if you keep thinking it (which is tantamount to squirming); it will become more deeply entrenched in your consciousness. In other words, we pave the way for it to become an even stronger actuality in our life. Negative thoughts, words and attitude arouse negative and unhappy moods and actions. When the mind is negative, poisons are released into the spirit, which cause more unHappiness and negativity. Negative thinking is the way to frustration, disappointment, failure and ultimate despair.

I recall a young woman who had given a workshop presentation. When she reviewed the feedback she received from participants, she was stunned that someone had written about how awful she was. The person even utilized a few expletives and emphasized that he would never attend another workshop where she was scheduled to present. She was devastated and vowed to never give another presentation. How unfortunate.

The problem in this scenario is not with the negative feedback the presenter received. Rather, it is with how the presenter chose to interpret it. She had at least five options (probably more). One, ignore it. Two, consider it humorous and dismiss it. Three, accept it as a right of opinion and nothing more. Four, reflect upon her presentation to assess if there were areas that needed improvement. Or, as she apparently did, internalize the negative into her consciousness, thereby setting herself up for defeat and self-pity.

And, in so doing, she is misusing and subverting the only creative power there is; that vital, dynamic substance in us, that God-given power which lies innate in every man, the power to speak it into being. God spoke existence into being.

When you talk negatively about yourself or to yourself, you bring into being that which you speak. Your own self-defeating, negative, pessimistic thinking will make you a self-defeating, negative, pessimistic individual. And, whether you realize it or not, you attract what you think. That is to say, if you think negative, you will attract the universal negative force into your life. If you think self-defeat you will attract all the forces of self defeat.

This is why negative people tend to "hang out" together. They feed on each other's negativity as it grows within each of them. Suffering with chronic negativity, they distort their spiritual image and become their own victims. They willingly and voluntarily victimize themselves. How sad.

Most people are not aware of how negative they really are. Throughout the course of normal conversation, they bombard themselves with negative talk. Even people who are aware of the power of their words seem to miss some of the most commonly used derogatory comments that are made towards themselves and/or others in the course of normal conversation.

All negative assumptions about our lives are a painful prophecy made up by that deep inner part of us that not only want us to see ourselves as failures but, once having convinced us of it, actually cause the undesired outcome. You see what I mean? These negative assumptions that pop up in us about