How do I stop being a loser? How do I possibly stop? Well, Napoleon Hill, PMA, positive mental attitude, his famous book, Think and Grow Rich. Essentially, it’s an analysis of people that were successful. But this PMA as a phenomenon is an interesting idea because here we are.
How can I possibly have a positive mental attitude in this mess called life, my life? Not easy for sure, but it actually begins with speech, doesn’t it? It’s a group of words in English we call limiters. They limit how I think, how I act. How are you today?
So so. This means I’m no good. No good today at all. How are you? Same old.
Same old. Means my life is boring. What did you do yesterday? Nothing. Now nothing is impossible because that literally means you didn’t act at all, and, of course, you did.
Or how about its friend? Nothing special. I did nothing special. My life is nothing special tragic. But there are many people who think this way.
And how does one change when one is in this, gosh, this soup? Well, I think the very first thing that a person has to do, you have no choice, this is to engage with the idea that I am alone. I’m alone on this earth. Now, of course, there’s other beings running around and I could be married, and I could have a boyfriend or girlfriend, I could have children. All of those things are true.
But, fundamentally, I am alone in the sense that I cannot reach out and jump inside your brain, inside your mind, and look at the world in exactly the same way. I’d like to. I’d like to be able to do this, but I can’t. I can’t. The only pure relationship I have is with the eternal vow, as Martin Buber tells us, with God as he sees it.
With God, I can have this real link. So in that sense, I always have a partner. You know, I’m sitting the other day for a concert, and I was speaking to a teacher beside me and a Christian nice man, and he reinforced this idea. So there must be many people that think the same. Now, of course, there’s a great pandemic now of an epidemic of loneliness that’s descended upon us because of social media.
I read, and it’s probably true. I mean, all you have to do is look at your phone, and you realize immediately that there’s somebody more handsome or more beautiful than me. For sure. Oh, gosh. Oh, no.
Really? True. There’s someone richer than me. Get away. Really?
Absolutely. So there’s always these superlatives. Right? There’s always someone more beautiful, etcetera, than me. But there is no one who knows me like me, and I think we have to realize this.
Who’s my teacher? I often say this ad nauseam actually. Myself. So the only way I am going to get over this kind of losing mentality, this pain that we all suffer, I think anxiety, fear, it just goes on and on. Everyone suffers this, I think.
But people that are successful in life, I don’t not mean financially successful, but spiritually, philosophically successful are people that have dealt with this. Now you can never truly conquer this, but you can deal with it. How do you do this? Well, one technique I’ve read and I think is a very interesting one is when you awaken in the morning, don’t look at your phone. Of course, don’t touch your phone.
And then as you lie in your bed, count backwards from 100 to 0. Take you 2 or 3 minutes. Greatly calming. Greatly calming. And then and only then get up.
In my case, I go into the kitchen and I make a cup of coffee and then I come back and I listen to my affirmations as I make my bed. So I try to fill myself with positive thinking at the very beginning of the day. Now to be fair, as I’ve said before, there are some days that I don’t feel good for whatever reason. I’ve had bad dreams or perhaps I forgot my homework or perhaps I’m sick. Gosh knows.
So every day is not a good day. You’d be naive to claim that, but I know that I decide if it’s going to be a good day or a bad day. Then I proceed to shave, of course, right in my notebook and go forward into the day. And then I put my phone on. Take my messages, etcetera, etcetera.
And I don’t think this behavior is unique at all at all. Some people do it at 5 o’clock in the morning. I’m not a friend of 5 o’clock in the morning, but I do it a little bit later. But it’s all the same thing, and then then I go out. Now we are filled with this negativity.
Why so much negativity becomes the question. Well, obviously, it’s from, you know, it’s originally from Hurst and Pulitzer. Right? So called yellow journalism, sensationalism. The mind seems to respond well to negativity.
Biologically, we were probably the same when we left the Rift Valley a 100000 years ago. We have that natural fear in us, but we can control this. Now as I’ve spoken about before, we are naturally kind beings. There are the weirdos that are not, I’m sure, aggressive, angry people. There are some, but not most people, not most.
And yes, some people suffer more than others and some people must develop more than others. You know, we’re all on a path. Right? But ultimately, I think we must realize that there is truth and the truth is that we can live decent, colorful, positive lives. And why am I here?
What’s my mission? What happens when I leave here when I die? These questions can be answered by each individual. So I don’t have to feel like a loser and I don’t have to feel like a victim for me. You know, I was thinking just the other day, my very, very first love.
I think it was 13 or 14 years old, and a new girl had arrived in our small little town. And for whatever reason, this girl I can’t even remember her name. It’s terrible. But she likes me, and we were friends. I was awake all night.
Gotta be a man. Gotta ask her to be my girlfriend, whatever that was. So I was awake, like I said, all night. The next morning, I ran up to her and I said, could I tell you something? And she said, yes.
Yes, Leon. But let me tell you something first. And I said, sure. What? I met a boy.
And I’m waiting for and his name is Leon, but it doesn’t come. His name is Bob. To this day, I have that visceral feeling like I’ve said before, I’m sure, when I hear the word Bob, the name Bob. So there we are, lying on my mother’s sofa in our family room, listening to America, an old band from the seventies, broken. I felt as if my heart literally was down in my entrails in the lower part and lower extremities in my body.
And then here I am today, 67 years old. So from 14 to 67 and things went along, not bad. I’ve achieved more than I expected and less than I wanted. So and I think that’s the same for all human beings. Right?
So enjoy your life. Say your affirmations. Be positive as much as you can. And you know what they say. You know what they say. Critical thinking is necessary to get over feeling like a victim, and critical thinking is great. God bless. Take care. Bye bye.