I wasn't sure how I wanted to approach this topic as it affects all of us. The first spiritual principal I ever learned was that thoughts are things. So when you are going a long letting your brain talk to you about life, your mate, your kids, your friends those thoughts have form. They go out in the world and help create the environment you live in.

When I was a girl my mother was constantly negative in the way she spoke to herself. She would say things, like "beggars can't be choosers." She would rail against God who was punishing her, and would lie helplessly in self driven state of depression and poverty. Though like most children I saw her creative side and adored her when I was little. It was only as I grew and understood our lives did I feel anger toward her lack of taking responsibility for us and herself.

I am bringing this up for 2 reasons, one is I am trying to do something I consider difficult (yet I want to do it), the second is I have a couple of people in my life who are the voice of negativity my mother demonstrated. I understand it is their fear and their own issues, but it does affect me. So I had to examine my own feelings around the negativity. Thank God I have other voices in recovery that are healing and positive.

Let me say it is a long time since I have lived with Violet (my mother), decades in fact. Her voice followed me into adulthood. The spiritual people I have met a long the way have mostly replaced her voice. They have helped me change my view of my own abilities and taught me to speak kindly to myself. They help me every day have a relationship with a higher power. So here is what I know about negativity.

First any negative thought you allow to run free untethered creates more of the same. The more you say you can't do something the more you enforce it. The "can't" is the powerful force that stops your actions or ambitions from happening, it also prevents healing. You actually create something you don't want to happen by allow it free reign. I believe it is at the root of most all of our maladies, physical, spiritual or mental. It is usually created by FEAR.

Fear of this type is usually the extreme reaction to events in our lives we are unable to cope with. The fear of the event happening again creates a "button". So any time we get close to that button, it is like an alarm is set off in our psyche. The "button" can be as simple as when you get something you love you lose it. So when you start feeling like you want something, you get the alarm, "Uh oh it is starting again!" Your emotions, your brain and your fear mechanism is trigger, and you stop.

One of the first ways to handle this involuntary response, is face it. That is right, go ahead walk right through it. That response does a couple of things. Regardless of the outcome it teaches you, you have feelings, you are not a feeling. It can show you several outcomes that are possible, not just the fear you are going to fail, or lose. Lastly it can change your thought patterns to allow you to move toward success. It is true. Once you believe you are capable of doing something, you move forward more confidently. All this from thought.

So as you walk through life, next time you find yourself rationalizing something, or afraid of something, face it. Find a friend or loved one that lets you complain all the way through, but go through. I can change how you think and finally it can change how you live.