“Did you hear about the Ebola outbreak?” a dance mom asked me as we sat and watched the girls learn their choreography. This was about eleven years ago, when my granddaughters were competitive dancers. “We could all die,” she added grimly.
Only four cases had been confirmed in the United States, but we were all about to die. None of the people who had contracted it in the US had died, but we had better all Prepare For The Worst.
Why do we stalk negativity?
What do we Google? Disease and disasters. What do we prepare for? Emergencies. (Have you used up all the pandemic-era TP you hoarded yet?) We love to sink our teeth into a juicy calamity.
Let’s look at the flipside.
The opposite of sickness is health. How can you prepare for it? The flipside of lack is abundance. How can you study it? How can you sink your teeth into a juicy happy outcome?
Health, abundance, and happy outcomes are just as real. The negative and the positive are both true. It’s a question of which side you’d prefer to live on.
Most of our thinking comes from what we learned from the moment we were born. We imitated our parents’ mindsets and actions. We tell ourselves life is hard because that’s what we’ve always heard. We spend so much time talking about what doesn’t work and what’s wrong, that we forget that we have the power to create something effortless and wonderful.
This week, keep track of how many times you think and say that something is difficult. That’s all. Just keep a running tally. Later, we’ll work on changing the mindset. But for now, see how deeply ingrained that mindset is.
