I’m not preaching.

I’m learning the hard way like most of us.

Most of us do not need enemies the way we beat ourselves up constantly.

That’s why one of the most important things I have ever shared in years of writing this daily blog is to put a stop/loss on all negative thinking whether someone else gives it to us or whether we inflict it upon ourselves.

We need to be our best advocate.

Looking to others may feel good but it makes us codependent to them and puts power in the hands of those close to us who shouldn’t have it.

Be on the lookout for negative thoughts.

Purge them from your mind a.s.a.p.

If you don’t believe in yourself with all your talents and shortcomings, who will?

When the author Norman Cousins was diagnosed with terminal cancer, he ordered a bunch of Marx Brothers movies and said if he had to die he was going to go out laughing.

Of course, he lived – for a long time – and when he later had a heart attack, Cousins told the EMTs on the way to the hospital not to worry; that he wasn’t going to die.

He lived.

If negative thinking can successfully be extracted from life and death situations, we have no excuse not to become more aware of the damage we do to ourselves when we allow a negative thought in our mind even for a brief period of time.