YOU CAN'T AFFORD THE LUXURY
OF A NEGATIVE THOUGHT

THE CURE

MACBETH: Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, Raze out the written troubles of the brain, And with some sweet oblivious antidote Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff Which weighs upon the heart?
DOCTOR: Therein the patient Must minister to himself.

SHAKESPEARE

ACT-CENTUATE THE POSITIVE

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.

GEORGE SANTAYANA

Yes, Virginia, there is a cure for the disease of negative thinking--dozens of cures, in fact. Any one of the techniques, suggestions, or ideas in this section may do it for you. Any one may be the key that opens whole new worlds of aliveness, enthusiasm, and health.

Yours may be a combination lock that requires five keys, or ten, or twenty, or you may need everything in this book--and a hundred more techniques you discover on your own--to open the doors to your inner kingdom of joy, self-confidence, and happiness. Whatever it takes is whatever it takes.

Whatever it takes, the results will be worth it.

I'm going to begin by talking about death (eeek!) and the fear of death (eeek! eeek!). After that, luncheon is served. I'm laying out a smorgasbord of positivity.

Mostly, these suggestions will seem familiar because they're good old-fashioned common sense. I tend to be pragmatic--if something works, I use it; if not, I try something else. What I pass along to you was learned through my own process of trial and error. It is from a firm--and substantial--foundation of mistakes that I offer these suggestions.

There's no particular order to this gathering of ideas. No "Do this first, then this, then this." You are the architect of your cure. Naturally, like all good architects, you'll be consulting with other professionals--but the Master Plan is in your hands.

Choosing the pathway to your cure is easy--just follow your heart.

Please don't just read this book; use it. Do some things. Try them. Find out if a technique works for you--if it produces uplifting results. If so, do it some more. If not, throw it away. Try something else. This book contains a lot of things to try.

And now, The Cure.

Common sense is not so common.

VOLTAIRE

The music that can deepest reach, And cure all ill, is cordial speech.

EMERSON

Death 101 (Part One)

This is a crash course in death. Why death? Shouldn't we be focusing on positive stuff? Yes, but first we have to explore the motivation behind doing all the positive stuff.

One who longs for death is miserable, but more miserable is he who fears it.

JULIUS WILHELM ZINCGREF
1628

If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive!.

SAMUEL GOLDWYN

If you're going to think more positively because you fear death, then whatever you do--no matter how positive--will be an affirmation of that fear.

As long as fear is looming large, you will probably continue with the process of improvement. As soon as fear no longer threatens, you may revert to old habits. When, for example, the medical cure for your illness is discovered, there's no need to fear dying of it; therefore, you may feel you can return to your former habits of negative thinking. That will, of course, recreate the intention to die, and another method of death is likely to appear.

If you use the techniques given in this book because you want to live a fuller, happier, more joyful, and productive life, then you have a foundation that will hold firm. If you undertake these methods as a frantic attempt to outmaneuver the Grim Reaper, the whole venture is, to paraphrase Henry Higgins, "doomed before you even take the vow."

Not that you must be perfectly calm in the face of your own mortality before any of these suggestions will work. Not at all. Fear can be a good motivator to start something. But fear must gradually be replaced with the desire for a positive result if long-term progress is to be made.

It also feels better--running from something you fear is far less enjoyable than running toward something you desire.

Once you accept your own death, all of a sudden you're free to live. You no longer care about your reputation. You no longer care except so far as your life can be used tactically to promote a cause you believe in.

SAUL ALINSKY

Running from fear only strengthens fear--you are demonstrating that fear has power over you. Fear must be faced and gone through. The procedure of "getting over" fear is succinctly stated in the title of the book Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. (A book I haven't read, so I can't recommend it, but it does have a great title.) Only then do we learn the truth of fear--that fear is merely an illusion, not a real thing.

Before I continue with my short course on death, let's stroll over to the next classroom and overhear a few pointers on fear.

The late F. W. H. Myers used to tell how he asked a man at a dinner table what he thought would happen to him when he died. The man tried to ignore the question, but, on being pressed, replied: "Oh well, I suppose I shall inherit eternal bliss, but I wish you wouldn't talk about such unpleasant subjects.".

BERTRAND RUSSELL

Fear 101

There are some things it's good to have a healthy fear of--drinking poisons, leaping off tall buildings, sex with gorillas--situations in which our physical body is in imminent danger of annihilation, dismemberment, mutilation, or extinction.

Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

BERTRAND RUSSELL

All other fears--the ones we face most often every day--are illusions. They should be given no more credence or authority over our actions than television commercials, election-year promises, or people who try to sell us flowers in airports.

Most people approach a fearful situation as though fear were some sort of wall. Let's say the situation is walking up to someone we do not know and saying, "Hello."

As we think about approaching the stranger, the wall begins to form. As we imagine what the person may say in response, the wall grows denser. (The other person's response is almost always imagined in the negative: "Would you leave me alone!" Seldom do we imagine the other person looking up at us and singing "Some Enchanted Evening.") If we begin to move in the general direction of the person, the wall becomes almost solid. It seems an impenetrable barrier. We turn away, humming a chorus of "If I Loved You."

But the wall of fear is not real.

Fear as a barrier is an illusion. We have, however, been trained to treat this illusion as though it were real. This belief served us well in our childhood years. Our parents taught us to be afraid of everything new. This was--at that time--good advice. We were too young to know the difference between the legitimately dangerous and the merely exciting.

When we grew old enough to know the difference, however, no one ever taught us to take risks, explore new territories, and treat fear as energy for doing and learning new things. Fear as a reason not to do should be tucked away with all those other cozy childhood myths--Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy. (The Tooth Fairy was particularly hard to let go of.)