One of the (many) joys of ending a long, miserable
marriage is that it leaves me free to pursue my own personal development, or
spiritual journey. Possibly I left my marriage at a time when personal
development courses had become main stream enough to be readily available. Certainly I am constantly grateful for all
the resources readily available out there.

Right now there is an abundance of personal development
workshops; some free, some paid. Many
of them offer great information. A good
number of the attendees are single women who are past the first flush of
youth. Funny that. 

Recently I had the pleasure of listening to Dr Topher
Morrison at one such workshop. He had a
lot of valuable things to say. Two
which have stuck in my mind are these:

“Success
is achieved through a few simple
behaviours
that you repeat daily.”

“Failure
is achieved through a few simple
behaviours
that you repeat daily.”

Now these two statements imply total personal
responsibility. I found them
exhilarating. It’s great to think that
a few simple behaviours repeated daily produce success. It’s far less appealing to think that
failure is produced by a few simple behaviours repeated daily. Particularly if you live, or have lived in,
a situation where a ‘crazy-maker’ has turned your expectations of life on their
head. 

Can you ever be held responsible for their behaviour? I choose to believe that you cannot. Equally, I prefer to believe that whether or
not you nurture their negative beliefs in your own mind is a choice you can
make, or refuse. 

There are perfectly understandable reasons why you take on
their negative beliefs (especially their negative beliefs about you). At some level there is almost an unspoken
belief that if you really accept these negatives then someone will have to come
along and refute them for you. Sadly,
it’s a fundamentally flawed belief; lots of beliefs are, however much we may
cling to them. Generally speaking, it
doesn’t happen. Or even if it does, by
that point your brainwashing is so complete that you don’t register this
alternative viewpoint. 

So in that sense, the simple behaviour of repeatedly
disbelieving your own worth daily perpetuates the failure to move on. 

“But”, you might object, “when you feel that low it’s
impossible to affirm your own worth daily”. Not so.

Granted, it may be impossible to be relentlessly positive
from morning to night. But it’s not
inconceivable that you can have a positive, nurturing thought about yourself
every so often, is it?

Consider that the average human being has an average of
60,000 thoughts per day. How many of
them do you want to be the same old self-punishing rant? 

We’ve all done that at some point in the vague hope that
‘something will give’. And it
doesn’t. So, the system doesn’t work,
yet we repeat it. That way lies yet
more misery. Guaranteed.

I’ve always found that misery begets more misery. Focusing on what you don’t want has
an unfortunate but predictable habit of drawing more of the same into your
orbit. Focusing on something different,
however modest that something may be, has the effect of producing a different,
and better, result.

Still, at first, I found all of this Law of Attraction
stuff challenging and unnerving. If you
attract what you think about and you are temperamentally inclined to think
about negatives then surely, try as you may, you will end up exactly where you
are now? Happily not.

It is said that the energy transmitted by 1 positive
thought outweighs 100 negative thoughts. Of course, if you are an absolute beginner, you probably deserve a
special dispensation; 1 positive thought per 1,000 negative thoughts. That would come to 60 positive thoughts per
day, which probably wouldn’t take more than 2-3 minutes in all. (You could even go through a batch of 10 or
15 several times a day, to get the thing done.) 

The only thing you need to remember is that a positive
thought only becomes positive when it has some good feeling behind it. For as long as it takes to go through your
60 positive thoughts you are obliged to feel and enjoy your own innate
worthiness. What’s more you are allowed
to do so. The Universe, you, and I all give you permission,
unconditionally. 

Would you be willing to play with that? Just by practising the simple behaviour of
choosing 60 positive thoughts a day – and that number could grow exponentially
of course if you find you like it – you could set in place the simple
behaviours that repeated daily lead to your personal success and emotional
regeneration.