GRBAITING CLOUDS By Randy! Longmire PascD CSL R CM Bit Ste cm Ce Et oe Introduction In continuing our lessons on self-empoorment™, we want to explore the realm of negative thinking and the role of blame in our quest for personal disempowerment. Negative Thinking: Living In A Disempowering Context 4. When things are looking hopeful, there is still a fifty percent chance things will take a tum for the ‘worst. 2. Even on a sunny day, you're still geiting cancer. Phrases like these are effective tools for shifting your perspective on the world. In a moment of happiness, hope, and joy, you can alter your perception and immediately feel despair, strife, and upset Looking to the future, you can declare what is not pos- sible for yourself - you can limit your potential - simply by looking from within a negative or disempowering context. As I've stated in my previous column, I am an active self- ‘deprecator, so the things I share are coming from personal experience. For example, two years ago I had it made. I had more money than I needed, the nicest vehicle I'd ever ‘owned, and credit cards with $0 balances. At that time, I looked into my future and contemplated what would lie there. I saw that I could actually create a future of debt and ‘overwhelming stress around money and finances. 1 imag- ined living with a negative income and having bill collec- tors calling and mailing me daily. Flash forward to today, two years later, and those things have come true. Through my negative vision for my future I was able to cause myself to be unemployed for 10 months, have more debt than ever, nearly unbearable stress around finances, and now I am a ‘cepted once again into the communities of the downtrodden ‘who support my martyrdom and victimized self-image. ‘Once you regain that sort of negative outlook, get as many people as you can to agree with you about how bad things are. This will provide you with a disempowering support system for the times when you are optimistic, confident and excited When the people of the world are living successful, fulfilled, and empowered lives as a result of decades of passionate self-help vigilantes like the Dr. Phils, Tony Rob- bins, and Wayne Dyers of the world, the logical next step for human evolution will be decades of self-cmpoorment™ Self-Doubt Another tool for effectively shifting your perception into a disempowering context is self-doubt. When you develop the muscle of disvaluing your abilities, you will be a pio- neer of the impending self-empoorment™ movement. December 2006 One way to flex the muscle of doubt is to mistrust your intuition. Begin by counting the occasions each day where your intuition fails. We tend to notice, value, and share the times our intuition is correct, but how often do we disregard the times we were wrong? Your friend calls right when you ‘were thinking about them: “It’s that powerful intuition!” What about al the times you were expecting a call and received nothing but telemarketers? We have been trained to forget those failures almost immediately after they occur, having been reprogrammed to remember only the times we ‘were right. Discover the disempowering power of doubt. Learn how you can effectively inhibit your performance in the mo- ment! It doesn’t take a lot of effort or hard work. You sim- ply train yourself to recognize moments of confidence or positive self-talk, and immediately replace those thoughts with doubt and negativity. This is actually a natural tenden- cy for the brain but, as with any muscle, you can develop yourself to be a master of self-inhibition through practice. The Power Of Blame Learn to blame others for everything, especially when you know you are the one responsible. This is @ great way to separate yourself from others, lose relatedness and, most importantly, experience a loss of personal power. Blaming others will always keep upset in place. You will never resolve a conflict if you continue to blame the other person(s) in the situation. This is good. This is what we ‘would hope to see. In today's self-help movement, people are learning to take responsibility for upset even when the issue is ‘obviously someone clsc’s fault. The self-empoorment™ movement will establish the opposite. People will have the ability to blame others even when all signs blatantly point the responsibility at themselves. Summary Keep these pointets in mind over the next several weeks, and watch for the pitfalls of empowerment, hope, and joy that will certainly come up. When you see an opportunity to shift your perspective, to alter your context to one of disempowerment, make a note of it and share it with others. Count the times your intuition fails and share them. Send ‘me an e-mail to share those moments, or to share experi- ences of empowerment where you are stuck and can't see how to shift the perspective to one of negativity. Keep looking up...to see the clouds appear. Randyl Longmire is not a doctor. He is not a therapist. He has won no awards, and he has no standing in the academ- ic world. He is generally unqualified for most professions, pursuits, hobbies, and athletic activities ‘The Word and its editorial staff are not responsible for any loss of life, self-esteem, oF livelihood as a result of Mr. Longmire's teachings, and we feel they are in poor taste.