No, of course you haven’t heard any good negative predictions lately. That’s because there aren’t any good negative predictions. There are only negative negative predictions. That’s because there’s nothing good about a negative prediction! Negative predictions can only be negative.
Pessimists, dissenters, prophets of doom. Who needs them? The defeatists of the world always begin with the same curse of negative predictions.
“You’ll never succeed.”
“You’re too dumb to pass the test.”
“You’ll never win.”
“Don’t bother trying…you’ll only fail.”
These cynics and doubters don’t understand that their greatest obstacle is…you guessed it, their own negative predictions. That’s right. Their greatest obstacle is none other then themselves, their thinking.
This burden of building dungeons in the air, of gloom and doom, of burning your bridges before you even get to them, can be crippling over the course of a lifetime. Armed with the right attitude, however, you can undo this curse and live a better, more positive, joy-filled life.
James Whitaker, the first American to reach the summit of Mt. Everest, knew what it was like to deal with real, not imagined, rough spots. Avalanches, dehydration, hypothermia, and the physical and mental fatigue caused by the lack of oxygen at 29,000 feet all stood before him and the top of the world’s highest mountain. Most of those who dared to climb it before Whitaker had failed. He succeeded. He turned it around.
“You don’t really conquer such a mountain,” he said. “You conquer yourself. You overcome the sickness and everything else – your pain, aches, fears – to reach the summit.”
Ignoring, denying, or complaining about the rough spots leads to self-destruction. Achievers use the rough spots to move to the next level.
I recall many years ago in the Mel Brook’s movie, Blazing Saddles, one of the funniest movies ever made, there is a scene that perfectly captures the nature of self-imposed burdens. You may recall that the bad guys are chasing the good guys across the desert. Of course, the bad guys are closing the gap. The situation is desperate. Finally, the good guys develop a plan.
What do they do? Right in the middle of the desert, the good guys build a tollbooth. The toll is a nickel. As the bad guys ride up to the toll, they realize they don’t have the nickel so they send one of their gang back to town to get the nickels they need to pass through. In the meantime, the good guys get away.
This is ridiculous, isn’t it? Why do the bad guys stop in the first place? Why? Good question. For the very same reason you probably do in your own life, that’s why.
How many people encounter “tollbooths” in their lives every day without ever questioning the validity of the darn obstacle? Instead, they just stop and are immobilized. Or worse, they retreat to find what’s necessary to get past it.
Do they ask, “Does the tollbooth have a right to be here?” “Is there another way around it?” “Why can’t I just ignore it?”
Some people spend so much time preparing for imagined tollbooths, they just waste their lives away.
For them, running into adversity is horrible, terrible and awful. For winners, it’s none of these. If at first you don’t succeed, you’re about average. That’s because a well-adjusted person is one who makes the same mistake twice without getting nervous about it. And the well-adjusted above average, success-oriented, person learns from the first mistake and doesn’t make it again.
Once I was playing a game with one of our grandchildren. We couldn’t find the rules in the box. He decided to make up his own rules. Great. Only problem is, after about ten minutes, he became angry at the game, shouted he HATED the STUPID game he was losing, and insisted we stop playing immediately.
Fine. Except one thing. He made up the rules of the game! Why not just CHANGE them instead of making himself so angry? This is the curse of negativity. This is the curse of living by self-created rules you don’t like. Self-imposed rules of life that you no longer like require only one sane response. Change. You can change your own self-imposed rules if you don’t like the game you are in.
Someone once said, “An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.” Wisdom.
On June 22, 1986, almost 30 years ago, Lee Iacocca said in a newspaper interview, “Most people are looking for security, a nice, safe prosperous future. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s called the American Dream.” On the other hand, the American Nightmare is the fear of failure. Iacocca said, “Fear of failure brings fear of taking risks…and you’re never going to get what you want out of life without taking some risks. Remember, everything worthwhile carries risk of failure.”
So stamp out the curse of negative predictions, self-created rules that block your advancement, and negativity in general. Replace it with good old-fashioned mental self-control. You deserve it and everyone else around you does as well.

Author's Bio: 

Michael R. Mantell earned his Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania and his M.S. at Hahnemann Medical College, where he wrote his thesis on the psychological aspects of obesity. His career includes serving as the Chief Psychologist for Children’s Hospital in San Diego, and as the founding Chief Psychologist for the San Diego Police Department. He also served on the faculty of UCSD’s School of Medicine, Dept. of Psychiatry.

After retiring from practicing clinical psychology for 40 years, he has become a highly sought after transformational behavior coach and power mentor for professional and elite amateur athletes, senior executive business leaders, and trains the nation’s top leaders in fitness in transformational leadership. He has worked in the media for nearly 40 years, appearing on every major talk and news show, and has been interviewed in, and written for, every major health and fitness magazine.
Michael is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the International Council on Active Aging, the Chief Consultant for Behavior Science for the Premier Fitness Camp at Omni La Costa, and served as the Senior Consultant for Behavioral Sciences for the American Council on Exercise.

Michael is an Organizational Advisor to Fitwall, Rock My Run, amSTATZ, Outburst Mobile, and speaks regularly for Rancho La Puerta and the Asia Fitness Conference in Bangkok, in addition to numerous other fitness-health organizations throughout the nation. He has been a keynote speaker for the University of California’s system wide “FitCon” and for UCLA’s “Stress Less Week” as well as for the Transformational Leadership Council.

He is a best-selling author of three books including the 25th Anniversary updated edition of his 1988 original “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff, P.S. It’s All Small Stuff,” and his 1996, “Ticking Bombs: Defusing Violence in the Workplace.” He is listed in greatist.com’s 2013 “The 100 Most Influential People in Health and Fitness.” His fourth book is due out soon.