Listen Jack, I know it’s tough out there. Young men and women are facing so much discouragement. I get where you are. And I understand why your mail contains so much negativism. There’s despair. But I don’t want you to lose hope. You can’t lose hope. If it’s any comfort there’s no successful individual who hasn’t had moments of despair. Despair generates depression and fear. The fear comes as we project into the future but can’t see beyond present circumstances. We can’t see any turn of events.
Sometimes despair comes from the information we ingest. It’s why you have to be careful about what you read, what you hear… These things affect your outlook to life. The newspapers don’t help either. They can be so full of negative stuff. It’s like it’s not news unless it’s bad news. Unfortunately our most voracious consumption is news. It’s what most people feed on first thing in the morning. That’s a mass ingest of sadness. We gobble it from classic media, we gobble it from social media. We bloat ourselves with negativism. And we don’t seem to realise news outlets have an agenda. Every news outlet has a bias and a slant. There’s always an agenda. What we take in news-wise is essentially someone’s reinterpretation of facts and events, whether we accept it or not. There’s conscious and unconscious bias. We get programmed with these biases every day. Positive news hardly sells, negative news does – a lot! It’s what accounts for the headlines – catastrophe, wars, rumours of war, economic meltdowns, security threats, murder, anger, malfeasance… The list is endless. There’s no way ingesting all that negative stuff won’t affect you. It’ll drag down your spirit. Those kind of information bring despair. They pump fear into your heart, make you fearful about the future. Unfortunately there’s no let down in the negativism. The negativism is constant, day in, day out. Check out the headlines tomorrow.
I was shocked at the starkness of those five negative statements you made. You listed them as bullet points. And because you believe them they’ve taken on the colouration of religion. You put faith in them, therefore they will come to pass. Faith is powerful. We don’t really know how faith works. What we do know is, we can program the outcome of our lives through what we believe. Faith is highly dependent on input. It is processed from input. Faith uses imputed data to generate the future. That impute is the sum of our words, beliefs and imagination. And so if you believe you won’t succeed you won’t. Faith gives us godlike capabilities. We can generate our future through our beliefs. What if you flip those five negative statements? Instead of saying “I am not loved,” say “I’m loved.” Instead of saying “I will not make it in life,” say “I will make it!” Instead of saying “I will be abandoned,” say “I will not be abandoned.” Instead of saying “I am not good enough,” say “I am terrifically good!”; and instead of saying, “My girlfriend will abandon me,” say “My girlfriend will be by me and support me.” See the difference? The outlook changes, just because you switched from negative to positive affirmations. That change generates a different set of results faith-wise.
I’ve asked myself why so much negativism? I’ll tell you why. It’s because you’re afraid. You’re giving fear free reign over your heart. You need to conquer fear. You do that through your words. Speak words contrary to the fear. Say “I will not be afraid. I will succeed.” Repeat that several times a day. Then act on your word. Do the things that will make you succeed. Fear affects health. Fear can paralyse, literally. It has the capacity to loop itself. You’ll keep hearing words of discouragement, like a social media GIF. Write down positive stuff and speak it to yourself every morning; and any time fear comes on you. Just counter with positive words. You need to believe those positive confessions, I mean really believe them. Your belief must be so strong it seems you have what you’re saying already. Faith has the ability to make life generate the realities we believe in. Act as if what you’re saying is real, that it has already come to pass. In time you’ll see it manifest. But you need hot fervent belief. Discountenance the reality in front of you, believe in the unseen reality.
As a young man you can’t afford not to believe in your future. What then do you have? It’s important therefore for you to have a change of outlook. You can’t afford all that negative stuff. If you believe you won’t make it you won’t. If you believe you will make it you will. Faith is powerful. You must be able to look at apparent negative facts and still believe the contrary as your reality. That’s faith. You must be able to look at your little self and believe you’re going to be great, even when all the facts are screaming impossible. You’ll be shocked at how seemingly impossible circumstances change overnight, just because someone exercised faith. We don’t know the mechanics but we’ve seen the impossible become possible. How faith works is not really our concern, shouldn’t be our concern. That’s one problem we have when it comes to exercising faith – we want to know how it will work. But if you know how it will work it wouldn’t be faith again. Just believe. I am no more interested in how faith works than in how my car works. I just want to move from place to place, let the engineers worry about mechanics. In the same way stop worrying about how your faith will work, just exercise faith. Focus on the end result.
You’ve got to believe in the future envisaged by you. If you believe in that future you will endure. No matter what life throws at you, you will hold on to your faith. Why? Because faith says you already have it. Believe stubbornly. You’re too young not to believe you will succeed. You’re too full of sap to believe in failure. You’re too full of energy to ever give up.
But what if you don’t make it after pouring in so much effort? At least you tried! You’re still better than the man who wouldn’t even try. He adjudges himself a failure without giving himself an opportunity to succeed. He gave up without trying. There’s something contradictory in the idea of a youth giving up on himself. There’s just something not right about it, yet it’s the most common form of surrender. It’s self-surrender.
As you aim for the top appreciate your intermediate successes. They may seem small but they represent progress. They give encouragement. Otherwise all you will see is what you haven’t accomplished. We hardly take cognisance of our incremental successes. That’s because our sights are set high. We hardly applaud arriving on the 2nd floor when we’re aiming for the 20th floor. Yet we must get to 2nd floor first. All life requires of us is we exercise faith, hold on to our dreams and act according to our vision. Slowly we rise but soon we get there. Of course there’s a price to pay. There’s focus, hard work, discipline, tenacity. There’s determination and grit. You must endure, you must stay on course. Be prepared for opportunities as well. They will come. But they don’t always wear t-shirts emblazoned with “OPPORTUNITY!” They can be subtle and look inconsequential. It’s why you put in your best into everything.
