Uprooting Negatives: Planting Positives

One of the first things to know about uprooting negatives is that having negative thoughts is not shameful or an indication of poor character; it’s simply a result of being human. We live, therefore we will, at least occasionally, have fearful and discouraging thoughts to deal with. Mark Twain helps us accept this truth by saying, “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear.” I prefer the word transformation to mastery, but the idea is the same: Fear, discouragement, irritation, and all the rest of our agitated, hope-sapping thoughts simply are. What we do with them is completely up to us

Excerpted from How to Stay Upbeat in a Beat Down World by Sue Patton Thoele. Available on Amazon.