Positive affirmations can protect you from negative phone calls and keep you from getting “stuck” in a downward spiral. I returned a call to a friend on Friday who had left me a voicemail a few days before. And his name is Bruce. You’ll get why he’s like a turtle in a second.

You know I typically don’t take personal calls during the day. But in this case I was cleaning up my office and decided to crack two “turtles with one stone.”

Hello Bruce,

How’s it going? “Their saying the economy was worse than they had previously stated.” Right off the bat, Bruce was spewing out negative thoughts.

I was like oh boy, here we go again. Bruce went on to tell me about a couple who purchased ten rentals in Los Vegas during the last real estate boom in the U.S and how his wife spent last weekend with the wife of the real estate couple.

He said “I ask my wife, did you ask them what happened to those ten houses? They were so smart back then but now look at them.” Bruce’s wife said “no I didn’t ask them that. That would have been rude.” Bruce said “I would have asked them. Because I bet they don’t have them anymore.” What a grumpy dude.

Let me just list a few of Bruce’s comments here to illustrate the point I want to make.

• Who’s going to hire a 50 year old man like me?
• If you aren’t a government worker or have a government pension then you’re not doing well in this economy
• My wife looks at me as if I’m a bum because my business is failing and I can’t find a job
• Who do you know that’s doing well right now?

I probably don’t have to tell you. The rest of my day was mostly unproductive. Truth be told, I had to take a nap after listening to Bruce’s negative junk. His crappy attitude really did affect me in the worse kind of way.

When I woke-up, I realized that the negative things he was saying was the first thing on my mind. And I quickly reminded myself that I don’t accept personal phone calls during the day, especially from Bruce. So I immediately began my success ritual to change my state of mind. You know you must fight for the state of mind you want to create for your business and life through positive affirmations.

Positive Affirmations Protect Your State of Being

I realize the reason Bruce rants on and on about how bad things are right now. He’s constructing protective walls like a turtle’s shell with the negative affirmations he makes so he has excuses for his lack of direction and action. Anytime something doesn’t go right or he fails, he can say it didn’t go his way because of the economy. But in reality, the conditions in the economy may have nothing to do with his failures.

Does this sound familiar in any way to you?

Now Bruce’s wife Pandora and kids have a very high “burn rate”, which means they like spending money on the latest gadgets, fashions, and eateries. And he says that his savings are dwindling fast.

When all his money is gone, Bruce will have constructed the story or built the “shell of excuses” around him before his “Rome” falls: It’s not my fault. It’s the government’s fault. It’s those crooks in Washington. They did it. They screwed the country.

Bruce Is Stuck

My point is when you don’t take responsibility for what happens in your life you dig a deeper whole for yourself. You can’t clearly evaluate results in your life and make good judgments if you play the blame game on the government or corporate greed.

Do you understand the nasty plot now? And it’s not pretty for anyone who chooses to give in like my friend Bruce. Now It’s almost impossible for Bruce to do the challenging work of figuring out what he can do next to move his life in a positive direction because he’s focused on things which are literally out of his control.

He’s “stuck.” And he’s not coachable either. And he creates his environment where “stuck” seems only logical. He constantly makes affirmations to keep himself focused on his negative goal of being “stuck”. But Bruce would probably say he’s closer to something which rimes with “stuck.” That’s right; goals can be negative or positive. And not actively setting positive goals can mean you’re allowing negative goals to get set for you.

Bruce has emotionally set-up conditions which justifies his lack of action. So his daily focus now is to validate or prove he’s right.

Then he watches the news everyday to find evidence he’s right about the fact that he has no control over being stuck. And there’s plenty of evidence to support his case. So there’s no reason for him to take action towards a positive goal you know.

Bruce constantly looks for corroborating evidence with his wife’s friends, his friends, and just wherever he can grab onto the facts to prove that he’s justified in taking no action.

Because if he took positive actions towards assessing viable options for making money, then he’d disprove his hypothesis that there’re no jobs out there or ways to make money in a business venture. Now he’s painted himself into a corner, which is going to be difficult for him to fight his way out of his hard “shell.”

We all do what Bruce does to a certain extent because it’s comfortable staying with in our protective “shells” like turtles. It seems like the easy thing to do which is to go and hide out if you will.

When we adopt this kind of mindset, we shut out viable opportunities because we can’t see them through our “shell.” And the downward spiral begins. It’s because we’re only looking to affirm our hypothesis. We set-up the emotional conditions to support our case and then find the facts to support it.

You know Bruce is able to find plenty of data points out there to prove his hypothesis that he can’t make money anymore. Right?

But I can find lots of proof points today to show Bruce’s hypothesis isn’t true as well.

Rely On Positive Affirmations to Change Your State of Mind

The only thing Bruce has control over all the negative excuses that Bruce brings up is his state of being. You need a daily success ritual to get you focused on opportunities and the positive side of things. So make a decision to focus on what’s positive right now. Then develop plans to win in this economy based on what you see as positive.

Don’t allow yourself to get “stuck” like Bruce in a negative emotional state where you just look for the facts to support your negative hypothesis. Because the evidence is there to support whatever you decide to focus on.

So here’s my formula for you. Leverage your past successes to get you into a winning state of mind. Relive times in your life when you overcame huge obstacles in your way. See what you saw at the time. Hear what the people around you were saying.

And most importantly, feel what you felt at the point when you were powerful. Stand the way you stood with the same smile you had on your face at the time.

Think of an occasion when you had completed a project or won a successful negotiation. Fully relive your experience in all of its glory.

Break Out of Your Shell

For a copy of my positive affirmations to help you get into massive action, email me and I will forward you my daily “shell” cracking success affirmations.

I offer two complementary coaching sessions per month. It’s always first come, first served.  so get signed up right away.

And you know you can sign-up right now for a complementary Break Out of Your Shell coaching session with me to get more help on how to change your state and get moving and creating success in your business and life.

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