Full confession. I’ve been struggling lately.
Not a good thing for someone who promotes empowerment, right? I mean seriously, if I can’t empower myself, how can I help others?
At least that’s what I’ve been telling myself. We all have down days. It’s part of being human.
I’ve noticed the word CAN’T has been showing up in my vocabulary lately. I can’t sell. I can’t grow. I can’t lose weight. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.
I sound like a two-year old throwing a temper tantrum.
There’s an old saying I use on my kids, “Can’t never could do anything.”
The more ‘I CAN’T’ shows up in my vocabulary, the angrier and more negative I find myself becoming. I become frustrated with myself.
It’s no secret that the more you focus on something, the more it becomes your reality.
Sure, I recognized what was happening, and I ‘tried’ to change my thoughts, but I also ‘try’ to lose weight. I ‘try’ to be a good wife, mom, daughter, friend. I ‘try’ to do the right thing.
Did you know, there is no such thing as try? Seriously. No such thing. Just ask Yoda.
‘Try’ to pick up a pen. Right now…
Picked it right up, didn’t you? You didn’t try…you just did it.
You can argue anyway you like, but the fact of the matter is, you either picked up the pen, or you didn’t. There is no in-between.
Try is a make-believe word we use to give ourselves permission to fail.
“Well, I tried.” No, you didn’t. You either did, or you didn’t.
You can substitute other words for try, but it’s still the same thing. You either did, or you didn’t.
Let’s get back to CAN’T.
Can’t is a very dis-empowering word. When you say you can’t do something, you are setting yourself up for immediate failure.
You are sending a message to your subconscious and to the universe that says, “OK, I’m ready to fail. Let’s make it happen, team.”
Words have immense power. They are directly tied to emotion. ‘Can’t’ signals us to immediately feel defeat. Defeat in turn creates a hailstorm of other emotions – fear, anger, hate, angst, stress, worry.
It’s a ripple effect.
Drop a pebble into water and what happens? You can see the ripples cascading away from the source.
The same thing happens when you use a negative word. Eventually those ripples turn into waves. The waves turn into tsunamis. Before you know it, you’re drowning in negativity.
Fortunately, the same occurs when we reverse things and use positive words and thoughts. It becomes greater and greater and soon we are swimming in a sea of positivity and abundance.
Lately I’ve taken to asking myself questions such as, “How can I make money with Daring Woman? How can I get advertisers? How can I sell when I can’t sell?”
While it seems like I’m asking myself the right questions, they all have one thing in common. They are energetically negative.
I was thinking about this the other day. Realization dawned on me about how negative I’ve become. How toxic I feel energetically and emotionally.
I decided to ask a different question to see what happened. Obviously doing the same thing over and over isn’t working. As Einstein says, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results.”
So, I asked myself a different question, “What can I do differently to achieve my goals?”
I felt an immediate shift. My energy came rushing back. The strong, confident, and capable me rose to the surface. The black cloud of toxic emotion I’ve been living in disintegrated into a bright, shining, new world.
One question. One single question has created a complete shift in my thoughts, my behavior, my emotions.
Originally published at daringwomaninc.com