These assumptions are not easy to swallow. If you are anything like me, assuming their opposites would be a lot easier.

On a slightly different note, who was the smart- ass who performed that particularly pedestrian bit of alphabet play with the word ASSUME and brought in an asinine whiff of pure bad taste into the ‘propah’ minds of the innocent? If you find him (or her, though frankly I think this kind of thing is more male than female. Yes, in this one thing I have a gender bias you couldn’t hide behind the Everest), please to shoot him betwixt the eyes. And no warning. The silly ass..! I know there is no pun there, but if there were, it would have been VERY intended..!

I began to gag from the word GO, if you must know. I disagreed with all of them from one to fourteen. The last one saved me from a perfect score. The absolute contrariness in me made me mad about that too. But you knew that, right? My reactions are what a pious little miss would call negative. But who cares what a prim little runt thinks anyhow?

I was just going to click my way out of this mush when some forgotten memory rose out of my subconscious and caught me by the throat.

Many years ago, I read a book called Best Year Yet!. On an aside, if you’ve ever felt that you are floundering around aimlessly in your life and are simply not able to put your act together because you don’t even know what your act is, then click on that link and dive in. When you surface, you can feel all the gratitude (toward me, naturally) you want. I know you aren’t cheap and would express it wiring obscenely large amounts into my Swiss Bank account. Just in case you feel embarrassed about offering me money for this good turn I am doing you, let me assure you that I would not be embarrassed accepting it. Since this is NOT a sponsored link and the site isn’t going to pay me zilch, I am eager to clean up somewhere. And buddy, you’re IT..!

In this life changing book Jinny Ditzler relates an incident that happed when she was a teen. As a result of this incident, Jinny says, she internalized some very debilitating beliefs about her own person and her value to others- specially to members of the opposite sex. Many years and failed relationships later, when she identified this painful incident as the one where her belief system had gone haywire, she began working on herself. One of the things she did was the “I am beautiful and deserve to be loved” kind of positive affirmations while planted in front of a mirror. I remember reading that she couldn’t say the words. Apart from making her feel like a priceless ass (oh damn that word again!), it sounded so utterly false to her… such a blatant lie.

Until then, her self talk included declaratives like “Nobody loves me”, “I am not worthy of love”…… you get the drift. She then consciously (and very bravely), breaks down her predominantly negative self talk. She comes to the conclusion that her negative self talk was just as false as the positive self talk she was trying to learn..! That was a moment of change for her. She decided to speak the lie that would- with no harm to another person- buoy her up to move forward in her life instead of speaking the negative lie which had only been dragging her under for years..!

None of these assumptions are going to be easy to internalize. But I’d rather speak a positive lie which makes me feel better about myself than a negative one which does nothing but make me feel terrible. Simplistic? Perhaps. I have been accused of being a Pollyanna. You know what? I’m VERY okay with being one. The alternative sucks..!

Enjoy…!