Self-Sabotage Made Easy

Humans like to bitch. Actually, we love it. Our favorite pastime, I think, is complaining about all the things we don’t like. The politicians we don’t like get way more airtime than the ones we do like. And then they get elected. Because that’s the way the Universe works. What you focus on grows.

Attention is Miracle Grow

It doesn’t matter if it’s positive attention or negative, attention is fertilizer. Things we pay attention to are things that thrive and grow and cling to us. And it doesn’t matter if the attention we pay is “STAY WITH ME!” or “GO AWAY!” The result is always the same. More of what we’re paying attention to.

There’s a second, equally true universal law. Every subject has things about it that are wonderful to our judging minds, as well as things that are horrible. It’s just like the tiny photon that can exist everywhere and nowhere until an observer observes it, at which time it exist in one and only one place. Our judging minds make the call. What we choose to observe is what becomes our reality. Not the other way around.

What bitching does

Take a subject, any subject–I’ll pick one that gets griped about most in my circles. The thing I hear authors bitching about most of all is Amazon. They complain about how its ranking system works, something no one actually knows. They complain about reviews, which they shouldn’t be reading anyway. They complain about customer support, which is the best in existence.They complain about sales, which are higher than any other online bookstore. They complain about everything and anything related to Amazon.

And so the things about the company that irritate them multiply. Their experience with Amazon gets worse and worse, and they say, “See? I knew I was right! This company sucks.”

When in fact, all that has happened is that they have focused on things they don’t like and created more of them. All by themselves. I’m over here having a phenomenally fun and profitable time at Amazon myself. So what’s the variable?