What I would like you to understand is that when something is happening and you feel strong negative emotion it is pointless to try to cover it up with a bright, happy thought. When your radio signal is set on 106 FM you cannot hear what's being broadcast on 98.7 FM. The frequencies are too far apart.

Because of what is happening in your environment, you are more likely to be focused on something gone wrong, so you can't immediately focus on, "my life is perfect in every way". This is partly because you have been trained to "face reality" and "tell it like it is", but also because those frequencies are pretty far apart.

If something happens and you feel despair and one of your well meaning friends tries to help you by being cheerful, all you do is justify more vehemently why you feel like you do. Their happiness just makes you feel even more like a failure. And their guidance just makes you feel like you would like to smack them along side of their head. There is nothing worse than feeling the opposite of who you are and how you want to feel while some positive thinker is flapping in your face about how you create your own reality. You feel like saying, "I am sure that is not true, or you wouldn't be in my reality in this moment!"

But when you understand it is not your job or even possible to find a really good feeling thought from that bad feeling thought, you can work out of it slowly. If you are in despair about something, instead of trying to change it completely, perhaps you could find a little gratitude in something else to soften your energy. If you are having trouble forgiving someone, perhaps you could feel a little better if you forgave yourself for something that you might have done in the past. Sometimes we cannot come out of despair, lack of forgiveness or other negative emotions completely because the frequencies from despair to happiness or total forgiveness to loving the other person are too far apart, but if you will take a small step in that direction, it can make a huge difference.

Even frustration is better than despair or lack of forgiveness. From frustration you can find hope and from hope you can find just about anything that you want. The reason so many people have given up on any awareness of what their emotions are telling them and doing something about it is the leap seems too far from where they are. All it takes is some small steps and you will get there!

-Dr. Robert Anthony