# Chapter 150

There are many things that will tear at you, at your belief in yourself. The whole world seems designed to crush us sometimes. To see us falter and to see us fail. Most people seem to see the problems and pitfalls first, rather than the possibilities and potentials. You may be feeling defense already! We have somehow come to believe that this constitutes adult behavior, seeing all the reasons something or someone may fail, and that to embrace the possibilities and potentials is childlike behavior. Quite the opposite is true though. It takes far more belief in oneself to pursue the possibilities than to disparage every initiative. And if you don’t believe in yourself, no one else is going to have any reason to do it.

Seeing all the problems and pitfalls can be a blessing if tempered with the resolve to work past them and produce something beautiful or effective in the end, but most don’t do that. They sit back and watch others try and fail, or try and succeed, it doesn’t really matter in the end, because these are the Monday morning quarterbacks, calling the plays far from the field of play. They have no skin in the game, nothing to lose, nothing to gain. They too have no belief in themselves. They understand that effort, requires huge amounts of energy and that they have no plans to lend any to the adventure called living.

Try to limit your time with such people, they will always chip away at your belief in yourself.