Trick or Treat

"Hatred never ceases through hatred. By compassion alone does it cease." Shakyamuni

It is Halloween and it will be soggy for the kids here. I have my Teddy bear Halloween sweater on with my black cat earrings. The real black cat is downstairs pestering her brother.

I was thinking about trick or treat this morning but not the candy variety. One of the dirtiest tricks that a person can play on someone is to destroy their confidence in themselves. Abusers do this all the time. They try and make their victim feel inadequate, stupid, untalented, unloved, etc. They work on the person's self esteem to erode it thereby achieving their true aim of making the victim feel like they deserve the abuse being handed out.

If a person is going to accomplish something in life then they need to believe in themselves. They need to believe that they are capable of doing something and doing it well. You have to believe in you. The straightest path to failure is starting out telling yourself you are going to fail. That you can't do something.

The classic abusive statement that I use as an example is from my ex. I was doing art work on my computer getting ready for a new show. He came in and said, "Why don't you do something useful with your life and go out and babysit?" That one statement held a multitude of insults. I wasn't mature enough to do anything other then take care of someone else's kids like I did when I was in high school. I wasn't an artist. I couldn't accomplish anything on my own. I went on to my art show and made more sales then anyone else in the Art Colony.

Treat yourself tonight with something other then the left over candy. Find something positive about yourself and give yourself a compliment. Let yourself know that you are not a failure. Try each day to spend a few minutes on what went right. What was an accomplishment you succeeded at today?

When you give yourself positive reinforcement then when you make a mistake it no longer becomes all consuming. When you make a mistake make it a learning experience. What went wrong and what can I do to make sure it doesn't happen again? We all make mistakes we just need to learn from them rather then beat ourselves up.

My picture for today has apologies to Beethoven and is called "Moonlight Sonata."