It is not unusual for My children to fuss and fume about how they are treated, yet they may sentence themselves to frustration by predicting doom under the umbrella of being realistic.

Someone you know may have been treated unfairly. Perhaps you. In your reasoning – or rather unreasoning – you might determinedly predict unsatisfactory conclusions to follow. Your reasoning is often anecdotal. You would not accept an anecdotal example from a friend as a basis to accept a new drug, yet you might give dismal advice to someone based on what happened to a friend or something you read.

Let me put it this way: Do not, absolutely do not, be the voice of doom when you advise someone else and/or yourself to do or not to take an action.

Someone is going to win the lottery this week. Someone wins every week. It is interesting that everyone I know who plays the lottery run over in their minds what it would be like to win. Odds aren't in anyone's favor, yet every week or day someone wins big. Why on Earth would anyone say to a friend: "You will never win."

A friend may want to be admitted to a certain medical school, and you tell him all the ways he won't get in. Whatever the statistics may be, why would you discourage a friend from applying to a particular school assuming he won't get in. What advantage do you see?

If a friend of yours wants to be a millionaire when he grows up, by what divine right would you tell him he never will make it? Are you telling your friend that others might succeed, but he won't?

You may consider it impossible, but what kind of friend are you? Nothing is impossible.

Did Christopher Columbus tell himself that the Queen would never fund him in order to fill his desire to find the land he sought? Did he, in the name of practicality, tell himself he would never get to show the world that the Earth is round? If Columbus's friends discouraged him, he did not listen, nor was he shaken.

Did Edison or Tesla tell himself that he would never get a handle on electricity?

In life in the world, there is every benefit in voting for yourself or another. When you are pessimistic – all under the name of down-to-earth reality – you are telling the Universe that you cannot come out ahead. How can you be so sure? Why would you yourself desire to marry a particular woman, for instance, only to defame yourself and tell the Universe that the one you would like to marry will never marry you. Someone may win her hand, but not you. What kind of friend are you even unto yourself?

Represent yourself. When you are looking for work, why on Earth would you communicate to yourself all the reasons why a prospective employer would not want to hire you? Do not sabotage yourself. Tell yourself all the reasons why an employer would want to hire you.

Go for an interview! Let the chips fall where they may. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. One good thing can lead to another. Dreams do come true. Why sink your heart or another's heart on a prophesy?

Represent your friends' desires. Represent your desires. Then you are ahead by virtue of having gone for what you wanted.

Oh, give me a home where the Buffalo roam
Where the Deer and the Antelope play;
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word,
And the sky is not cloudy all day.

Who would ask to hear a discouraging word, or ask for a sky is that is cloudy all day?

No one is to be a dream-spoiler. Certainly, no one is to be proud of spoiling anyone's dreams. There is no need to educate yourself or others to the end of dreams.

Let us call negativity what it is.

Since when was defeating oneself or another a practice to be applauded?