PDD.119: "The Fearless Approach"

Victims of crime, particularly those who government agents have failed, consider the following words from this unlikely source: The 50th Law, by 50 Cent and Robert Greene, G-Unit Books, Inc., 2009 ....

"Events in life are not negative or positive. They are completely neutral. The universe does not care about your fate; it is indifferent to the violence that may hit you or to death itself. Things merely happen to you. It is your mind that chooses to interpret them as negative or positive. And because you have layers of fear that dwell deep within you, your natural tendency is to interpret temporary obstacles in your path as something larger -- setbacks and crises.

"In such a frame of mind, you exaggerate the dangers. If someone attacks and harms you in some way, you focus on the money or position you have lost in the battle, the negative publicity, or the harsh emotions that have been churned up. This causes you to grow cautious, to retreat, hoping to spare yourself more of these negative things. It is a time, you tell yourself, to lay low and wait for things to get better; you need calmness and security.

"What you do not realize is that you are inadvertently making the situation worse. Your rival only gets stronger as you sit back; the negative publicity becomes firmly associated with you. Being conservative turns into a habit that carries over into less difficult moments. It becomes harder and harder to move to the offensive. In essence you have chosen to cast life's inevitable twists of fortune as hardships, giving them a weight and endurance they do not deserve.

"What you need to do, as Fifty discovered, is take the opposite approach. Instead of becoming discouraged and depressed by any kind of downturn, you must see this as a wake-up call, a challenge that you will transform into an opportunity for power. Your energy levels rise. You move to the attack, surprising your enemies with boldness. You care less what people think about you and this paradoxically causes them to admire you -- the negative publicity is turned around. You do not wait for things to get better -- you seize this chance to prove yourself. Mentally framing a negative event as a blessing in disguise makes it easier for you to move forward." pgs 75-77