98 – Keep Problems to Yourself

There is a time to ask for help and share your troubles with friends. But, those times should be carefully selected with forethought and discretion. By default, it is best to keep your problems to yourself.

Publicizing your weaknesses, your lacking, your hurt, your faults with the world neither makes you a role model nor makes the world a better place. Show your humanity and mortality, show your natural frailty and normal mistakes—those things prove that you don’t place yourself above others. But, specific flaws and injuries should never be advertised.

Some people will tell how much they have been hurt in order to gain notoriety, sympathy, or even to guilt others into agreeing with them. Don’t use your injuries to blackmail others; it unnecessarily divulges information, which can always be used against you, also it will likely backfire.

It is not deceptive to advertise and promote your positive achievements. People don’t rise up to do the right thing from stories of foolishness. We are motivated by stories of people who set out to do something good and finished. Encourage people by your own life that good things can also be achieved.

Failure is in abundance, but goals reached are a commodity. Say something about yourself newsworthy, not tabloid-worthy. Sharing the gossip content about your own life is sets everyone off course. Focus on the good. Dwell on your strengths in your private thought life. Don’t let your mind wander to things you wish you could have done, but didn’t. Instead, dwell on the good things you are glad you did and your determination to do more. It begins in your thought life.

People who walk into the room and start spouting their inferiority, failure, faults, flaws, and can’t say anything good about themselves have just revealed much about their private thought lives, perhaps even their view of themselves. Someone who thinks he can’t can’t. So, the lesson here is not so much about how to put on a fake, happy face, but what to build up in your hourly mind time. What you say and what you dwell on that makes you say it would serve you best if it is good news.