Ray was on a tear.
“All that self-help stuff is okay, I guess, but it has never worked for me. Ever.” He was starting to get excited, waving his arms and pacing around.
“In fact,” he went on, “it usually makes things worse for me.”
I asked Ray for examples.
“Well, like, I’m out of work — you know that, right? — and I’ve wasted the last two months trying to affirm myself a job.” He sat down, dejected. “Heck, it would have worked better if I’d just gone and seen about all the jobs in the classified ads or visited the employment agencies.”
“You didn’t physically do anything to find a job?” I asked.
“Well no,” he almost shouted. “I didn’t want to drain my energy away from the affirmations. I mean, that’d show a lack of faith, right?”
Ray was running a pattern I’d seen him do before.
One time he had told me about the expensive new “good luck charm” he’d ordered. Paid a couple of hundred dollars for it, so it was sure to work. But it didn’t — at...