When we have negative things happen to us, failure in our lives, or people who have told us over and over again that we will never amount to much, we begin to believe and expect these very things. We don’t necessarily think it in our heads, but we believe it deep down inside. It becomes apparent when something goes wrong and we respond something like this, “things always go wrong for me, everything always messes up, it happened like it usually does, etc.

Many of us have had a life time of building a negative expectancy, so it won’t go away over night. We can, however, begin the process of rooting it out of our lives and replacing it with a positive expectancy.

Let me share a few things that can help to begin this process:

1. Resist it. You must stand against the temptation to be negative and fight it with everything you have. Be determined you won’t let bitterness remain rooted in your life (James 4:7-8).
2. Renew your mind. Change what you allow in your mind. Dwell on positive things like Christ's love for you, success, your potential, etc. Listen to tapes on success or read books on the subject. Feed on positive things until it begins to crowd out all the negative things that life has fed you (Romans 12:2).
3. Watch what you say. When something goes wrong we tend to get upset and vocalize the negative. “Things always go wrong, I can’t do anything right, etc.” Instead of speaking the negative we must resist and say something positive like, “I am going to succeed; I will overcome and be victorious over this (Proverbs 18:20-21).
4. Change who you associate with. Lets face it; we become like those we’re around. If you’re around those who are negative, in a rut, and not striving to better themselves, you will tend to become the same way to one degree or another. On the other hand, if you hang around people who are pursuing success in all areas of life, you will also begin to move in that direction (1 Corinthians 15:33).
5. Forgiveness. When we hold things against someone we will often experience similar things in our life down the road. For instance, you may have had a father that was an abusive drunk and then you end up doing the very things that you hated in him. This often happens because we never forgave them. Refusing to forgive often causes us to retain unto ourselves the very things we hate. The only way to free ourselves is to offer complete forgiveness. This is not easy but it can be done. We must choose to forgive them from the heart. It takes time and it will be a battle. Every time it comes up we must chose to forgive them over and over until it is rooted out of us completely (John 20:23).