The Power of Negative Thinking on Your Subconscious Mind

I was born the sixth of seven children in a lower middle class family almost seventy years ago. My father was a self-styled preacher of "The Word of God." Among the first things he instilled in my subconscious was that I am a "Sinful Creature" and that I must forever "Repent" and be punished for my sins. My mother was a good woman who worked hard to keep the family together. We never had to go on welfare like some of the people in the neighborhood did. If my father hadn't wasted a very good brain on religion, life would have been much better for all nine of us. When I was three or four years old, the younger of us were left to fend for ourselves. Among my earliest memories is my next older sibling, my brother, taking me down on the floor, sitting on top of me, and pounding on my eyes. He is almost two years older than I am so I stood little chance of any effective defense against his superior size.

Later, when I went to my mother, who was working as a clerk in a store at the time, she didn't give me a chance to explain. She told me to go back home and stop crying because it was causing my eyes to swell up. This whole episode was one of the greatest tragedies of my life. We didn't have television because it was a new technology in the "forties" and no one in the neighborhood could afford nor had one. I don't know if anyone in the whole city had one. I was about twelve the first time I ever saw a television. We, the boys in our neighborhood, spent our after school time either trying to earn some money or playing baseball. My goal in life was to become a professional baseball player.