“Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words can never hurt me.”

Really?

Then why did one of the most successful and spiritual men I have ever known repeat these words every time he tripped, dropped an item, or bumped into something when he was in his seventies—“My dad always told me I was a klutz”?

And why have Judy and I found it impossible to reprogram the thinking of some of the most attractive and accomplished women who explain the logic of their low self esteem with sentences like these—“My father said that my sister got all the beauty and brains in our family” or “My husband constantly tells me that he wishes I would be as in shape, as articulate, as fashionable, or as sexy as his friends’ wives”?

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