How does one deal with a lack of external encouragement in their life?

[Wapsie B]

I understand the power of a positive mental state for functioning well and acheiving your full potential. Affirmations and goal setting are fine and good but I've yet to do that on a consistent basis enough to have any results. I have to believe in the here and now that it's going to work before I invest even a second of my time.

I'm seem to have been looking for encouragement from others around me that I think I need but have never received. I can't remember having a job where I felt nurtured and encouraged to grow and develop. School was the same way as I wanted desperately for someone to show me my path. I envied the A students where teachers took them aside and encouraged them to develop their talents. Where they got an ego boost I got nothing. If someone were to ask me about an influential person in my life who gave me direction it would be impossible for me to answer that. I've had this feeling of just having to fend for myself like a ship without a rudder. Never had a teacher, minister, role model who I thought cared about me as a person.

Love? Well we won't even go there.

I still seem to be looking for my ego boosters that I never had. This feeling of going it alone has given me a cynicism about human nature that is hard to shake. It has made me put a distance between myself and others, not being able to put complete trust in anyone. So how do people find the power within themselves in the here and now? I'm not talking about affirmations or goal-setting for sometime in the murky future but how to live in the present.