We obviously all know that our beliefs shape our reality

Bear with me while I figure out how life on the dirtball works please.

My kinda long standing attitude toward the dx has been, "Ok, if I'm going to die, I'm going to die. I'll do the best I can on the self care, but the rest is out of my hands."
Somewhere along the way that has shifted to, "If there's a SINGLE thing I can do to stop this within my abilities, both energetically and financially, I'm going to do it."

It's all been a lovely lesson in surrender and acceptance and still that underlies my actions and attitude, but if it's within my abilities, it's time to shift this.

There have been thousands of books written about belief and physical reality from relatively silly things like 'wishcraft' to Louise Hay to more science based works like Bruce Lipton's The Biology of Belief or Candace Pert's The Molecules of Emotion. It's also clear to me that if we can stop and listen long enough to ferret out what appears to be the universe's subtle instructions for us, that the important events just click into place. Yeah, I might still have an experience that looks like 'bad' stuff but if I listen hard enough, I can find value (some might think of it as the 'hidden meaning') in all of these events.

Duh, so if we know this and have read enough to convince ourselves that it is true, what is it that causes us to fall into despair or some other form of negativity that begets self destructive attitudes and behaviors when life throws us a curve ball or even a series of experiences that we deem 'bad'? Could it be ONLY a combination of precognitive programming buttressed by societal attitudes?

Here's an example from my life. I'm simplifying this to make a point. In actuality, the experience has been much richer of course.

I get the dx and my initial attitude is 'Well, that figures. Here I've been a good person all my life, raised a child to the best of my abilities, shown up for my friends in need (and all the rest of that sort of story) and the universe deals me a blow that is not only FATAL, but also painful and debilitating in every regard, strips me of my assets (and all the rest of that story). There's an 'F*** You, God' in that response. I'm sure you can feel it. Then most of the rest of the feedback my little ego gets from friends and family supports this attitude (no blame or judgment in that, it's what we know and how we're taught).

K, it's true that my family of origin belief system was basically that the universe is out to trample you into the ground and only through super human effort can you keep from getting squished. Obviously, that's my programming. There are other aspects to my core story like, 'no matter what you do, you can't possibly be good enough', but let's just stick with The Universe Hates Your Guts to keep it simple. So given that programming, how else could one possibly respond to the dx except with either super human effort (did that) and then a big fat defeatist attitude when it doesn't seem to be working? UNLESS I'm able to see that programming for what it is.

Why do ANY of us EVER carry around this old patterning that happened before we old enough to discern what we wanted to carry and what we didn't?