| A word about your thoughts and the way they make you feel.
About affirmations: Here’s why it is so important to keep good thoughts at the forefront of your mind. The mind is so busy, even while focused on an activity that takes concentration, thoughts pop in and out of our minds all the time. The mind’s job is to be right and we all like to think our mind is right. After all, the thought originated in our mind and we all like to think that we are right (most of the time). Also, most of us trust our thoughts, and we get busy to justify them.
Bear with me here for a few more moments on this. So we think a thought like, “I should do this activity now”, and then our mind gets busy to provide for us all the reasons that we should do that activity now. Or consider this example, we think “so and so doesn’t like me”, and then our mind gets very busy to dig into the past to find all the examples of times when that person did or did not do or say what we need to make us feel liked by that person. Once again it’s the mind’s job to be right and prove it to us.
Get it? The mind creates other thoughts that support the original contention.
What if instead we all just began noticing our thoughts and observing them without judgment?
What if instead, we observed our thinking and were amused, or curious? Suppose you began to notice how redundant, and out-dated your thoughts were? Ask yourself how far into the past your thoughts reach or notice how far into the future they project. Ask yourself, and become curious.
What would happen if instead of flitting about forward to the future and flashing back to the past we decided to guide our thinking to the present? Do you begin to see how much more powerful you could be and feel if you questioned those ever-present thoughts chattering away to you? Imagine instead of following them – you directing them instead.
That is where the power and beauty of affirmations come in. If you remind yourself to fill your head with good things (by affirming resourceful life-affirming thoughts) there is no room for the thoughts that do not serve you to enter the picture. The mind can only think one thing at a time. Just try typing something on the computer while your child is asking you a question and you will soon discover that you can not split the mind into two different directions at once.
In psychology there’s a rule called, seven plus or minus two. That means that most people can think of seven things all at once, plus or minus two things. Whenever you are thinking about multiple subjects, it may appear that you are thinking of them all at once, but what is really occurring is that your mind processes them one by one so quickly that it appears to be thinking them all at once.
So when you are stressed and unsettled rather than continuing the pattern of thinking that got you feeling that way, I invite you instead to have some favourite affirmations on hand so that you can escape your imagination when it does not serve you. It’s similar to planting flowers so that weeds won’t grow.
It’s important to your health and well being. It is also important to the ones you love who spend time with you. Nobody wants to be around a “downer”.
Here’s an experiment for you to do to demonstrate how powerful your thoughts are. Spend two minutes repeating to yourself, “I’m a failure, I’m a failure, I’m a failure …” Then notice how you feel. Not so good I’m willing to bet. Now repeat again and again for a couple of minutes, “I can do it, I can do it, I can do it …” Notice how energized and pumped you become with the positive thought.
You choose how you present yourself to the world. You choose whether to be a “drag” or a magnet for love and joy and all that is good. Help yourself spend your days joyously by repeating affirmations and experience how good you feel and how good you make others around you feel. Here are some of my favorites and I encourage you to make up a few of your own. “I love myself, I like myself, I accept myself completely” “Love and peace and joy abide in me” “I can have and do and be anything I choose” “I am a channel of blessings to all whom I meet and the whole world leans towards me to give me what I want”
Finally, remind yourself there really are only two ways to feel. One way feels good and the other not so good or downright lousy. The only reason you feel one way or another is because of what you are thinking. Chances are if you consistently feel bad it is because you have practiced “ bad” or non-resourceful thinking often. I invite you to begin to practice positive thinking and pretty soon these thoughts will dominate and so will feeling good. |
