DAY 3

Monitoring Your Self-Talk

Today you learn more about changing the messages you give yourself, clearing out negative thoughts from the past so you can live in the present moment.

Now that you’re on Day 3 of your mirror work, are you feeling a closer bond with your friend, your mirror? Each day that you practice mirror work you may fall in love with yourself a little bit more. Each day it becomes easier to say your positive affirmations and truly believe them.

The best way to love yourself is to release all the negative messages from your past and live in the present moment. So today, I’d like to work with you on changing what I call your self-talk—what you say to yourself in your head.

Too often we accept the early messages from our parents, our teachers, and other authority figures. You were probably told things like “Stop crying like a baby,” “You never clean your room,” and “Why won’t you make your bed?” And you did what people told you to do, in order to be loved. When you were young, you might have gotten the idea that you were acceptable only if you did certain things. Acceptance and love were conditional. However, it bears remembering that others’ approval was based on their ideas of what was worthwhile and had nothing to do with your self-worth.

These early messages contribute to our self-talk. The way we talk to ourselves inwardly is really important because it becomes the basis of our spoken words. It sets up the mental atmosphere in which we operate and attracts our experiences to us. If we belittle ourselves, life is going to mean very little to us. However, if we love and appreciate ourselves, then life can be a wonderful, joyous gift.

If your life is unhappy or you are feeling unfulfilled, it is very easy to blame your parents—or the almighty Them—and say it is all their fault. However, if you do that, you will stay stuck in your conditions, your problems, and your frustrations. Words of blame will not bring you freedom.

Your words have great power. So start listening closely to what you say. If you hear yourself using negative or limiting words, you can change them. If I hear a negative story, I don’t go around repeating it to everyone. I think that it has gone far enough, and I let it pass. However, if I hear a positive story, I tell everyone!

When you are out with other people, really listen to what they are saying and how they are saying it. See if you can connect what they say with what they are experiencing in their lives. Many, many people live their lives in shoulds. Should is a word that my ear is very attuned to. It is as if a bell goes off every time I hear it. I have heard people say it as many as a dozen times in a single paragraph. These same people wonder why their lives are so rigid, or why they can’t leave a situation. They want to have a lot of control over things they cannot control. They are busy either making someone else wrong or making themselves wrong.

You can practice positive self-talk during your mirror work, making only positive statements about yourself and repeating only positive affirmations. If any of the negative self-talk from your childhood comes up, you can turn it around into a positive statement. For example, “You never do anything right!” could become the affirmation I am a capable person, and I can handle anything that comes my way. As you listen to yourself and others, you can become more aware of what you say and how and why you say it. This awareness will help you change your self-talk into affirmations that will nurture and heal you in body and mind. What a wonderful way to love yourself!

Let’s affirm: I release all the negative messages from the past. I live in the present moment.

Your Day 3 Mirror Work Exercise

  1. Stand or sit in front of your bathroom mirror.
  2. Look into your eyes.
  3. Say this affirmation: Whatever I say to myself, I will say it with love.
  4. Keep repeating it: Whatever I say to myself in this mirror, I will say it with love.
  5. Is there a statement that you heard as a child that still sticks in your head? Maybe something like “You’re stupid” or “You’re not good enough,” or whatever else comes to mind. Take time to work with negative statements and turn them into positive affirmations: I am smart. I am more intelligent than I realize. I am a genius with an abundance of creative ideas. I am a magnificent person. I am lovable. I am worth loving.
  6. Choose one or two of these new, positive affirmations and say them over and over again. Keep saying them until you feel comfortable with them.
  7. Each time you pass a mirror or see your reflection in a window throughout the day, stop and repeat these loving affirmations.

The Power Is Within You: Your Day 3 Journaling Exercise

  1. Did you repeat a negative story today? Write down how many times you repeated it and how many people you told it to. Now write down something positive you can tell those people tomorrow that will help them feel better about themselves and everyone around them.
  2. Write down the word should. Next to it, make a list of words to use instead. You might start with the word could.
  3. Post several of the new, positive affirmations you learned today on your mirror so you can practice them whenever you see them.

Your Heart Thought for Day 3: I Always Have a Choice

Most of us have foolish ideas about who we are and many rigid rules about how life should be lived. Let’s remove the word should from our vocabulary forever. Should is a word that makes prisoners of us. Every time we use should, we are making ourselves wrong or someone else wrong. We are, in effect, saying: not good enough.

What can be dropped now from your should list? Replace the word should with the word could. Could lets you know that you have a choice, and choice is freedom. We need to be aware that everything we do in life is done by choice. There is really nothing we have to do. We always have a choice.

Your Day 3 Meditation: You Deserve Love
(Day 3 of the audio download)

See yourself surrounded by love. See yourself happy and healthy and whole. See your life as you would like it to be, putting in all the details. Know that you deserve it. Then take the love from your heart and let it begin to flow, filling your body with healing energies. Let your love flow around the room and around your home until you are in an enormous circle of love. Feel the love circulating so that as it goes out from you, it returns to you.

Love is the most powerful healing force there is. Let it wash through your body. You are love. And so it is.