Welcome to Step 6! The premise behind this chapter is that what you believe—what you tell yourself both consciously and unconsciously—affects what happens in your life. We might even say that you actively create your own world. Although you may not recognize your power, you do wield it. And with enough persistence, you can identify the beliefs that imprison you. You can then develop powerful mind-body tools to reprogram those negative mental circuits. Using those strategies, you’ll literally change your brain to change your life.
How can you possibly have so much power? You probably doubt that you do, and you may be thinking, If I had that, I would be using it to make my life better, easier, and more fulfilling. What person in their right mind would choose the pain and suffering I experience? You can’t possibly be right.
Well, you wouldn’t consciously create distress for yourself, but you do so without knowing it. You see, we all carry around internalized messages, ideas about ourselves and others. Some of them are healing, and others harm us. We’re aware of some of those beliefs because of the chatter we hear in our heads, but are unaware of many others, in spite of their power.
You learned most of those lessons early in your development and stored them away without realizing it. But your internalized messages affect the course of your life. The healing ones are encouraging, gentle, loving, optimistic, honest, and fair; the harmful ones are critical, discouraging, pessimistic, and harsh. Your ideas determine your behavior and what the universe gives you back in response. But how do you acquire these beliefs? How is it that they affect you as they do, and how can you change them?
THE ORIGINS OF SELF-CONCEPT
Well, the lessons we learn about ourselves in childhood determine our self-concepts as adults. The models you were exposed to or taught during your formative years dramatically affect your mind-set. For most of us, our primary learning laboratory is our family of origin. We learn how to think about ourselves and others from what our parents teach us by word and example.
Although our teachers, classmates, and religious leaders may exert powerful developmental influences on us as well, we experience the messages contained in our “home base” as the most powerful. Obviously, if you were raised in an environment other than a traditional family with two parents, then you were exposed to messages and models of a different nature. The home environment has the greatest power to affect the mind-set of a developing child, whatever form it takes.
As children, we learn and store away information with the degree of cognitive development that we have at the time of the event. For example, if we’re young and still very concrete or literal in our thinking, we may simply store away a lesson such as “I am a bad boy” or “I am a naughty girl.” Since our capacity to understand what might make a person good or bad hasn’t yet been developed, we store the information as a simple fact.
Without being consciously aware of these stored self-concepts, we’re influenced by them throughout our adult lives. Since these old messages can cause dysfunction and intense pain, we may find ourselves questioning our ideas and choices enough to identify some of our negative core beliefs over time. Having figured out what they are, we can use our adult ideas to talk back to our childlike ones. By recognizing and subsequently challenging our internalized beliefs, we can change and replace them with more constructive and positive notions. This healing process involves using a cognitive-behavior technique, a form of self-talk called “affirmations,” to reprogram destructive thoughts. You’ll learn more about that later in this chapter.
But before discovering how to change the mind-set, we need to ask: How do those negative lessons actually affect us? What do we do with them? What does it really mean to be influenced by our past?
MARKING TIME
Strange as the idea may seem, we all reexperience our pasts in the present as we tell ourselves what we learned. Having been called stupid or lazy in childhood, we may tell ourselves the same things now. We also hear our self-concepts and worldviews reflected back in the words of others, even when those people aren’t actually saying those words. So we may “hear” our friends or bosses calling us dumb or unmotivated, when they’re simply following up with us to determine where we are with a project.
Additionally, we re-create familiar family dynamics in our adult relationships, even if the original situations were (and often still are) painful to us. We may pick critical friends, bosses, lovers, and life partners. What’s familiar somehow feels right, hence the popular notion that “women marry their fathers” and “men marry their mothers.”
In spite of our adult desires to experience joy, fulfillment, and pleasure in our relationships and pursuits, we often unknowingly recreate the pain, sadness, and loss of our childhoods. We do it minute to minute by what we tell ourselves, and year after year as a result of the choices we make. Our biggest challenge can be trying to figure out how to live the life we’re meant to have, as opposed to the one someone else might have taught us.
You’ve probably heard the expression “You’re your own worst enemy.” I believe this statement to be true. We are, in many ways, what we believe. Both my personal life and clinical work with patients have shown me how frequently our troubles are the result of self-sabotage. We often impose limits on ourselves that trap us into what doesn’t work. Until and unless we challenge our beliefs, we remain stuck in unproductive, even self-destructive, positions.
BREAKING FREE FROM OUR MISCONCEPTIONS
I’m going to give you a silly, simple example of what I mean by staying trapped by an idea. A long time ago when my now-teenage son was three years old, he and I had a battle of wills about vegetables! I’d made dinner, and we were sitting down to eat. Gabe announced that he didn’t like broccoli (having never eaten it before) and refused to sample it.
I insisted that he try one bite, and if he disliked it, he could have a substitute. He refused to do so. He was given multiple chances to challenge his belief and cooperate. But even knowing that his rigidity would land him in bed without any further dinner, treats, or bedtime story, he refused to try the broccoli. He was eventually carried off to his room, kicking and screaming.
Gabriel was a stubborn little boy, but I was even more determined than he was when it came to health issues. So when we sat down to green beans the next evening and he pulled the same routine, he was carried off to bed as he had been the night before. This went on for four days, with Gabe insisting each night that he didn’t like the vegetable on his plate, no matter what it was. It didn’t make a difference if he’d never tasted it before, or if he’d eaten it with gusto in the past.
Finally, on the fifth night, we sat down to broccoli again. The familiar routine began to play itself out until just before the trip to bed. Then, wonder of wonders, Gabe lifted the tiniest spear of broccoli to his mouth and put it in. And guess what? His reluctant face broke into a smile. He finished that first piece, and as he was stabbing the second one with his fork, he said “I like broccoli! Can I have some more?”
“Of course, Gabe,” I answered. “But wouldn’t you have saved yourself a lot of upset if you had just tried the broccoli the first time?” He nodded.
“There’s a lesson here,” I said. “Don’t insist you know something when you don’t know for sure that it’s true. Your stubbornness will only cause you grief. Other people might even get angry with you, and do or say things that upset you. It’s best to be open-minded and willing to try new things. Do you agree?”
By now Gabe was on his third helping of broccoli. He nodded again and said, “I don’t know why I wouldn’t try it, Mom. But I learned my lesson.”
I believe that he did learn to challenge his stuck thinking. In fact, we never had an argument like that again—not about anything! What a relief that was to all of us in the family.
Now this may seem like a silly story about a three-year-old child and vegetables. But is it really so irrelevant? Have you ever enacted this kind of dysfunction in your adult life? For instance, have you ever insisted that someone didn’t like you, that you couldn’t accomplish a goal, or that your input wasn’t valued when you didn’t know for sure that you were correct? I doubt that you can truthfully answer no to this question.
We all fall into “stinking thinking” sometimes. And when you get stuck in one of those ruts, what happens? You act on the basis of your assumption. You treat the person whom you believe doesn’t like you in a way that may actually lead them to feel that way. You shy away from pursuing goals that you believe you can’t achieve, so you never meet them. Or you keep your mouth shut, thinking that no one values your input, and thus lose the opportunity to have any say in what happens to you. Your beliefs can get you into a lot of trouble. In fact, what you think can alter the course of your life.
UNEARTHING DESTRUCTIVE ASSUMPTIONS
Some of your counterproductive thoughts are easy to identify, while others are deeply buried. The ideas that are readily accessible are the ones that you hear in your head. For instance, your internal voice might say, That was a stupid thing to do or You’re such a loser. You can discover these perceptible beliefs by attending to the dialogue in your mind. But identifying your more deeply buried assumptions requires more digging. It involves examining your destructive life patterns and tracking their origin. What did you learn that you’re unconsciously playing out? You need to do some detective work to discover the underlying beliefs that you haven’t as yet given voice to. Let’s look at some examples of each scenario—accessible beliefs and buried ones—so that you get a handle on what I mean.
REWORKING ACCESSIBLE BELIEFS
If you think back to Stan’s story, you’ll recognize the thought that imprisoned him. Remember when he hit a wall in his photography business? He told himself that he couldn’t succeed in that line of work. The idea I can’t do photography for a living led him to give up on his passion and take a job in the casino industry.
With a lot of time and help, Stan was able to challenge his belief and rediscover his inner flame. In this case, his counterproductive thought was relatively easy to identify. But since so many of his life choices had followed from it, the reprogramming effort involved a lot of work.
What about a more simple example of a destructive belief—one that’s easily identified, challenged, and reprogrammed? Well, my patient Sam was a particularly anxious fellow who tended to expect the worst possible outcomes to problems. One day he came in overwrought because his boss hadn’t responded to voice-mail or e-mail communications about a pressing work matter. Sam was convinced that he’d made some fatal error, that his boss was avoiding him as a result, and that his job was in jeopardy. He was afraid to go back to work. “I’m about to be fired,” he insisted tearfully.
But Sam actually excelled at his work. His performance reviews were routinely exceptional. In fact, he’d just been given a glowing evaluation! I reminded him of his workplace history and challenged him to consider alternative reasons for his boss’s lack of response. As he began using his rational brain to challenge his dysfunctional belief, he was able to settle down.
Armed with a list of possible causes for the situation, Sam chose to change the belief that told him, I’m in serious danger whenever someone is slow to respond to my questions. Instead, he decided to say, “Not everyone responds as quickly as I do when queried. I need to tell myself: Calm down. No news is good news. If I’m at risk, I will surely be told about it.”
Sam committed to making these few sentences a new mantra, and he repeated them in his head all the way back to work. When he got there, he discovered the reason for the silence—his boss had the flu!
I continued to work with Sam for several months. Occasionally, he’d start to express that old, crippling belief. But before he even finished the sentence, he’d stop himself and state: “I don’t know why I’m saying that, because I know it’s old thinking. No news is good news. If I’m at risk, I’ll surely be told about it.”
By changing his mind and reprogramming that dysfunctional pattern, Sam’s anxiety progressively diminished. Empowered to take charge of his emotional life in a new way, he was able to graduate from my care.
REWORKING HIDDEN BELIEFS
Now let’s look at an example of someone with a deeply buried but disabling belief. I’d like to tell you about Melissa, who came to me hoping to heal her romantic life. Her marriage had ended some years before when her husband shared his infidelity and desire to repartner with his lover.
Melissa was devastated. “Perhaps I haven’t fully recovered,” she said, “because I shy away from romantic relationships. And whenever I do get involved with someone, I hold myself way back. Eventually he always leaves. It becomes a replay of my marriage experience.”
The two of us got down to work, trying to sort out the lessons of Melissa’s history. What did she believe, and why was she replaying an abandonment dynamic over and over again? As it turned out, she came from a family with a disabled sibling. She was a good student and a quiet child, and her parents didn’t recognize the attention she needed in order to thrive. She was often expected to take care of her brother, having to put aside her schoolwork and whatever else she wanted to do. As a result, Melissa learned the lesson: My needs aren’t important; I have to help those less fortunate, no matter what the cost to me. Although she was somewhat aware of this conviction, she didn’t recognize its influence.
When it came to relationship issues in her adult life, that internalized idea exerted its silent power. During Melissa’s courtship, she often played the role of silent caretaker, putting up with and even accommodating her then-fiancé’s troubling behavior. When he proposed, her inner-wisdom voice said Don’t do it! but her dysfunctional belief countered with You can’t hurt his feelings. He’s a nice enough guy. He needs you. You have to say yes. Without recognizing that the childhood message My needs aren’t important; I have to help those less fortunate was at play, she said yes.
Upon entering the marriage, Melissa buried her inner wisdom along with her turmoil and misgivings. She tried to make things work, but out of sight and mind is not out of life. In spite of her efforts to build a loving partnership, she couldn’t alter what she’d known to be true: Her husband wasn’t ready and wouldn’t fully commit to the union.
When he left, Melissa was devastated. She didn’t remember that she’d had her own misgivings from the very beginning. She personalized his decision that she wasn’t good enough for him, and then carried this sense of low self-worth into subsequent relationships, dating unavailable men who’d never commit enough to hurt her so deeply again.
It took Melissa and me months to identify the crippling belief that had been behind her acceptance of the marriage proposal. By looking at her childhood, we finally figured out where the idea had come from. Armed with this knowledge, we began to reprogram the self-destructive brain circuit.
As an adult, Melissa understood the importance of caring for herself and her own needs in life. She came to recognize that she’d abandoned herself in choosing to enter a marriage that wasn’t meant to be. The demise of the union was inevitable. She was good enough, but she’d made the wrong choice. It wasn’t right! She’d set herself up to suffer when she ignored her inner wisdom and enacted the learned belief. She’d put her own needs aside to avoid “hurting his feelings.” As a result, she unknowingly hurt herself.
Her internal script needed to be rewritten. It became: My inner wisdom is my guide. I need to honor my feelings, give them a voice, and act on them. I am meant to silence the voices telling me that I don’t count. Those aren’t really mine. I am good enough, and I deserve to experience joy.
Melissa and I worked together for some time. She needed to develop skill in identifying and heeding the wisdom of her inner voice, ferreting out and challenging the old belief and living more authentically. Throughout her work, she repeated the new script she’d created. This exercise enabled her to reprogram the old tape as she strove to believe what she now knew to be true. She graduated from my care several years ago, feeling empowered and transformed.
The universe acts in synergistic and strange ways sometimes. When I wrote down Melissa’s story, I hadn’t heard from her in quite a while. We’d connected perhaps two or three times since her graduation. Yet, as I was writing about her, she was writing to me. Within days of completing this passage, I received a New Year’s greeting card from her. She’d just read my first book and loved it. She was writing to tell me that, and to let me know how well she was doing. She was engaged to a wonderful man, and she’d truly reprogrammed her mind and changed her life. She was grateful and delighted to have me share this story of her transformation in order to help you.
THE POWER OF YOUR MIND
We’ve now covered three examples that demonstrate the power of beliefs to affect life paths, and I’m sure you resonated with some elements of each story. What struck you? To whom do you relate the most—Gabe, Sam, or Melissa? Have you ever engaged in an effort to reprogram your destructive beliefs? How well did you do?
Perhaps you have some experience with affirmations or other cognitive-behavior techniques. These methods are extremely powerful in altering problematic brain circuits, because they work by creating new neural pathways. You see, when you tell yourself something over and over, the same pattern of neurons fires repeatedly. Eventually, that circuit takes on a life of its own. So when you encounter the familiar situation, your brain begins to tell you what it already knows (almost without thinking). After feeding yourself something negative for years, such as My needs aren’t important, your mind has that thought pretty well fixed in place.
But you can change this! The way to do so is by telling yourself something different over and over again until it becomes ingrained. You don’t have to think the new message is true for it to take; you just have to keep saying it. After a while, it will become fixed enough that you’ll believe it instead.
There’s something else I need to teach you about the strength of your thoughts to affect your life. It concerns the minute-to-minute power of your mind-body connection. Whenever you give yourself encouraging or positive messages, internal chemicals are released that calm the deep limbic system of your brain. This makes you feel happy and relaxed.
By contrast, when you focus on sad, angry, worrisome, or critical thoughts, your brain releases chemicals that activate your deep limbic system and make you feel tense, anxious, and unsettled. So even before you reprogram your problematic circuits, you can harm or heal yourself by what you allow your mind to say.
LOOKING INWARD
In the remaining pages of Step 6, you’ll identify the beliefs that imprison and harm you. You’ll then develop strategies to bring about both immediate relief and long-term change. The first part of this process involves figuring out what thoughts you need to alter . . . and perhaps you know some of them already. If so, write them on the lines below or on a separate piece of paper:
Most imprisoning thoughts are the result of fear, self-devaluation, guilt, pessimism, overgeneralizing, and “catastrophizing” (or expecting the worst). Let’s look at each of these categories a bit to help you find your inner demons.
— Fear is a big issue—in fact, it can cripple the most mighty! As I mentioned earlier, according to Franklin D. Roosevelt, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. That’s how prominent this force is in our lives. In fact, it’s the greatest cognitive distorter. We can’t think straight when we’re anxious. We may worry about our health, our financial security, the strength to endure challenges, or the ability to perform at an acceptable level. We might be afraid of flying in an airplane, losing our keys, or driving our car in snowy conditions. We may dread abandonment, abuse, annihilation, or failure. These are just a few examples.
What are you afraid of? Is this an area of stuck thinking for you? What do you say to yourself?
— Self-devaluation is very common in negative thinking. You might enact this by labeling or calling yourself names, for example: I’m a failure and a jerk. Or perhaps you devalue yourself by comparing yourself unfavorably to others: I’m not as smart as Sally, or as funny as Jon. You might even put yourself down by overgeneralizing (which you can also do with fear, guilt, and the like): I’ll never be promoted, I’m always left out; or No one will be interested in my ideas. I often hear the ultimate self-devaluation from my patients. It sounds like this: I’m not enough, I don’t matter; The world would be better off without me; or I’m a burden to those around me.
How do you devalue, criticize, label, or belittle yourself? What do you say?
— Let’s move on to guilt. We feel this emotion when we neglect to say or do something that we believe we should do, or when we do or say something that we think we shouldn’t. Whenever the word should comes into your mind, you’re holding yourself to someone else’s standard. Often, you’re articulating a rule of behavior that you learned while growing up. Think back to Melissa’s story. She learned to put herself second, and that felt right. So she said to herself, I should accept this marriage proposal. My feelings aren’t important. I can’t hurt him.
Guilty thoughts can also surface when people survive disasters that take or destroy the lives of others around them. This is called survivor guilt, and may sound like this: It should have been me. You might also feel guilty for outperforming your siblings or parents: I shouldn’t have embarrassed them or shown them up; or for failing to meet the expectations of others: I should have stayed in that marriage. My parents loved my ex-spouse.
Finally, you may even feel guilty when someone else criticizes or hurts you. You could be enacting an old dynamic and assuming that you’re responsible for the other’s behavior. The thinking is: I shouldn’t have said or done what I did. I regret my behavior.
What’s the role of guilt in your internal dialogue? How often do you find fault with yourself for what you should have done but didn’t, or what you shouldn’t have done but did? What do you say to yourself?
— Pessimistic thinking, seeing the cup as half empty instead of half full, is a powerful warden. It can imprison you and forever keep you from taking charge of your life. Studies looking at how well children learn when teachers are told that their students are bright versus intellectually limited demonstrate that the way the instructors view the pupils—whether it’s accurate or not!—determines classroom performance. Smart kids who are treated as if they’re limited do poorly; average children approached with high expectations perform extremely well.
Think about the implications of this: If you expect yourself to fail, you most likely will. Additionally, if you expect others to treat you poorly, or if you think that unpleasant things are going to happen, you’ll search for and find the negative outcome. Each time you do so, you’ll reinforce your belief that the world is a big, bad, or scary place. You’ll withdraw more and more, and take less and less charge of your life.
But we’re imperfect beings who live in a flawed world. Perfection can’t be the goal. Every single moment is full of opportunities and problems, blessings and curses. You can choose to focus on the negative and feel bad or on the positive and feel good. For example, during a wonderful celebratory meal, you can let a chipped plate destroy your pleasure in the company and wonderful food. Or at the theater, you can permit the occasional distraction of someone coughing in the audience to diminish your enjoyment of the play. When your coworker calls in sick and your workload increases for the day, you can tell yourself, I bet she won’t be in for weeks and I’ll be overwhelmed or Thank heaven I’m well and can manage the extra work for today. Which thought do you believe will make for a better day?
Are you pessimistic at times? When do you expect the worst for yourself or others? What do you say in your head?
— We all overgeneralize at times, and whenever we do, we set ourselves up. When we use words such as always and never, we’re falling into this trap. Telling ourselves I’ll never get promoted, I’ll always be abandoned, or No one could possibly love me is a recipe for staying stuck.
Similarly, saying I can’t change my life, You never listen to me, or Everyone is out to get me keeps us stuck. Nothing in life is absolute. When we make global statements, we leave no space for growth, options, or creativity. Taking charge of your emotional life requires you to follow a unique path specific to your challenges and gifts. You can only find your way if you are open-minded and flexible in your thinking.
In what ways do you overgeneralize? Is it mostly when thinking about yourself, others, or both? What do you actually say?
— Perhaps the most crippling series of thoughts emerges when we catastrophize. In this behavior, both fear and pessimism come together, and we assume the absolute worst. For example:
• Our spouse is late, so we say, He must be dead.
• When our friend needs to talk, we decide, He’s chosen to end the relationship.
• Upon receiving a letter from the IRS, we believe, I’m going to be imprisoned.
The excessive fear that accompanies catastrophizing unsettles our nervous systems in dramatic ways, and we feel absolutely awful. At this point, we’re often unable to take action of any kind.
When do you catastrophize? What’s the fear behind your thoughts? What do you tell yourself?
BEGINNING TO CHANGE YOUR MIND
Now that you’ve done some thinking about the beliefs that imprison you, it’s time to get into the real work of Step 6: identifying and reprogramming your dysfunctional thoughts. You’ve already written down some of your problematic beliefs as you read through the examples, descriptions, and questions in this chapter. What other ones might you be carrying?
You’ll be cataloguing all your counterproductive beliefs later in the chapter by completing “My Negative-Thought List.” In preparation, think about your areas of success and challenge. What ideas may have contributed to your difficulties? Write them down on your list. You may have 3 statements, or you may have 22. Remember to include your experiences of fear, self-criticism, guilt, pessimism, overgeneralizing, and catastrophizing.
To help you identify more negative thoughts, do the following “Sentence-Completion Exercise.” As you go through it, write down whatever comes into your mind without thinking about it. Just let what’s in there pop up. You may be surprised by what’s revealed to you when you create this opportunity.
SENTENCE-COMPLETION EXERCISE
I am _____________________
I can’t Men _______________
Aging _____________________
Women ___________________
Children _____________________
Other people _________________
Death _____________________
God _____________________
Money _____________________
No one _____________________
Sickness _____________________
Everyone _____________________
Sex _____________________
Love _____________________
Anger _____________________
Sadness _____________________
Loss _____________________
Forgiveness _____________________
Life _____________________
Hope _____________________
Now read your completed sentences, putting a mark next to those that you recognize as imprisoning beliefs. Include them in your Negative-Thought List.
MY NEGATIVE-THOUGHT LIST
1. __________________________________________
2. __________________________________________
3. __________________________________________
4. __________________________________________
5. __________________________________________
6. __________________________________________
7. __________________________________________
8. __________________________________________
9. __________________________________________
10. _________________________________________
VISUALIZATION FOR HEALING
Before I teach you how to reprogram your imprisoning beliefs, I’d like you to pause and do a visualization exercise with me.
Imagine an all-powerful, all-knowing, loving, compassionate, and caring being beside you. Allow yourself to see, hear, smell, feel, and fully sense the presence of this wise entity, and get comfortable. Breathe deeply into the moment. Perhaps you’d like to hold hands with this visitor or get close in some other way. Your guest is your helper, protector, assistant, and co-healer. It may be someone you already know, or someone who’s coming to you for the first time.
In the presence of this wise being, read your negative thought list aloud. Allow your co-healer to feel concern for you. Let yourself recognize the pain your wise friend experiences as you voice your harmful beliefs. Invoke compassion for yourself as you sit with this pain for some moments.
Then open your heart and mind as widely as you possibly can. Repeat the following affirmations out loud three times:
• I am at one, at peace, and at ease.
• I have all that I need.
• I am safe, abundant, blessed, and wondrous.
• I carry the mystery and beauty of the infinite within me.
• I am lovable and loved.
• I am more than enough.
• I am meant to be.
These words come from your wisdom healer. As you repeat them, recognize the peace that descends upon you and your guide simultaneously. Feel the soothing chemicals suffuse your brain and body, and allow yourself to relax fully into this healing. You’re at one, at peace, and at ease. You want for nothing.
Sit with the blessings of these affirmations for as long as you wish, repeating the words that touch you. Feel them cushioning you, comforting you, and forming a protective energy field around you. Let your body and spirit relax deeply into this safe space. Stay there as long as you wish, and know that you can return to this place anytime that you want. It’s always there for you.
TRANSFORMING NEGATIVE SELF-TALK
Now that you’re calm, it’s time to start developing positive, affirming thoughts to speak back to your internal critic. This exercise involves taking each negative idea on your list and fashioning an uplifting antidote in response.
How do you decide what sort of statements to create? Well, following are some guidelines:
1. All affirmations need to be in the present tense. So let’s say that the negative statement on your list is I’m a failure. Rather than saying I will be successful, you might try I am successful or My best is good enough.
2. Write statements that are positive rather than negative. For example, if your imprisoning thought is No one will ever love me, your antidote might be something such as I am lovable and loved, as opposed to I am not going to be abandoned.
3. Your validating statement doesn’t need to be believable to you at this moment. In fact, it probably won’t be or you wouldn’t have to create and say it. The affirmation is something you choose to say now in order to bring about changes in your belief system and in what comes to you in the future as a result.
Let’s practice this exercise. Take your list of negative thoughts and start writing positive antidotes for each one. Here are some examples:
• “I’m fat and ugly” becomes My body serves me well, or I appreciate the miracle of my body.
• “I can’t take care of myself” becomes There’s always help; there’s always hope.
• “People are scary” or “The world is unsafe” becomes I am at one, at peace, and at ease. The universe provides for me.
• “I won’t be happy until I have financial security” becomes I am comfortable and safe. Abundance is mine for the asking.
• “I’m a nobody” becomes I am a blessed child of the universe.
• “I’m weak” becomes I am vibrant, energetic, and empowered.
• “I’m alone” becomes I am held in the warm embrace of the infinite.
• “I should be more outgoing or friendly” becomes I am wonderful just as I am.
• “I’m scared” becomes My Lord is with me. I do not fear.
• “My anxiety will escalate out of control” becomes I have tools to use to interrupt my anxiety.
• “I am destined to fail” becomes I create my own destiny, and I choose to succeed.
Sometimes finding the proper affirmation or antidote to a self-imprisoning thought takes a while. Don’t get discouraged. Instead, sleep on it, get help, and experiment. The right answer will be revealed.
Once you’ve created affirmations for each of your negative ideas, write these positive statements on index cards. These will become your reprogramming tools. But how are you to use them? Each morning and evening, you are to take three deep belly breaths, thank the universe for giving you the power to heal, and then read the statements on your cards. Say each one out loud three times before going on to the next, letting the words sink into your being. When you’re finished, thank the universe again for supporting you, and then go on with your day.
It’s crucial that you read your affirmations regularly. Remember, you’re up against entrenched ideas. Each time you affirm yourself, you’ll feel the immediate, self-soothing benefits. Over time, you’ll alter your mind-set loops and dramatically change your life.
A POWERFUL TRANSFORMATION: CAROL'S STORY
You may doubt my words. Perhaps you’re thinking: I can’t really change my life by choosing to say stuff I don’t even believe. Affirmations can’t do that much to make a difference. That’s magical thinking! I’d like to share one of the most dramatic tales I know in order to demonstrate the power of your mind, the effect of affirmations and visualizations, to change your body and your life’s course.
Some years ago I attended a Women in Leadership conference in San Francisco that was sponsored by Leadership, Inc. One of the speakers was a runner who described how she used her mind to qualify for the Olympics when a serious year-long injury prevented her from training for the team tryouts.
Since I unfortunately can’t remember the name of the speaker, I’ll call her Carol. She was a schoolteacher who ran track, a fast and gifted athlete whose dream had always been to qualify for and compete in the Olympic Games. So one year before the tryouts (which come up every four years), she chose to take 12 months off from her job, rent a home adjacent to a track, and devote her time to training for the qualifying races.
Soon after she moved into her new home, she injured her leg very seriously. As I recall, she tore some ligaments. She was unable to even walk, and was told that the recovery process would take a year. Perhaps she’d be able to run by the end of that time, but she surely couldn’t train for the Olympics. It was unlikely that she’d be able to run by the tryout date!
Carol was devastated. As she hobbled around on her new crutches, she felt the hopelessness wash over her. What will I do now? she wondered. The next qualifying opportunity won’t arrive for four more years. I’ll be too old to compete then, and I can’t take another year off. I’m doomed.
But then her inner wisdom spoke up. Don’t give up, she heard from deep inside. Train anyway. Confused, but hopeful, she began to puzzle about the message. How can I work toward my goal if I can’t stand, walk or run? What might I do?
And then she hatched a plan: She’d use her mind to change her body; she’d train her brain to change her life. She’d tell herself: I am qualifying for the team and work to see herself do it. She’d imagine herself in her Olympic outfit and at the games—and she would be there!
Carol set to work. She procured tapes of all the prior Olympic races in her category. She watched the winning athletes over and over, slowing the tapes down to analyze their movements frame by frame. Each time she watched a tape, she imagined herself running in the place of that competitor, only faster. She spent hours a day doing this, and she also affirmed herself constantly: I am outrunning everyone in my category. I am at the Olympics.
When she was able to stand comfortably on crutches, she stood at the starting line on the track and visualized herself running the course—fast! She told herself, I am winning. Eventually, she could stand without crutches, and she kept doing the same thing. After some months, she could walk a bit of the track, then a little more, and eventually the whole course. She continued to excel in her mind, even though she couldn’t really run a single step.
When the qualifying day arrived, Carol had trained daily—in her mind—for a full year, but she hadn’t actually run at all. She put on her running clothes, wrapped her ankle and foot in all sorts of protective bandages, and stood at the starting line. The bell rang and she was off, doing what she’d told herself she’d do, enacting what she’d visualized, and living her belief.
And she qualified! She ran her best time ever, and she was going to the Olympics as a member of the U.S. team. She’d talked herself to triumph. Her mind—the things she’d chosen to tell herself over and over, the images she’d called up, and the persistence she’d exhibited—had literally changed her physical being and her destiny.
Can what you tell yourself change your mind, body, and life? Of course. You simply have to choose to step into the challenge and do the work persistently and consistently, without fail. Can you visualize and talk yourself to wellness? You certainly can.
What you choose to tell yourself will change your path. Use the daily affirmations you’ve created, and you will take charge of your emotional life.
