Positive affirmations are like building a new road map in your brain.
Think about an open meadow.
When you drive through it the first time,
the grass lays down from your tires
and then springs back up.
If you continue to drive over the same thing,
three times a day,
then sooner or later you have made a path or ruts to drive on.
That is what positive affirmations do.
They pave a new road or new way of thinking of yourself.
This is the story I use to tell when I taught my positive affirmation class. This came about when I first started writing journals and started my journey to heal myself well over 20 years ago. Way before “The Secret” movie came out. Way before my vision boards. I read a lot of Louise Hays and Shakti Gawain back then and honestly, whole heartedly, believed I could change my world if I just thought differently.
That started my “Yellow Brick Road” path. Where all the characters and scenes in the Wizard of Oz would remind me of something in my life. I set out to find that magic of click 3 times and I would be home. The mythical land where troubles melt like lemon drops and everything would be bright and sunny and I would find the comfort and peace within myself that I desperately longed for.
But the trap became that I believed it was all in my thinking. So, if something didn’t work out the way I wanted, the way I had intended, the way I expected, or the way I had “affirmed” it, then it was my thinking. I tweaked my thinking so much that I no longer knew who I was, what I believed in, and that I wasn’t committed enough or strong enough to change all the bad things I thought.
So, I would try harder.
I spent more on self-help books than I did on diet and exercise books and programs.
But what I wasn’t seeing was the missing link in my own teachings.
I spent so much time and energy creating the new road with my thoughts, that I never DROVE or WALKED on that road.
I had all these new beliefs, thoughts, insights, etc….BUT I was still NOT living it….and THAT is what created the trap.
No matter what we feel or know,
no matter what our potential gifts or talents,
only action brings them to life.“The Life You Were Born to Live”
- Dan Millman
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More on this tomorrow…and until then my question for you
Are you LIVING the life you want or are you caught in a trap of your own?
I like where you are going with this. It DOES all start in our thinking, our beliefs. But must go on from there to the DOING part. But… so many people work on the outward part without changing the INside, and it ends up being temporary.
So, for me it’s been a process. Even though I have to work on all parts all the time (the inner beliefs/what I speak/what I do), I’ve have to shift the emphasis at times to where it needed work. Honestly, after all this time, I am still working on the INside stuff, yet actively putting legs to it, the DOING part.
Looking forward to the rest of your thoughts on this. You have a great way of writing, and making me “see” it.
What a great post. I so needed to hear this. I’m guilty of being a negative Nelly most of the time. I so need to start thinking and living positively. Keep up the great work!
VERY VERY GOOD observation and confession. As I say to others, there are many who know more than I. Take a piece, work a piece. Action follows thought and speech. Since I”m a Life Coach I ask, ‘What does that look like?’ ‘Tell me the story in action’ and “how you gonna get it?’ – meaning what’s the plan? I appreciate you writing this because, although I do affirmations and believe in the power of thinking, I also believe in the power of ‘get your back up off the wall and dance, come on’ – Kool n’ the gang, Get Down.
The problem with the whole positive thinking thing, for me, is it leads to a false corollary – that if the things you have visualized, dreamboarded, etc., don’t come to pass, IT MUST BE YOUR OWN FAULT.
Or, if somebody gets sick with cancer, say, and positive thinking didn’t make the cancer go away, they must not have *really* committed to it.
I do believe we can bring positive things into our lives, but I think it’s important to allow ourselves to be human, to fall down, and to know that sometimes no matter how much work and affirmations, blah blah, we put towards a goal, sometimes we may fall short. (Doesn’t mean we can’t pick ourselves up and try again!)
My mom is an real believer in the law of attraction and I swear she thinks that positive thinking is all it takes. However I believe in action, in order for something to happen you have to take some kind of action. I think of positive thinking as more of a motivational tool, to put you in the right mindset to take the appropriate action.