Let’s dig a bit deeper into getting you crystal clear about developing your Affirmations. You will see how they resonate with such joy when you have them just right. My favorite saying when I just know its absolutely right - "NAILED".
And that is my sincere wish for you in Brilliance Gathers.
For things to become so clear, so right that you become invincible on your life path.
That there is health, joy and laughter, a joie de vivre that is true to you.
Let's move consistently toward this, or an even better place.
_____________
Recap on some learnings about creating
your personalized affirmations
Selections from your Guidebook Chapter 2
Affirmations with words and valuable phrases can be quite powerful, imprinting positive messages in our subconscious mind. These Affirmations can help with rewriting the thoughts in the files, where often-negative messages that originate from a repeated phrase can be stored. The only barrier to achieving our personal goals is ourselves and we often need to retrain our thought patterns to see the joys, opportunities, and possibilities in life rather than the limitations. Our thoughts can and do drive our attitudes, our actions and our behaviours. We can use this powerful chain reaction for empowerment, achievement, success, and self-actualization.
Selections from your Guidebook Chapter 3
Affirmations have the right intentions yet, when we are just beginning, most of us find they just don’t go deep enough. There’s a whole world residing under the surface – your surface! And when you start to mess with what you’ve taken on as belief over the decades, watch out! Mr. and Mrs. Ego are on the rampage. Let’s review what’s going on and how to work with this.
The subconscious mind cannot differentiate between negative and positive, or between what is real and imagined. For example, if we want to be successful, we cannot say things like “I don’t want to be a failure.” The subconscious mind will act upon the word “failure,” ignoring the word “don’t,” and actualizing the undesired result. We must choose what we share with our subconscious mind carefully, and that is why positive Affirmations are so critical. The subconscious mind is most open to helpful and beneficial suggestions while we are in the “alpha” brainwave state — our most relaxed state of mind. The alpha wave frequency is often achieved in a meditative state or just before falling sleep, creating an optimal time to receive positive Affirmations. Music designed to create the alpha wave state or technology known as brainwave entrainment can also help if you are not an avid meditator.
Lesson - Week 2
Now, as we enter Chapter 2 in our second week of Affirmations, let’s agree that the best way to change how we feel on a regular basis is to change how we think. Specifically, we can learn to evolve with how we talk to ourselves (self-talk). In this Lesson, please work with Chapters 2 and 3 of the Guidebook - both work together.
By learning to identify the ways we consistently misinterpret events in our lives, we can begin to think more realistically and helpfully about even the most difficult of circumstances. This tends to have beneficial effects on our mood and outlook in the long run.
Changing our thoughts can’t change reality,
but it just might change how you feel about it.
Our lives are like a story constantly unfolding in front of us, like a beautiful meadow as it reaches the forest. And, through self-talk, we are constantly narrating the events of this story to ourselves () as they unfold.
Much like a narrator in a book explains what’s happening in the plot, we talk to ourselves in our head about what’s happening in our lives, what it means, what it makes us think about, what we should do, etc.
And, get this, the same laws apply to the habit of self talk as they do to
the laws of how we form our habits of physical behaviour
A habit is a habit, both in the physical or emotional realms
A habit is an action you do frequently and
automatically in response to something in your environment
So, the way we talk to ourselves about the events in our lives becomes habitual, a pattern, that without our astute wizardry will remain in place for the lifetime. Once we have made the connections, we can learn to talk to ourselves in specific ways just like we can learn to tie our shoes or say please and thank you.
The idea of mental habits has profound practical implications for our lives,
specifically, how we feel emotionally.
Sampling of Common Forms of Unhelpful Self-Talk
I've prepared just a sampling of the most common forms of unhelpful self-talk that lead to us feeling badly on a regular basis. You’ll see there is overlap between them and that one habit will easily lead the way to another. Most of us, when we read these examples of negative self-talk, fully understand that they’re not completely true. Yet, the problem is we do use them – we get into the habit of saying them.
Merely understanding that we have inaccurate self-talk isn’t enough
It’s the habit of regularly catching ourselves in the act of
inaccurate self-talk that matters
Mind Reading
Mind reading is assuming we understand what other people are thinking without any real evidence. We imagine what’s going on in someone else’s head, but we do it in a way that’s biased and inaccurate. At its core, Mind Reading is a failure of imagination. We often only imagine the negative without exploring many different possibilities, some of which are bound to be neutral or even positive.
Overgeneralization
Overgeneralization is the habit of telling ourselves that a negative event is bound to continue happening in the future. When we overgeneralize, we make predictions about the future based on isolated pieces of evidence from the present.
Black and White Thinking
Black and white thinking is the tendency to evaluate things exclusively in terms of extreme categories. It shows up most commonly when we evaluate our own personal qualities and characteristics this way. Black and white thinking is a problem because it sets us up for chronic disappointment. When our expectations are consistently exaggerated, we never meet them and then always feel badly about ourselves.
Fortune Telling
Fortune Telling is the mental habit of predicting what will happen based on little or no real evidence. Instead, when our mind throws a negative outcome or worst case scenario at us, we “go with that” and tell ourselves that that’s what will happen. Fortune Telling is a failure of imaginative flexibility, and it often leads to a state of anxiety.
Labeling
Labeling is the habit of describing ourselves or others in one extreme way, usually negatively. This is always an inaccurate oversimplification because people and their sense of self (including our own) are highly complex and ever-changing,
Transforming your Negative Self-Talk and Feel Better
Changing our habitual ways of thinking and talking to ourselves can be a huge undertaking, especially if the habits are long-standing and pretty firmly entrenched. But there are some simple steps we can all take to build better habits of self-talk:
• Look for distortions in other people’s speech. Of course the idea is to change ourselves, not other people. Yet, as we begin, it can often be helpful and sometimes easier to identify examples of negative self-talk in other people first. Once we get better at noticing 'the talk', we can more readily start to see this in our own thinking and self-talk.
• Change your (inner) tone of voice. We all know that the way someone says something to us often affects how we feel at least as much as what they say (think about a conversation involving sarcasm). The same thing applies to the way we talk to ourselves. In addition to paying attention to what you say to yourself, be attentive to the way you talk to yourself. Are you harsh, judgmental, and sarcastic with yourself? What would it look like if you were more gentle, empathetic, and straightforward in the way you talked to yourself?
• Validate your feelings instead of analyzing them. Many of us feel the discomfort or pain of an emotion and our gut reaction is to start talking to ourselves about those feelings and what they mean. Instead, try to simply observe and notice these feelings. Mindfulness and meditation can help you get better at this.
• Be intentional, not habitual, with your self-criticism. There’s nothing wrong with self-criticism, pointing out your own mistakes, and holding yourself to a high standard. But you’ll be much more likely to do this productively if it’s intentional and deliberate rather than a gut reaction. Instead of instantly passing judgment on yourself in the moment, schedule a time to reflect on a perceived mistake or flaw intentionally, maybe by journaling the evening of the instance or talking it over with someone you trust.
• Cultivate Empathy and Self-Compassion
For better or worse, our society and culture tend to emphasize and encourage judgment. We hold ourselves (and others) to high standards and are quick to point out when those standards are not met. An effective way of thinking about this is we might call the observing or appreciating mode. Rather than analyzing and critiquing everything, it’s possible to cultivate a mindset that acknowledges and observes in a non-judgmental way. This empathetic, compassionate mindset is especially helpful when it comes to our mental and emotional wellbeing.
Mindfulness and Meditation as you develop your affirmations
To help you along on your quest to develop unique and supportive Affirmations, how about setting some time each day this week and next to meditate, journal and fully explore the material in the Guidebook and Workbook. Also, keep in mind the Truth Focus Statements explained in the Guidebook Volume 1.
You can juggle all of this playfully while you are developing your Affirmations, setting your time toward the end of Week 3 to light up your life with Your Personalized Ritual.
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