I never thought much about positive self-talk until last year. It always seemed artificial to “talk yourself into something”. I’ve changed my mind. The habits of thinking, feeling and doing that make up our personality are created by our rehearsing what we think, feel and do largely on an unconscious plain. So if we are going to successfully break into our habits and change them, becoming conscious of those old tapes helps us pierce through the frozen ice of old habits. Beginning to rehearse in our selves the different action we want can only be beneficial. Replacing old tapes with new tapes that serve me better in this day and time help me navigate my life today. Brain research shows we like to repeat old patterns because they are easy to fall into. But the brain also likes to create new avenues of working and continues to do so all of our lives. Balancing the two integrates old and new into satisfying ways of being.
So I took the old tape of indecisiveness with inclinations to sit on the fence and began to replace it with a call to right action. Instead of going down the highway of life with one foot on the break and one foot on the gas, I began to say to my self “right action”. I found that “right action” almost immediately was fueled by fear of going into the unknown way too fast. So I added to my new tape, the concept of courage. Then with right action and courage, I realized I needed to have a direction, a goal to move toward. I added a third concept to my new tape: vision. My new tape now reads right action, courage and vision.
With no specific goal in my mind other than changing the immense unseen power of the old tapes, I begin to say to myself during times of meditation: Right action, courage, vision. I flood my being with the three concepts.
First I place myself in a venue of receptivity, allowing a vulnerability of being. I sit comfortably with back straight, feet on the floor and have several cleansing breaths. With my hands placed downward on my legs, I allow the flow of being. Then after a time I speak to myself the words of power: right action, courage, vision. Depending on which one seems to generate more pull for me at that time, I might stay with it. I sense the new flooding into my body.
Then I place my hands up as if to offer to share this wonderful new power with my world. I open to let it move out into my day.
Then I place my hands over my heart and invite the new words: right action, courage, vision to cover my body like honey or sunshine, flowing and soaking into every pore beginning with the heart.
And finally I outstretch my hands in a gesture of giving and hope for each person the ability to move in right action with courage and vision.
During the day is when I see specific situations arise that I have the opportunity to meet using the ability found in the delivery of my new tapes. These concepts have always been there, but I had covered them up with the unconscious need to fear, and to become indolent about my goals and life in general. The walk is day by day, creating new habits to replace the old.
What do you think?
Andrea Andress, March 24, 2012
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