Say Yes To Life
Institute For Unlocking Human Potential
11512 14 Avenue, Edmonton, Alberta T6J 7A3
“To share the age old wisdom with all and to provide the opportunity for everyone to experience life at its fullest and challenge everyone to Dare to Dream Big to realize their full potential”
N. Pas Paskaran
Volume 8 Issue 4 April 2009
------
Greetings:
We’re what our beliefs make us. Our beliefs, more importantly our core beliefs, determine the outcomes of our actions. Our beliefs either support our efforts or sabotage our actions. Our core beliefs shape our destiny.
Change your beliefs and you change your behavior.
Change your behavior and you change your results.
Change your results and you change your life.”
Lisa Jimenez
Our mind can be compared to a garden. A gardener must remove the weeds before planting the seeds. Otherwise the weeds will take over the garden. We must weed out the non-supportive beliefs before we plant beliefs that support our goals and dreams. Let me repeat. We must weed out the non-supportive beliefs before we plant beliefs that support our goals and dreams. We must sow the seeds of the beliefs that support what we want in life, from life and out of life. We plant new beliefs by controlling the thoughts we think and our habitual vocabulary.
We continue our discussion, in this issue, on the crucial concept of the power of beliefs to shape our life experiences and hence our destiny.
I hope that you will gather insights on how to live our lives effectively and enjoy the abundance and prosperity that life has to offer.
With Best Wishes for an Abundant and Successful Lifestyle.
------
The newsletters from the previous years are in the archives on the web page. Refer: Bookmark this address for quick reference.
------
(continued from last issue)
Change our thinking
Dr. Wayne Dyer, best selling author and one of the foremost speakers in the world, writes in his book, ‘You’ll See It When You Believe It’, “Work each day on our thoughts rather than concentrating on our behaviors. It’s our thinking that creates our feelings and hence our actions and ultimately our destiny in life.”
Vic Johnson in quoting James Allen, author of many excellent essays including the gem among gems, ‘As a Man Thinketh’ says, “ We can’t change our circumstances without first changing our thoughts to harmonize with the circumstances we want. To think otherwise is foolish.” Changing our thoughts will ensure changing our beliefs.
Changing our beliefs is not as simple as changing our clothes. We change our beliefs by changing the thoughts we think and the habitual vocabulary in our communication with others. Changing our thoughts and habitual vocabulary is not as simple as changing our clothes.
We must exercise discipline to monitor our thoughts and change them from focusing on what we don’t want to focusing on what we want. When our thoughts drift to focusing on what we don’t want to happen, we must direct it to focus on what we want to happen.
We must exercise determination to monitor our habitual vocabulary and change from ‘I can’t’, ‘I won’t’, ‘I haven’t’ etc to ‘I can’, ‘I will’, ‘I have’ etc. Change from using depreciating words to using appreciating words. Change from using pessimistic words to using optimistic words. Change from complaining to complimenting. Change from talking about unfavorable outcomes to talking about favorable outcomes.
If we change our thoughts and habitual vocabulary for the better, we will change our non-supportive beliefs to empowering beliefs. It will be the most significant step we will take in living a fulfilling and satisfying life.
Challenge to review our beliefs
I want to encourage you to review and reflect on your belief system. Take an unbiased review of your core beliefs. I challenge you to question as many of your core beliefs.
Recognize the beliefs that are empowering and supporting our lives. Capitalize on them Preserve them. Sharpen them. Refine them.
Also identify those beliefs that are not supporting our lives; that are disempowering our lives. These are the limiting beliefs in our lives. They sabotage our efforts. They prevent our dreams and goals becoming realities. Replace such disempowering beliefs with beliefs that support, enhance and enrich our lives.
It is extremely difficult to analyze our beliefs and recognize which are beneficial and which are harmful to our living. Most of the time, we have become so comfortable with these beliefs, over so many years of believing in them, that we do not recognize them as controlling our lives either for the good or bad. Most of the time, we are either blind or ignorant of the beliefs that are controlling and directing our lives.
I present below some of the questions we can ask ourselves in an effort to recognize our beliefs in some of the areas of our life.
What is our belief about health?
What is our belief about marriage?
What is our belief about wealth?
What is our belief about politicians?
What is our belief about management?
What is our belief about taking risk? Is it fun or dangerous?
What is our belief about learning? Is it easy or difficult?
What is our belief about old age?
What is our belief about raising children?
What is our belief about teenagers?
What is our belief about elderly people? Is it nuisance or wise with age?
What is our belief about life? Is it life is a picnic or life is a struggle?
What is our belief about people?
What is our belief about strangers? Is it never to be trusted or could be trusted?
What is our belief about people of different ethnic background?
What is our belief about people on welfare? Is it to be pitied or not to be pitied?
What is our belief about wealthy people?
What is our belief about business people?
There are thousands of questions one can raise for different areas of life. You get the point. Answers to these questions reveal our beliefs in these areas of life. Some of the beliefs are supporting and empowering us. They are enabling us to fulfill our dreams. They ensure we live a harmonious, successful and fulfilling life. While other beliefs are not supporting us in our lives. They sabotage our efforts. They are instrumental in ensuring we live a disharmonious, unfulfilling and dissatisfied life.
Use of affirmations:
We can change the non-supportive beliefs by using affirmations. However, first and foremost, we must want to change. If we are half-hearted, we will not change our beliefs. We must decide to change our beliefs. We must believe that we can change our beliefs. We must confidently expect to change our beliefs.
What are affirmations? Affirmations are directive to the brain. These directives will rewire the brain consistent with the wording used in the affirmations. Affirmations by themselves don’t bring about a change in our circumstances. We’ve to take the necessary actions to create the desired outcomes. Affirmations re-wire the brain to ensure our beliefs are congruent with the actions. Let me repeat. Affirmations re-wire the brain to ensure our beliefs are congruent with the actions.
There are four rules to follow when using affirmations:
- Affirmation must be in the first person. We can only affirm for ourselves. We can’t affirm for others – family, friends, colleague or a group. Affirmation starts with “I’m”.
“Ours is a loving family” is not an affirmation. It’s merely a statement. It has no power to rewire the brain of family members. It’s mandatory that a directive be issued to rewire the brain. Thus, the affirmation is personal and must start with “I’m”.
- Affirmation must be in the present tense. Never affirm, “I will be healthy.” Never affirm in the future tense. This is a hard concept to accept. Affirming in future tense will ensure we never arrive at what we want; we never realize what we want. Affirm as if what you desire is a reality in the present. Affirm, “I’m healthy.”
- Affirmation must be a positive statement. Never affirm, “I’m not afraid.” Never affirm as a negative statement. We can’t move away from fear. We can only move towards courage. Thus, affirm, “I’m courageous.”
It appears that both these affirmation are attempting to achieve the same end result. However, the difference is like day and night. Positive affirmation will produce the desired end result. And the negative affirmation will not produce the desired outcome.
- Affirmation must be specific. Affirmation, “I’m thin” is vague. What does ‘thin’ mean – 50 kg, 70g, 95 kg or 120 kg? It’s subjective. Affirmation, “I’m an excellent student” is vague. Is it a mark of 60, 70, 80 or 90? Proper affirmation is either “I’m thin at 75 kg” or “I’m an excellent student with an average of 85.”
To overcome sickness and improve our health, affirm. “I’m healthy.”
To overcome debt and improve our finances, affirm, “I’m wealthy.”
To overcome tiredness and have more vitality, affirm, “I’m energetic.”
To overcome anger, anxiety and worry, affirm, “I’m calm, cool and relaxed.”
To overcome fear, affirm, “I’m courageous.”
To overcome lack of confidence, affirm, “I’m confident.”
To overcome a sense of low feeling, affirm “I’m happy.”
To enhance our personality, affirm “I’m a dynamic person.”
To rewire the brain for success, affirm “I’m successful in life.”
(to be continued in the next issue)
------
Please forward this newsletter to friends, relatives and colleagues.
Please send me email addresses of people who may be interested in receiving the newsletter. Inform me of any change to your email address.
If you're not on my mailing list, please send me your email address for future mailings.