Halos And Rainbows

These are for everyone! 

I use an affirmation every day for a happy little moment of thought in my Fairy Glade but the best affirmations are the ones we make four ourselves.  Shall we learn about them together?

Why use Affirmations?

Every thought you think, every work you say reaffirms your identity to yourself and others.
We constantly confirm who we are; whatever is happening at that moment helps us do this.

Since we were little children we have been controlled and commented on by others to make us behave in the correct ways, react to situations appropriately, etc. Some things we‘re brought up to believe may make us feel uncomfortable as they are “not part of you but something you learned“.
Maybe an action felt acceptable once but you know it is not so comfortable now.

Let’s ask ourselves a few questions, these are just examples, you can ask what you like.

Are you afraid of dogs?
Has one ever hurt you?
Did you see someone get hurt?
OR
Did you learn to be afraid because someone close to you was? Do you actually feel fear?

How about

When something goes wrong do you experience uncontrolled anger and/or panic?
Are you behaviours appropriate for your survival?
OR
Are they learned reactions, do you really feel the anger and panic you display?

How can I change?

There are two ways we speak to ourselves inside our heads, positive and negative. Positive is I can, I am, I will and negative is I can not, I will not be able to, I’m no good.

Well we can use Positive Affirmations to re-programme our brains, kind of like brainwashing (think of a little man with a long tooled mop) but you do it yourself in nice manageable pieces.

These are my rules,

Negative self-talk needs to go, offer it to choose it‘s window - it‘s leaving.
Have an honest think and find a behaviour you’d like to help grow
Remember encouragement helps you focus on the things you want in life

The more you want to change the easier it is!

This is why!

Your subconscious has spent all it’s life learning patterns; some may have been discovered in times of hunger, abuse, tragedy or fear. It knows this behaviour worked then so it’s in the store ready to dust off immediately if needed. The worse the situation the more determined your subconscious is to use it’s tried and tested reactions.

So how can you change your brains messages?

Use an Affirmation - it’s a bit like brain training.

If someone told you that you are useless, ugly, fat and lazy constantly you d begin to believe them and feel sad, you’d think about these cruel words and maybe even become that person. How about if they said you were amazing, talented and beautiful? That feels better doesn’t it!

Thinking negative thoughts about ourselves and listening when others say bad things gets into our subconscious, it travels down your Stream of Consciousness and jumps into our subconscious storage and before long we can truly believe we are worthless.
That is never how it should be, we can change how we see ourselves; tiny happy little messages sent to our brain regularly will re-programme it.

Let’s go back to our old friend the anger reaction as an example.

Imagine crayon on the wall.
Do you shout scream and go completely crazy or do you take the crayon away replacing it with a cleaning cloth?

Now imagine a motorbike in pieces on the best lounge carpet, the engine dripping fluids on the cream sofa and spilled bear on your antique Welsh-dresser complete with a handful of keen mechanic type teenagers with no idea what they’re doing; all wearing muddy boots. DO NOT go on to imagine picking up the nearest spanner to deal with these thoughtless teens or you will have an even bigger mess to sort out.

Ok that is extreme and not many of us would calmly go and put the kettle on, get the cleaning things out, and wait politely for the motorbike and teens to wonder off, I would hope self-respect and a right to feel cross would assert themselves.

If we have trained our brain to deal with the anger and feelings of upset at those times, we will have also trained our kids to know and understand some mistakes are more serious than others. Think of how you could be sterner if you screamed, shouted and got violent over crayon on the wall, how could you possibly make the motorbike incident reaction more forceful?
Our reaction should be variable and acceptable for the level of “oops, it seemed like a good idea at the time,”

I am calm and react in an appropriate way (say this 3 times for the charm to work and - yep, you feel better already)

So we need to put good things into our “Stream of Consciousness” so that the store with the instant reactions in it can be dusted and updated when it needs to be. We all know how hard change can be so take it easy on yourself. You have to break through your brains resistance before you can re-train it.

Making an Affirmation Up for Yourself

You can write an affirmation for things in you life that you would like to change, job, happiness, love, feeling valued, temper, weight, self-confidence, you name it an affirmation may help, just remember if you dream of a muscle car winning one in a competition, when you are out of work and cannot afford to drive it may need a little run up such as “I have a fantastic new job”.

Try to use generalised affirmations rather than specific ones or you might be asking for what you think you want instead of what you need.

The affirmations on websites are a brilliant way to pick up a daily one at random, however usually if it makes you cringe it is something you need to look at, so don‘t put it back and choose again. They are a good way to learn how to write them in a way that suits you too.

When you make-up your own

Always write it as yourself, say I, me, myself
Always be positive - avoid negative words like not, no, can’t, wrong
Always be short and to the point so you can remember them

Do not write

“I am beautiful with long flowing hair and a fantastic body and have a perfect life as a film star”

This is asking the universe for rather a lot and is after all a bit of a mouthful

Try instead

“I am happy with myself and my career” repeated 3 times.

You will get the same results; but if you are 4 foot 8 and 15 stones with a face like the wrong end of a dog maybe you are being a little ambitious, even though the universe is infinite and abundant you shouldn‘t restrict your options for happiness. May be you will realise your ultimate dream eventually, but if you use affirmations then you will at least become confidence and happy with where your choices lead you.

So find an affirmation for something you want to deal with or write it yourself and get a sense of accomplishment. Say it 3 times over quite often during the day and then whenever that situation hits and before long you will be able to react in a far more comfortable way, feel happier about yourself and succeed in life.

Sometimes it helps to visualise the changes taking place. I like to imagine little mice nibbling away at the reactions (often hazelnuts) trapped in little holes along the banks of my Stream of Consciousness and gently changing the messages on them as they float past in their little boat. When the nuts or seeds are the best they can be little plants start to grow along the waters edge.
If you don’t like mice you could have anyone on a boat or raft dong similar things, a pretty lady putting in corrections like your favourite teacher; or even Skinheads on a Raft floating along your Stream of Consciousness and fixing the messages left with sparkly gems in holes on the bank. How about an artist painting new reactions onto a huge rock you regularly have to float past, the options are endless.

Basically it choose how or if you imagine it, you have places in your brain that reactions jump out of leaving us wondering where that came from, sometimes they are better and more appropriate than others.

To train your reactions just keep telling yourself something until your brain catches on and joins in, simple as that.