The Power of Affirmations

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2 Chapter One The Power of Affirmations I d like to begin our journey together with a story from my personal life that demonstrates the power of affirmations and how you can use them to transform your life. Recently, I was dealing with a challenging relationship. I found myself feeling afraid and uncertain about how to handle this difficult situation. At the time, I wasn t looking for a solution to my problem; I was just looking to ease my fear. Since I ve been trained to work with affirmations, I started repeating the affirmation, I am filled with courage. I repeated it again and again. I am filled with courage. I am filled with courage. I am filled with courage. Slowly, my fear started to subside, and I began to embody the attitude of courage. I began to sit a little straighter. I began to remember who I am at a deeper level. Nothing fancy, nothing overstated, just a quiet courage began to emerge. Again, I kept repeating, I am filled with courage. Suddenly, in the middle of saying the affirmation, a knowing came over me. I knew that I needed to express myself to this person. Up until this point, I was too afraid to even consider doing that. But suddenly it felt like it was the obvious thing to do. Of course, I needed to tell this person how I felt. I simply knew what I must do. When I was embodying fear, my clarity was blocked. When I embodied courage, a quiet knowing came over me, my paralysis lifted, and I had the strength to move forward and begin the process of resolving this situation. So what are affirmations? Affirmations are positive statements that you repeat to yourself for the purpose of reconditioning your body and mind. It has been said that the body believes every word you tell it. So it is very important to repeat statements that strengthen you rather than negative statements that can slowly deplete and weaken you. And boy, are we good at coming up with the latter. Many of us have the tendency to worry or fill our minds with anger, regret, fear or judgmental statements. This disturbs our inner peace. And that makes it hard to be clear and make wise decisions.

3 Our minds are like gardens that need tending. If a garden is left untended, weeds will grow. If we don t attend to our minds, negative stuff will just grow and consume us. This negativity will also make it hard to hear the quiet knowing that exists within. Affirmations help actualize our best selves Affirmations can be used in several different ways. First, they can help us embody a new attitude. As previously stated, the body believes every word you tell it. So when you repeat and really embody an affirmation such as, I am filled with courage, you begin to reprogram your body and mind. Your body begins to actually believe the statement you are telling yourself. Once you begin to embody a new attitude, your response to various situations in your life will change. This leads us to the second purpose of affirmations: to evolve our response to various challenges and events in our lives. When we are filled with courage, we respond to events in our lives in a very different way than when we are filled with fear. In other words, we can use affirmations to help us actualize our best self in everyday life. In addition, affirmation can help quiet the mind. Many of us have been trained to think through our problems. This, of course, has its place, but the intellect alone can be limited. I have been trained to quiet my mind and learn to listen to the whispers of spirit within me and all around me. When you use affirmations, you learn to focus on just one thought instead of hundreds of thoughts. When you are focused in this way, your mind starts to quiet down. As your mind quiets down, knowing from a deeper source can arise. As Rumi states, The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear. But I struggle with affirmations. Sometimes I feel like I m faking it. Yeah, I know, me too some days. But I really have found that affirmations help when you re feeling off or out of balance. The key is to keep at it. Like any other new skill that you want to develop, you need to practice. By working with these affirmations daily, you will find yourself able to embody these new attitudes more and more. Thoughts + Feeling = New Attitude! Our attitudes are a combination of thought and feeling. So if you really want to change your attitudes, you need to repeat affirmations and practice feeling them too.

4 For example if you are working with the affirmation, I am filled with confidence, you would repeat it to yourself but also practice experiencing the affirmation deeply. How would you hold your body if you were confident? How would you walk? How would you speak? What does confidence feel like when you try it on? Practice repeating the affirmation and feeling it in your body. This will deepen your experience. Over time, embodying these new attitudes will become more and more natural. Let s do a demonstration. So let s practice a little here. Let s take the affirmation: Repeat this affirmation to yourself. Keep repeating this affirmation and feel the power of the words as you repeat them. Feel the words now. Embody the affirmation. Feel the power of spirit coursing through your veins. Allow every cell of your body to be filled with the power of spirit. How do you speak when you are filled with the power of spirit? How do you hold yourself when you are filled with the power of spirit? How do you think of others when you are filled with the power of spirit? How do you feel when you are filled with the power of spirit?

5 Feel it. Embody it. Live it! Wow, that does help! Can you see how just that simple exercise could help to recondition your body and mind? Some days, it really doesn t take much to create a shift. Other days, you ll need to dig deep. Either way, affirmations can help. When working with this book you may want to take one affirmation and make it your affirmation for the day. Practice not only saying this affirmation but embodying it as well. Ask yourself: How would I handle this situation if I were filled with this quality? How would I talk with this person? What would I say if I were filled with confidence or power or love or whatever quality you are cultivating? How would I go through my day? Work with your chosen affirmation deeply throughout the day and see what transpires. Serendipity. Or in other words, another story for the book. So, it s 10:30 a.m., and I ve had my first minor challenge of the day. My 9:30 acupuncture client called me at 9:45 to say she was lost. This is inconvenient for me but the real challenge is this new client starts yelling at me about my bad directions, my unclear signage, about the fact that I work in a place with poor cell reception, etc.. I manage to hold my balance and give her directions. But when I get off the phone, I realize I may not be able to see her given the time. And to top it off, there s a part of me that doesn t want to work with her at all. Do I cancel her appointment? Do I tell her I don t want to work with her? Do I see her but give her a shorter session? My head is starting to spin. I take a deep breath and then remember the section I have just written in this book and the affirmation I have just written about. I decide to practice what I preach. I begin to quiet my mind and simply affirm: A little bit of calm comes over me, and I ask myself, Am I going to let this person throw me out of balance? I want to be stronger than that. I aspire to hold my balance in all situations. And so, I affirm again:

6 I take a breath and imagine that I ask myself what does this feel like? I take another breath, and I embody the affirmation. I sit a little straighter. I feel a little stronger. I breathe a little deeper. I ask myself: How I would handle this situation if I were filled with the power of spirit? I don t think this through, instead, I quiet my mind, and an answer comes to me. I hear the simple message, Give her the option to reschedule. My intellect kicks back in and begins to argue. She drove 45 minutes to be here, and she is already mad about starting the session late, so I can t ask her to reschedule. Then the other side of my mind gives its opinion, This woman is a jerk. I don t want to work with her at all. Tell her to go home and never come back. Okay, okay, I say to myself, back to the affirmation. I ask again, how do I handle this situation when I am filled with the power of spirit? Give her the option to reschedule, I hear again. She arrives. I am calmer, and so is she. I simply say, You know we are getting started later than I expected, and I want to give you the option to reschedule. Her answer surprises me. She says maybe that would be best because her 92-year old mother is sitting in the car and won t come inside. Mind you, it's the middle of August, and it s hot outside, and my session is usually an hour

7 and a half. Now I m thinking that my inner knowing may just have saved this 92-year old woman s life! And I m also thinking this will make a good story for the book. (The nice thing about being a writer is that everything can become material for a book!) So anyway, the story has a happy ending. It doesn t always come together so neatly, but at least this time it did! So what chakra did the affirmation, I am filled with the power of spirit, help to balance? The affirmation, I am filled with the power of spirit, helps align all of the chakras but specifically assists the throat chakra in coming into greater balance. This is because the throat chakra is the center for power, confidence, learning, growth, and expression. As I became filled with the power of spirit, I was able to say that which I needed to say. As I remembered who I truly was, my natural expression was stimulated. All the affirmations listed in this book are organized by chakra so that you will know specifically which chakra the affirmation you are working with helps to balance. But before we get to that, let s first take a moment and review the chakras and talk about why working on the chakras individually and collectively is so important. To read more, purchase Balance Your Chakras, Change Your Life from the webstore at TRCBhealing.com