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The Courage to Be Happy It's All in the Perception A Moment Like This The Train We Ride The Winter of Our Discontent Standing on the Edge As the Days Shorten A Moon That's the Colour of Bone An Attitude of Gratitude Belonging to Tomorrow, Missing Today
When the Weeds Take Over the Garden Practising Who You Are What We Get is What We Are Lighting A Candle The Blues of Spring The Path of Change Beating the Valentine's Day Blues A New Year, A New You 
Lighting A Candle
May is finally here and summer – well, it’s just a skip away.
And there’s no doubt that these longer, light-filled days can have an uplifting effect on the spirit. Though night time certainly has its place, given the chance, most of us would prefer to live in the light, rather than stumble in the darkness.
Light and darkness, of course, are not simple, external qualities. They’re also metaphors for what’s happening inside us, on an emotional level. Indeed, clients so often come to me because they’ve simply had enough of cursing the darkness. And they’ve decided to do something about it.
So many of us have grown up learning how to be self-critical. After all, it’s easy to beat yourself up about real or imagined mistakes you make or have made.
Having learned to feel bad about things we believe – or have been taught to believe – are bad, we learn to internalise these negative feelings, replaying them over and over again as ‘self-talk’.
And this so easily becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.
But in order for this to happen, we need to dismiss the important fact that ‘the person who never made a mistake, never made anything’. In fact, I’ve yet to meet the person who never made a mistake – and I’m willing to bet that you haven’t met that person either.
In the habit of feeling bad about ourselves, we deny ourselves the understanding that making mistakes – and learning from them – is a necessary part of growing and being human.
In fact, in the language of psychology, mistakes aren’t even called mistakes – they’re called ‘successive approximations’. By learning from our ‘successive approximations’, we eventually learn to get it right.
Doesn’t that make more sense?
We grow up believing all kind of things about ourselves. And a lot of these things simply aren't true and never were. They were ‘programmed’ into us when we were too young to realise that they were incorrect and inappropriate.
One helpful way that we can counter negative beliefs is by the simple use of positive affirmations. By using affirmations in a regular, habit-forming way, we weaken and help undo much of the negative programming that we may have experienced.
You see, habits formed because we consistently engaged in them. And this is the way they are replaced. By forming the habit of meeting negative self-talk with positive affirmations, we eventually replace the automatic negatives with automatic positives. Positive self-talk is a powerful way of influencing the way we feel about ourselves and our lives.
Affirmations don’t work their wonders overnight, of course, but then your negative self-talk didn’t happen overnight, either.
The good news is that simply by persisting, the change is brought about. And it really doesn’t take long before you begin to experience positive results. So start each day with a positive affirmation. As soon as you wake up, just repeat your chosen affirmation twenty times and then do the same again before sleeping.
Use the affirmation during the day, each time you find yourself engaging in negative self-talk and thinking. Stick with it, and the change you want will really be accelerated.
Start with the first affirmation below. In my opinion it’s the most important one.
I love and approve of myself Everything I seek is now seeking me Each day my life is filled with wonders and magicDoesn’t sound like much, does it?
Why not try it and see how you get on? After all, to paraphrase that old Chinese saying, it's better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.
Until next month, I wish you all the light you need as you continue on your own journey.
Copyright © 2008 Peter Field - All rights reserved.
Reproduction in any form is prohibited
Reproduction in any form is prohibited
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