Thoughts have power. Don’t invite trouble. Don’t draw to you what you don’t need or want. Be careful what you think. Be aware of what you say to yourself because what you tell yourself will manifest. Thoughts have the power to cure or to cause illness, to heal or to damage. Beware of negative thoughts, the weight of them often too hard to bear. Watch out for roaming dark entities looking for habitation too. Don’t become a host. Keep thoughts clean and good. Keep the body clean and good too. Healthy thoughts=healthy life, inside and out!
What you focus on will come to fruition, good or bad it will manifest. What you pick at will fester. What you believe will prove itself true. What you think will flower. What you say will bloom. Think carefully, in full consciousness, before you think or speak. Remember, by your own powers you create your life. And that is powerful indeed!
Thoughts create. How you think of yourself and your life creates your life and your world. How you perceive directly impacts you and your life. Life and death are equal parts good and bad, happy and sad, angel and devil, empty and full, light and dark. You can’t have one without the other, but in the light you can see and in the dark it is hard to see at all, though sometimes the light is as blinding as the dark and the dark as brilliant as the light. It all depends on how you decide to see it. Life, it’s all about now and how you want it to be. You are the creator and the destroyer, the giver and the taker, the challenge and the gift. It’s all about you and your grand creation, your own life!
It matters what we think, for we draw to us what we think. Even thoughts left unspoken yet still swirling in the mind attract. Ideas we have about ourselves manifest as we continue to repeat them and believe them.
Spines and prickles, like so many unwanted thoughts… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Anything we focus on with intention, both good and bad, whether we are conscious of doing so or not, affects us. Sometimes our negative thoughts rule us to the point where we have no other sense of self except these negative ideas. And such negativity has very negative vibes attached to it.
Thoughts matter. You can prove this very simply. Think of something bad that happened or something that makes you sad. Notice how you feel. Now think of a good thing, something pleasant, a happy place to be. Notice how you feel.
We can consciously monitor our thoughts, by constantly bringing our attention back to our thoughts and asking: What am I thinking about right now? Is it a good thought or a bad thought? How does it make me feel? Does it bring me positive energy vibrations or negative energy vibrations?
If we decide we want to change something about ourselves, the first place to start might be in changing what’s going on in our heads. We can be sure that what we think finds a way in and affects us in some way, often in ways we are not even aware of. And a lot of thoughts just aren’t good ones!
A Meditation
A simple 2 to 5 minutes of quiet and focused breathing, with intention to change your thoughts and your energy too, might just begin the biggest change of your life. It’s very simple.
Focus on the heart center and breathe into your heart the following words, saying them softly or silently to yourself: “Goodness, kindness, compassion and love in.” Exhale through your heart center the words: “Goodness, kindness, compassion, and love out.”
Take another breath into your heart center and say the words: “I am breathing into myself goodness, kindness, compassion, and love.” Let the power of good words and good thoughts fill you. Ask them to remain present in you, even as you exhale.
As you breathe out through the heart center, say the words: “I am breathing out into the world goodness, kindness, compassion, and love.”
Then breathe in again, saying to yourself: “I am filling myself with goodness, kindness, compassion, and love.” Breathe out into the world with the words: “I am filling you with goodness, kindness, compassion, and love.”
The Mantra:
Goodness, kindness, compassion and love in.
Goodness, kindness, compassion, and love out.
I am breathing into myself goodness, kindness, compassion, and love.
I am breathing out into the world goodness, kindness, compassion, and love.
I am filling myself with goodness, kindness, compassion, and love.
I am filling you with goodness, kindness, compassion, and love.
Try some simple centering and calmness… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
A simple breath and a simple mantra, for a few minutes at a time, is a powerful way to change our thoughts and to also reap the rewards of positive thinking as well as the generosity of sharing our goodness, kindness, compassion, and love with the rest of the world.
We are all capable of doing this. No one is more or less equipped. Let your heart show you that this is true. You might even notice, as you breathe in and out through your heart center, that your head is pretty calm and quiet. And that’s really the message I wish to pass along today: Focus more on the heart, leave the head alone.
Breathing and sending good vibrations to everyone, Jan
Note: I am shifting, pulling away, after today’s blog, from writing every week. In the meantime, a new collaboration between me and Jeanne, the Soul Sisters as I have been calling us, is in the works, to be revealed in the coming weeks!
Who else are we that we have unlimited power within? – Photo by Jan Ketchel
I have a pain in my shoulder. I notice that when I’m distracted or busy I don’t feel the pain; it simply doesn’t exist until I put my attention back onto my shoulder and remember, “Oh yes, I have that pain in my shoulder.” Immediately, I feel pain again. Why is it that the pain sometimes exists and sometimes doesn’t? Is it real to begin with?
I think about other scenarios where I think something and it manifests. One day, Chuck and I were gathering wood for the wood stove at our wood pile. Chuck was reaching high up on the stack while I was reaching down to some small logs on the ground below him. I suddenly heard a voice warning me to get out of the way, that a log could fall on top of me. As soon as I heard the message to get out of the way, I started to pull back. At the same time, as Chuck said, “a log leaped off the pile” and landed on my finger. OUCH!
I wondered if my thinking that a log could fall, actually caused the log to fall. Did my thought create the outcome? Do thoughts have that much power? Sometimes, I might think a thought and then tell myself to dismiss it, that it’s not something I wish to invite into my life, and in such cases the thought does not manifest. Can we really control our lives by our thoughts? Do WE have that much power? These questions have interested me for a long time.
We limit, inhibit, and control ourselves in the way we speak to and about ourselves. We tend to label ourselves, saying that “I am this” or “I am that.” We compare ourselves to others, give ourselves commands and definitions, make statements about ourselves that have impact, not necessarily positive, even if we might intend them as encouragement, such as, “I have to change, I must lose weight, I have to exercise, get into shape, eat better, etc.” We say, “I have to do this or that,” or “I should.” It’s also common to complain about what we think we can’t change. “I can’t… I shouldn’t… I’m not… Why aren’t I…? How come I can’t…?”
I do the same. I tend to say things like: “I have to get into balance. I have to get calm. I look tired today.” These things may have positive underlying intentions, but they in themselves are not helpful. When I notice myself saying these things I apply a little self-hypnosis and turn those phrases into affirmative, self-empowering thoughts. “I AM in balance. I AM calm. I look GREAT today!” When I do this, I notice that I feel differently. The more I say it, the more it becomes true.
Dare to dream a different dream… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Self-hypnosis is really just about offering suggestions to the self. We do it all the time, without even thinking about it, telling ourselves a myriad of things every day, plenty of negative self-talk, most likely, because we have been trained to notice only our imperfections. It might be time to try out some positive self-hypnosis for a change, to discover that real and lasting change comes from within, and that positive suggestions have positive impact.
If we actually listen to what we say to ourselves on a daily basis, how often we say negative or demeaning things to ourselves—I’m lonely, I’m bored, I’m a loser—the more lonely, bored, and the more of a loser we become. Our thoughts are that powerful!
So, watch what you say to yourself. You might be able to prevent a lot of unnecessary pain. If I had dismissed the thought of that log falling on me, might I have prevented my finger from getting crushed? I don’t know, but I’m sure going to try to avoid unnecessary pain in the future!
How can we do that? How can we avoid pain? How can we change our thoughts? We might begin by asking ourselves some questions, depending on our circumstances: Did I bring this pain on myself with my thoughts? Did I invite this challenge into my life? What thoughts do I tell myself that have created my life? Are my thoughts generally negative or are my thoughts generally positive?
Once we discover our own personal method of self-talk, we take the next step of using new language to empower ourselves. Self-hypnosis is an agent of change, but using it is our choice. Are you ready to take responsibility for the self and wake up this power within?
We enter new territory as we give positive, supportive suggestions to the self. “I am healthy. I am happy. I am fit. I am losing weight every day. I am beautiful. I exercise and I am in good shape. I eat right and I am healthy.” As we say these things to ourselves we become them. Yes, we have the power to change ourselves!
About a decade ago, when I was in the middle of my recapitulation, I discovered that I was always expecting everything in my life to be difficult. I expected bad things to happen to me because that was my experience. I expected my car to keep breaking down, people to disappoint me, to be lonely and sad, to always be depressed. One day, I got so fed up with things going wrong and with being depressed that I declared I would no longer be accepting bad things. From that moment on I would only accept good! That very day things began to change for the better. It was in that moment that I discovered just how much power my own thoughts had.
Just as the morning light of each new day is intentional, so will peace come if we intend it… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Gaining control over how we speak to ourselves, is a fine practice to accompany our work on becoming kind, loving, and compassionate beings. As we practice putting our attention on our thoughts—the patter that runs through our minds, day and night, about what we should or should not do or be—we will turn those thoughts on their ears. We will take back our power, turning negative energy into positive energy.
As we study how our own negative self-talk affects us, as we change the messages we constantly give to ourselves, we gain understanding in the difficulties that others face. We learn compassion when we realize that we are no different from anyone else.
We really do hold the power to change, the power to create a new reality, simply by how we talk to ourselves.
Here is a positive, self-affirming hypnotic suggestion to say to yourself: I am calm, I am in balance, and I have the power to change, Jan
NOTE: During the writing of this post my shoulder did not hurt one bit! Hmmm…
