How often should you read your affirmations?
Listen to this Post-
Body
I spent a good portion of the day today with a great friend of mine who is a personal trainer. As I listened to him speak about some of his clients, I noticed a pattern that was not too unfamiliar to me. He told me about one of his clients who had successfully lost 50 pounds while working with him on a program of diet and exercise. That same client left and went to another trainer because he was too embarrassed to go back to my friend because he had regained the 50 pounds.
Spirit
Robert Wright’s column in The New York Times on August 19th “Self, Meditating” talks about his visit to a meditation retreat six years ago and how he “came away from that week feeling I had found a new kind of happiness, deeper than the kind I’d always pursued. I also came away a better person.” He‘s going back to the same retreat again this Friday for a “tune-up”.
Mind
The affirmation process is a way to deliberately write goals for yourself – written in the present tense, in a one-sentence format – to change your “self-talk” to become positive and to create a better “self” for the future. Many people I know have begun successfully utilizing the affirmation process as a way to create the changes that they desire and have then somehow fallen out of the practice.
The first example I gave of the person who lost 50 pounds and then put it back on was a physical “body” example. In that instance, the person stopped working out and tracking his food intake with the physical trainer (and on his own). Inconsistent behavior.
The second example of the meditation visit was a spiritual example. Mr. Wright went to a retreat, learned a great deal and is now going back because he’s been “living like someone who hasn’t been meditating with much regularity or dedication, who has strayed from the straight and narrow.” Meditation is a practice that can and should be done on a daily basis.
The third example was a “mind” example. People successfully begin utilizing the affirmation process and get great results but, somehow fall out of the habit.
Can you see a pattern developing here? There is no single fix to any complex problem but, there is a simple concept which says that “proper daily habits, conducted with the right mindset and technique will yield successful, consistent results.”
Another way of saying that is if we expect consistent results in any area of our life, we’re going to have to give it focus and practice–daily.
How often do we eat? Probably too often, but for most of us, it’s several times per day. We eat to provide the nourishment for our bodies. It’s a daily activity.
How often do we read, watch or listen to the news? For many of us, it’s at least once per day so that we can stay current on what’s going on in the world?
How much time do we dedicate maintaining our bodies with exercise? How often would we do it if we were committed to having healthy bodies? If not daily, I’m guessing that it would be at least 5-6 times per week.
If we were committed to spiritual health, we would have a built-in routine for our daily spiritual habits such as prayer, meditation, spiritual reading, etc. How often would we pray, meditate and read scripture? Only on the days when we want to feel peaceful, loving and compassionate. Wouldn’t that be every day? It would be a daily habit.
Daily habits allow us to feel good every day-mentally, spiritually and physically.
If more people were aware of the effect that our self-talk has on our actions, results and self-esteem, they would deliberately utilize the affirmation process to minimize the negative, destructive self-talk and proactively control their thoughts, beliefs, speech and actions. We would become aware of how we’re speaking to ourselves and to others at all times. It would be a daily habit.
Here are three affirmations that you can use as models to help begin or reignite your daily mind, body and spirit habits.
Mind: I easily and happily monitor and control my self-talk so that my thoughts about myself and others are always positive and uplifting.
Spirit: I feel peaceful spending a minimum of 30 minutes each day nourishing my soul with prayer, mediation and scriptural reading.
Body: I exercise at least 30 minutes per day and feel confident with my healthy and vibrant body.
We choose to allocate time on a daily basis to the things that we value. Do you value your mind? your body? your spirit?
How often should you read your affirmations? I think that you know the answer!
[...] This post was Twitted by BobGregoire [...]