by Louise Hay
If you are a person with an illness who believes that it is fatal and that you are going to die and that life is no good because nothing ever works for you, then guess what?
You can choose to release your negative concept of life. Start affirming for yourself that you are a person who is lovable, and you are worth healing, and that you attract everything you need on the physical level to contribute to your healing. Know that you are willing to get well and that it is safe for you to get well.
Many people only feel safe when they are sick. They are usually the kind that have difficulty saying the word no. The only way they can say no is by saying, “I’m too sick to do it.” It’s a perfect excuse. I remember a woman at one of my workshops who had three cancer operations. She couldn’t say no to anybody. Her father was a doctor, and she was Daddy’s good little girl, so whatever daddy told her to do, she did. It was impossible for her to say no. No matter what you asked her, she had to say yes. It took four days to get her to literally shriek “No!” at the top of her lungs. I had her do it while shaking her fist. “No! No! No!” Once she got into it, she loved it.
I find that many women with breast cancer can’t say no. They nourish everybody except themselves. One of the things I recommend to a woman with breast cancer is that she must learn to say, “No, I don’t want to do it. No!” Two or three months of saying no to everything will begin to turn things around. She needs to nourish herself by saying, “This is what I want to do, not what you want me to do!”
When I used to work with clients privately, I would hear them argue on behalf of their limitations, and they would always want me to know why they were stuck because of one reason or another. If we believe we are stuck and accept that we are stuck, then we are stuck. We get “stuck” because our negative beliefs are being fulfilled. Instead, let’s begin to focus on our strengths.
Many of you tell me that my tapes saved your lives. I want you to realize that no book or tape is going to save you. A little piece of tape in a plastic box is not saving your life. What you are doing with the information is what matters. I can give you plenty of ideas, yet what you do with them is going to count. I suggest that you listen to a particular tape over and over again for a month or more so that the ideas become a new habit pattern. I’m not your healer or savior. The only person who is going to make a change in your life is you.
Now, what are the messages you want to hear? I know I say this over and over again—loving yourself is the most important thing you can do, because when you love yourself, you are not going to hurt yourself or anyone else. It’s the prescription for world peace. If I don’t hurt me and I don’t hurt you, how can we have war? The more of us who can get to that place, the better the planet will be. Let’s begin to be conscious of what is going on by listening to the words we speak to ourselves and others. Then we can begin to make the changes that will help heal ourselves as well as the rest of the planet.
Chapter 4
Reprogramming Old Tapes
Be willing to take the first step, no matter how small it is. Concentrate on the fact that you are willing to learn. Absolute miracles will happen.
Affirmations Do Work
Now that we understand a little bit more about how powerful our thoughts and words are, we have to retrain our thinking and speaking into positive patterns if we are going to get beneficial results. Are you willing to change your self-talk into positive affirmations? Remember, every time you think a thought, and every time you speak a word, you are saying an affirmation.
An affirmation is a beginning point. It opens the way to change. In essence you are saying to your subconscious mind, “I am taking responsibility. I am aware that there is something I can do to change.” When I talk about doing affirmations, I mean to consciously choose sentences or words that will either help to eliminate something from your life or help to create something new in your life, and you do this in a positive way. If you say, “I don’t want to be sick anymore,” the subconscious mind hears sick more. You have to tell it clearly what you do want. That is, say: 7 am feeling wonderfully well. I radiate good health.”
The subconscious mind is very straightforward. It has no strategy or designs. What it hears is what it does. If you say, “I hate this car,” it doesn’t give you a wonderful new car, because it doesn’t know what you want. Even if you get a new car, you will probably hate it soon, because that is what you have been saying about it. The subconscious only hears, hate this car. You need to clearly declare your desires in a positive way, as in: 7 have a beautiful new car that suits all my needs.”
If there is something in your life that you really dislike, I have found one of the quickest ways to release it is to bless it with love. “I bless you with love and I release you and let you go.” This works for people, situations, objects, and living quarters. You could even try it on a habit you would like to be free of and see what happens. I had one man who said, “I bless you with love and release you from my life,” to every cigarette he smoked. After a few days his desire for smoking was considerably less and in a few weeks the habit was gone.
You Deserve Good
Think for a moment. What is it you really want right now? What is it you want today in your life? Think about it, and then say, “I accept for myself _____________ (whatever it is you want). This is where I find that most of us get stuck.
The bottom line is the belief that we don’t deserve to have what we want. Our personal power lies in the way we perceive our deservability. Our not deserving comes from childhood messages. Again, we don’t have to feel that we cannot change because of these messages. Often times, people will come up to me and say, “Louise, affirmations don’t work.” It really has nothing to do with the affirmations; it is the fact that we don’t believe we deserve the good.
The way to find out if you believe that you deserve something is to say an affirmation and notice the thoughts that come up as you say it. Then write them down, because when you see them on paper, they will be very clear to you. The only thing that keeps you from deserving, or loving yourself, or whatever, is someone else’s belief or opinion that you have accepted as truth.
When we don’t believe that we deserve good, we will knock the pinnings out from under ourselves, which we can do in a variety of ways. We can create chaos, we can lose things, we can hurt ourselves, or have physical problems like falling, or have accidents. We have to start believing that we deserve all the good that life has to offer.
In order to reprogram the false or negative belief, what would be the first thought that you would need to begin to create this new “whatever” in your life? What would be the building block or the foundation that you would need to stand on? What would be the sort of thing that you would need to know for yourself? To believe? To accept? Some good thoughts to start with would be:
• “I am worthwhile.”
• “I am deserving.”
• “I love myself.”
• “I allow myself to be fulfilled.”
These concepts form the very basis of beliefs on which you can build. Do your affirmations on top of these building blocks to create what you want.
Whenever I speak somewhere, somebody will come up at the end of the lecture or will write me a letter and tell me that he or she has had a healing take place while he or she was in the room. Sometimes it’s very minor, and sometimes it’s quite dramatic. A woman came up to me recently and told me that she had a lump in her breast, and it literally disappeared during the lecture. She heard something, and she decided to let something go. This is a good example of how powerful we are. When we are not ready to let something go, when we really want to hold on to something because it is serving us in some way, it doesn’t matter what we do, it probably won’t work. However, when we are ready to let it go, as this woman was, it’s amazing how the smallest circumstance can help us release it.
If you still have a habit that you haven’t released, ask yourself how it serves you. What do you get out of it? If you
can’t get an answer, ask in a different way. “If I no longer had this habit, what would happen?” Very often the answer is, “My life would be better.” It comes back to the fact that we believe we don’t deserve a better life in some way.
Ordering from the Cosmic Kitchen
When you first say an affirmation, it may not seem true. But remember, affirmations are like planting seeds in the ground. When you put a seed in the ground, you don’t get a full-grown plant the next day. We need to be patient during the growing season. As you continue to say the affirmation, either you will be ready to release whatever you don’t want, and the affirmation will become true; or it will open a new avenue to you. Or, you may get a brilliant brainstorm, or a friend may call you and say, “Have you ever tried this?” You will be led to the next step that will help you.
Keep your affirmations in the present tense. You can sing them and make a jingle out of them so they repeat over and over in your head. Remember that you cannot affect a specific person’s actions with your affirmations. To affirm that “John is now in love with me,” is a form of manipulation, and it is trying to have control over another persons’ life. It will usually have a boomerang effect on you. You will become very unhappy when you don’t get what you want. You can say, “I am now loved by a wonderful man who is,” and list the qualities you want in the relationship. That way you allow the Power within you to bring to you the perfect person to fill that bill, who may possibly be John.
You don’t know what another person’s spiritual lesson is, and you don’t have a right to interfere in their life process. You certainly wouldn’t want someone else doing it to you. If someone is ill, bless them and send them love and peace, don’t demand that they get well.
I like to think of doing affirmations as placing our order in the cosmic kitchen. If you go to a restaurant and the waiter or waitress comes and takes your order, you don’t follow them into the kitchen to see if the chef got the order or how he is going to prepare the food. You sit and drink your water or coffee or tea or you talk to your friend, and maybe eat your roll. You assume that your food is being prepared and will be out when it is ready. It’s the same when we begin to do affirmations.
When we put our order into the cosmic kitchen, the great chef, our Higher Power, is working on it. So you go on with your life and know it is being taken care of. It’s on order. It’s happening. Now if the food comes out and it isn’t what you ordered, and if you have self-esteem, you will send it back. If not, you will eat it. You also have a right to do that with the cosmic kitchen. If you don’t get exactly what you want, you can say, “No, that’s not quite it; this is what I want.” Perhaps, you weren’t clear in your ordering.
The idea here, too, is to let go. At the end of my treatments and meditations, I use the words, And so it is. It is a way of saying, “Higher Power, it’s in your hands now, I release it to you.” Spiritual mind treatment, which is taught by the Science of Mind, is very effective. You can obtain more information about it through your local Religious Science Church or through books by Ernest Holmes.
Reprogramming the Subconscious Mind
The thoughts we think accumulate, and when we are unaware, the old thought resurfaces. When we are reprogramming our minds, it is normal and natural that we go a little forward, we come a little back, and we go a little forward again. It is part of practicing. I don’t think there is any new skill that you can learn absolutely 100 percent in the first 20 minutes.
Do you remember when you first learned how to use a computer, how frustrating it was? It took practice. You had to learn how it worked, to learn its laws and systems. I called my first computer my Magic Lady, for when I mastered her rules she did indeed deliver what seemed like magic to me. Yet, while I was learning, the way she would teach me I was off track or going in the wrong direction, was to devour pages of work that I would then have to do over again. Out of all the mistakes, I learned how to flow with the system.
To flow with the system of Life, you want to become aware that your subconscious mind is like a computer—garbage in, garbage out. If you put negative thoughts in, then negative experiences come out. Yes, it takes time and practice to learn the new ways of thinking. Be patient with yourself. When you are learning something new, and the old pattern returns, are you going to say, “Oh, I didn’t learn anything?” Or are you going to say, “Okay, that’s all right, come on, let’s do it again the new way.”
Or, say you cleared an issue and think you’ll never have to deal with it again. How do you know if you’ve really worked it through unless you test yourself? So, you bring up the old situation one more time and watch how you react. If you jump right back into the old way of reacting to it, then you know you haven’t really learned that particular lesson, and you need to do more work on it. That’s all it means. You have to realize it’s a little test to see how far you’ve come. If you begin to repeat your affirmations, the new statements of truth about yourself, you give yourself an opportunity to react differently. Whether it’s a health problem, a financial one, or a relationship difficulty, if you react in a new way to the situation, then you’re on your way to having another issue handled, and you can move on to other areas.
Remember, too, that we work on layers at a time. You can reach a plateau and think, “I’ve done it!” And then some old issue resurfaces and you injure yourself, or get sick, and you don’t get better for some time. Look to see what the underlying beliefs are. It may mean you have some more work to do because you are going to the next deeper layer.
Don’t feel that you are not good enough, because something you have worked to clear comes up again. When I discovered that I was not a bad person because once again I was facing an old issue, it became much easier for me to keep going. I learned to say to myself, “Louise, you are doing very well. Look how far you have come. You just need more practice. And I love you.”
I believe each one of us decides to incarnate upon this planet at particular points in time and space. We have chosen to come here to learn a particular lesson that will advance us on our spiritual, evolutionary pathway.
One of the ways to allow the process of life to unfold for you in a positive, healthy way is to declare your own personal truths. Choose to move away from the limiting beliefs that have been denying you the benefits you so desire. Declare that your negative thought patterns will be erased from your mind. Let go of your fears and burdens. For a long time now, I have been believing the following ideas, and they have worked for me:
• “Everything I need to know is revealed to me.”
• “Everything I need comes to me in the perfect time-space sequence.”
• “Life is a joy and filled with love.”
• “I am loving and lovable and loved.”
• “I am healthy and filled with energy.”
• “I prosper wherever I turn.”
• “I am willing to change and to grow,” and
• “All is well in my world.”
I have learned that we don’t always stay positive 100 percent of the time, and I include myself in this knowledge. As much as possible, I see life as a wonderful joyous experience. I believe that I am safe. I have made it a personal law for me.
I believe that everything I need to know is revealed to me, so I need to keep my eyes and ears open. When I had cancer, I remember thinking that a foot reflexologist would be very helpful for me. One evening I went to a lecture of some sort. Usually I sit in the front row because I like being close to the speaker; however that night I was compelled to sit in the back row. Right after I sat down, a foot reflexologist sat next to me. We began to talk and I learned that he even made house calls. I didn’t have to look for him, he came to me.
I also believe that whatever I need comes to me in the perfect time-space sequence. When something goes wrong in my life, I immediately start to think, “All is well, it’s okay, I know that this is all right. It’s a lesson, an experience, and I’ll pass through it. There is something he
re that is for my highest good. All is well. Just breathe. It’s okay.” I do the best I can to calm myself, so I can think rationally about whatever is going on, and, of course, I do work through everything. It may take a little time, but sometimes, things that seem to be great disasters really turn out to be quite good in the end, or at least, not the disasters that they seemed to be in the beginning. Every event is a learning experience.
I do a lot of positive self-talk, morning, noon and night. I come from a loving space of the heart, and I practice loving myself and others as much as I possibly can. My love expands all the time. What I do today is much more than what I was doing six months or a year ago. I know a year from now my consciousness and my heart will have expanded, and I’ll be doing more. I know that what I believe about myself becomes true for me, so I choose to believe wonderful things about myself. There was a time when I didn’t, so I know I have grown, and I continue to work on myself.
I also believe in meditation. To me, meditation is when we sit down and turn off our inner dialogue long enough to hear our own wisdom. When I meditate, I usually close my eyes, take a deep breath and ask: ‘What is it I need to know?’ I sit and listen. I might also ask, ‘What is it I need to learn?’ or ‘What is the lesson in this?’ Sometimes, we think we’re supposed to fix everything in our lives, and maybe we’re really only supposed to learn something from the situation.
When I first began to meditate, I had violent headaches the first three weeks. Meditation was so unfamiliar and against all my usual inner programming. Nevertheless, I hung in there, and the headaches eventually disappeared.
If you are constantly coming up with a tremendous amount of negativity when you meditate, it may mean that it needs to come up, and when you quiet yourself, it starts to flow to the surface. Simply see the negativity being released. Try not to fight it. Allow it to continue as long as it needs to.
