by Louise Hay
When We Are Very Little, We Learn How to Feel about Ourselves and about Life by the Reactions of the Adults Around Us
It is the way we learn what to think about ourselves and about our world. Now, if you lived with people who were very unhappy, frightened, guilty, or angry, then you learned a lot of negative things about yourself and about your world.
“I never do anything right.” “It’s my fault.” “If I get angry, I’m a bad person.”
Beliefs like this create a frustrating life.
When We Grow Up, We Have a Tendency to Re-create the Emotional Environment of Our Early Home Life
This is not good or bad, right or wrong; it is just what we know inside as “home.” We also tend to recreate in our personal relationships the relationships we had with our mothers or with our fathers, or what they had between them. Think how often you have had a lover or a boss who was “just like” your mother or father.
We also treat ourselves the way our parents treated us. We scold and punish ourselves in the same way. You can almost hear the words when you listen. We also love and encourage ourselves in the same way, if we were loved and encouraged as children.
“You never do anything right.” “It’s all your fault.” How often have you said this to yourself?
“You are wonderful.” “I love you.” How often do you tell yourself this?
However, I Would Not Blame Our Parents for This
We are all victims of victims, and they could not possibly have taught us anything they did not know. If your mother did not know how to love herself, or your father did not know how to love himself, then it would be impossible for them to teach you to love yourself. They were doing the best they could with what they had been taught as children. If you want to understand your parents more, get them to talk about their own childhood; and if you listen with compassion, you will learn where their fears and rigid patterns come from. Those people who “did all that stuff to you” were just as frightened and scared as you are.
I Believe That We Choose Our Parents
Each one of us decides to incarnate upon this planet at a particular point in time and space. We have chosen to come here to learn a particular lesson that will advance us upon our spiritual, evolutionary pathway. We choose our sex, our color, our country, and then we look around for the particular set of parents who will mirror the pattern we are bringing in to work on in this lifetime. Then, when we grow up, we usually point our fingers accusingly at our parents and whimper, “You did it to me.” But really, we chose them because they were perfect for what we wanted to work on overcoming.
We learn our belief systems as very little children, and then we move through life creating experiences to match our beliefs. Look back in your own life and notice how often you have gone through the same experience. Well, I believe you created those experiences over and over because they mirrored something you believed about yourself. It doesn’t really matter how long we have had a problem, or how big it is, or how life-threatening it is.
The Point of Power Is Always in the Present Moment
All the events you have experienced in your lifetime up to this moment have been created by your thoughts and beliefs you have held in the past. They were created by the thoughts and words you used yesterday, last week, last month, last year, 10, 20, 30, 40, or more years ago, depending on how old you are.
However, that is your past. It is over and done with. What is important in this moment is what you are choosing to think and believe and say right now. For these thoughts and words will create your future. Your point of power is in the present moment and is forming the experience of tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, and so on.
You might notice what thought you are thinking at this moment. Is it negative or positive? Do you want this thought to be creating your future? Just notice and be aware.
The Only Thing We Are Ever Dealing with Is a Thought, and a Thought Can Be Changed
No matter what the problem is, our experiences are just outer effects of inner thoughts. Even self-hatred is only hating a thought you have about yourself. You have a thought that says, “I’m a bad person.” This thought produces a feeling, and you buy into the feeling. However, if you don’t have the thought, you won’t have the feeling. And thoughts can be changed. Change the thought, and the feeling must go.
This is only to show us where we get many of our beliefs. But let’s not use this information as an excuse to stay stuck in our pain. The past has no power over us. It doesn’t matter how long we have had a negative pattern. The point of power is in the present moment. What a wonderful thing to realize! We can begin to be free in this moment!
Believe It or Not, We Do Choose Our Thoughts
We may habitually think the same thought over and over so that it does not seem we are choosing the thought. But we did make the original choice. We can refuse to think certain thoughts. Look how often you have refused to think a positive thought about yourself. Well, you can also refuse to think a negative thought about yourself.
It seems to me that everyone on this planet whom I know or have worked with is suffering from self-hatred and guilt to one degree or another. The more self-hatred and guilt we have, the less our lives work. The less self-hatred and guilt we have, the better our lives work, on all levels.
The Innermost Belief for Everyone I Have Worked with Is Always, “I’m Not Good Enough!”
We often add to that, “And I don’t do enough,” or “I don’t deserve.” Does this sound like you? Often saying or implying or feeling that you “are not good enough”? But for whom? And according to whose standards?
If this belief is very strong in you, then how can you possibly have created a loving, joyous, prosperous, healthy life? Somehow your main subconscious belief would always be contradicting it. Somehow you would never quite get it together, for something would always be going wrong somewhere.
I Find That Resentment, Criticism, Guilt, and Fear Cause More Problems Than Anything Else
These four things cause the major problems in our bodies and in our lives. These feelings come from blaming others and not taking responsibility for our own experiences. You see, if we are all responsible for everything in our lives, then there is no one to blame. Whatever is happening “out there” is only a mirror of our own inner thinking. I am not condoning other people’s poor behavior, but it is OUR beliefs that attract people who will treat us that way.
If you find yourself saying, “Everyone always does such and such to me, criticizes me, is never there for me, uses me like a doormat, abuses me,” then this is YOUR PATTERN. There is some thought in you that attracts people who exhibit this behavior. When you no longer think that way, they will go elsewhere and do that to somebody else. You will no longer attract them.
Following are some results of patterns that manifest on the physical level: Resentment that is long held can eat away at the body and become the dis-ease we call cancer. Criticism as a permanent habit can often lead to arthritis in the body. Guilt always looks for punishment, and punishment creates pain. (When a client comes to me with a lot of pain, I know they are holding a lot of guilt.) Fear, and the tension it produces, can create things like baldness, ulcers, and even sore feet.
I have found that forgiving and releasing resentment will dissolve even cancer. While this may sound simplistic, I have seen and experienced it working.
We Can Change Our Attitude Toward the Past
The past is over and done. We cannot change that now. Yet we can change our thoughts about the past. How foolish for us to PUNISH OURSELVES in the present moment because someone hurt us in the long ago past.
I often say to people who have deep resentment patterns, “Please begin to dissolve the resentment now, when it is relatively easy. Don’t wait until you are under the threat of a surgeon’s knife or on your death bed, when you may have to deal with panic, too.”
When we are in a state of panic, it is very difficult to focus our minds on the healing work. We ha
ve to take time out to dissolve the fears first.
If we choose to believe we are helpless victims and that it’s all hopeless, then the Universe will support us in that belief, and we will just go down the drain. It is vital that we release these foolish, outmoded, negative ideas and beliefs that do not support us and nourish us. Even our concept of God needs to be one that is for us, not against us.
To Release the Past, We Must Be Willing to Forgive
We need to choose to release the past and forgive everyone, ourselves included. We may not know how to forgive, and we may not want to forgive, but the very fact that we say we are willing to forgive begins the healing process. It is imperative for our own healing that “we” release the past and forgive everyone.
“I forgive you for not being the way I wanted you to be. I forgive you and I set you free.”
This affirmation sets us free.
All Dis-ease Comes from a State of Unforgiveness
Whenever we are ill, we need to search our hearts to see who it is we need to forgive.
The Course in Miracles says that “all dis-ease comes from a state of unforgiveness,” and that “whenever we are ill, we need to look around to see who it is that we need to forgive.”
I would add to that concept that the very person you find it hardest to forgive is the one YOU NEED TO LET GO OF THE MOST. Forgiveness means giving up, letting go. It has nothing to do with condoning behavior. It’s just letting the whole thing go. We do not have to know HOW to forgive. All we need to do is to be WILLING to forgive. The Universe will take care of the hows.
We understand our own pain so well. How hard it is for most of us to understand that THEY, whoever they are we need most to forgive, were also in pain. We need to understand that they were doing the best they could with the understanding, awareness, and knowledge they had at that time.
When people come to me with a problem, I don’t care what it is—poor health, lack of money, unfulfilling relationships, or stifled creativity—there is only one thing I ever work on, and that is LOVING THE SELF.
I find that when we really love and accept and APPROVE OF OURSELVES EXACTLY AS WE ARE, then everything in life works. It’s as if little miracles are everywhere. Our health improves, we attract more money, our relationships become much more fulfilling, and we begin to express ourselves in creatively fulfilling ways. All this seems to happen without our even trying.
Loving and approving of yourself, creating a space of safety, trusting and deserving and accepting, will create organization in your mind, create more loving relationships in your life, attract a new job and a new and better place to live, and even enable your body weight to normalize. People who love themselves and their bodies neither abuse themselves nor others.
Self-approval and self-acceptance in the now are the main keys to positive changes in every area of our lives.
Loving the self, to me, begins with never ever criticizing ourselves for anything. Criticism locks us into the very pattern we are trying to change. Understanding and being gentle with ourselves helps us to move out of it. Remember, you have been criticizing yourself for years, and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.
In the infinity of life where I am,
all is perfect, whole, and complete.
I believe in a power far greater than I am
that flows through me every moment of every day.
I open myself to the wisdom within,
knowing that there is only One Intelligence in this Universe.
Out of this One Intelligence comes all the answers,
all the solutions, all the healings, all the new creations.
I trust this Power and Intelligence,
knowing that whatever I need to know is revealed to me,
and that whatever I need comes to me
in the right time, space, and sequence.
All is well in my world.
Part II
A SESSION WITH LOUISE
Chapter Two
WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?
“It is safe to look within.”
My Body Doesn’t Work
It hurts, bleeds, aches, oozes, twists, blows up, limps, burns, ages, can’t see, can’t hear, is rotting away, and so on. Plus whatever else you may have created. I think I have heard them all.
My Relationships Don’t Work
They are smothering, absent, demanding, don’t support me, always criticizing me, unloving, never leave me alone, pick on me all the time, don’t want to be bothered with me, walk all over me, never listen to me, and so on. Plus whatever else you may have created. Yes, I have heard them all, too.
My Finances Don’t Work
They are nonexistent, seldom there, never enough, just out of reach, go out faster than they come in, won’t cover the bills, slip through my fingers, and so on. Plus whatever else you may have created. Of course, I have heard them all.
My Life Doesn’t Work
I never get to do what I want to do. I can’t please anyone. I don’t know what I want to do. There is never any time for me. My needs and desires are always left out. I’m only doing this to please them. I am just a doormat. Nobody cares what I want to do. I have no talent. I can’t do anything right. All I do is procrastinate. Nothing ever works for me, and so on. Plus whatever else you have created for yourself. All these I have heard and more.
Whenever I ask a new client what is going on in his or her life, I usually get one of the above answers. Or maybe several of these answers. They really think they know the problem. But I know these complaints are only outer effects of inner thought patterns. Beneath the inner thought patterns is another deeper, more fundamental pattern that is the basis of all the outer effects.
I listen to the words they use as I ask some basic questions:
What is happening in your life?
How is your health?
What do you do for a living?
Do you like your work?
How are your finances?
How is your love life?
How did the last relationship end?
And the relationship before that, how did it end?
Tell me about your childhood, briefly.
I watch the body postures and the facial movements. But mostly I really listen to the words they say. Thoughts and words create our future experiences. As I listen to them talk, I can readily understand why they have these particular problems. The words we speak are indicative of our inner thoughts. Sometimes, the words they use do not match the experiences they describe. Then I know that they are either not in touch with what is really going on or they are lying to me. Either one is a starting point and gives us a basis from which to begin.
Exercise: I Should
The next thing I do is to give them a pad and pen and ask them to write on the top of a piece of paper:
I SHOULD
They are to make a list of five or six ways to finish that sentence. Some people find it difficult to begin, and some have so many things to write that it’s hard for them to stop.
I then ask them to read the list to me one at a time, beginning each sentence with “I Should…” As they read each one, I ask, “Why?”
The answers that come out are interesting and revealing, such as:
My mother said I should.
Because I am afraid not to.
Because I have to be perfect.
Well, everybody has to do that.
Because I am too lazy, too short, too tall, too fat, too thin, too dumb, too ugly, too worthless.
These answers show me where they are stuck in their beliefs and what they think their limitations are.
I make no comments on their answers. When they are through with their list, I talk about the word SHOULD.
You see, I believe that should is one of the most damaging words in our language. Every time we use should, we are, in effect, saying “wrong.” Either we are wrong or we were wrong or we are going to be wrong. I don’t think we need more wrongs in ou
r life. We need to have more freedom of choice. I would like to take the word should and remove it from the vocabulary forever. I’d replace it with the word could. Could gives us choice, and we are never wrong.
I then ask them to reread the list one item at a time, except this time to begin each sentence by saying, “If I really wanted to, I could _____________________.” This puts a whole new light on the subject.
As they do this, I ask them gently, “Why haven’t you?” Now we hear different answers:
I don’t want to.
I am afraid.
I don’t know how.
Because I am not good enough.
And so on.
We often find they have been berating themselves for years for something they never wanted to do in the first place. Or they have been criticizing themselves for not doing something when it was never their idea to begin with. Often it was just something that someone else said they “should” do. When they can see that, they can just drop it from the “should list.” What a relief that is.
Look at all the people who try to force themselves for years into a career they don’t even like only because their parents said they “should” become a dentist or a teacher. How often have we felt inferior because we were told we “should” be smarter or richer or more creative like some relative.
What is there on your “should list” that could be dropped with a sense of relief?
By the time we have gone through this short list, they are beginning to look at their life in a new and different way. They notice that many of the things they thought they “should” do are things they never wanted to do, and they were only trying to please other people. So many times it is because they are afraid or feel they are not good enough.
The problem has now begun to shift. I have started the process of releasing the feeling of “being wrong” because they are not fitting someone else’s standards.
Next I begin to explain to them my philosophy of life as I did in Chapter One. I believe life is really very simple. What we give out, we get back. The Universe totally supports every thought we choose to think and to believe. When we are little, we learn how to feel about ourselves and about life by the reactions of the adults around us. Whatever these beliefs are, they will be recreated as experiences as we grow up. However, we are only dealing with thought patterns, and the point of power is always in the present moment. Changes can begin in this moment.