by Louise Hay
Some people think that if they meditate, they have to stop their minds from thinking. We really can’t stop the mind, but we can slow down our thoughts and let them flow through. Some people sit with a pad and pencil and write down their negative thoughts because they seem to dissipate more easily. If we can get to a state where we are watching our thoughts float by—“Oh, there’s a fear thought, and some anger, now there is a love thought, and now a disaster, there’s an abandonment thought, a joy thought”—and don’t give them importance, we begin to use our tremendous power wisely.
You can begin meditation anywhere and allow it to become a habit. Think of meditation as focusing on your Higher Power. You become connected with yourself and your inner wisdom. You can do it in whatever form you like. Some people go into a kind of meditation while they are jogging or walking. Again, don’t make yourself wrong for doing it differently. I love to get on my knees in the garden and dig in the dirt. It’s a great meditation for me.
Visualize Optimistic Outcomes
Visualization is also very important, and there are many techniques you can use. Dr. Carl Simonton, in his book, Getting Well Again, recommends a lot of visualization techniques for people with cancer and they often yield excellent results.
With visualization you create a clear, positive image that enhances your affirmation. Many of you have written to me about the kinds of visualizations you do along with your affirmations. The important thing to remember about visualizations is that they must be compatible with the kind of person you are. Otherwise, your visualizations will not work.
For instance, a woman with cancer pictured the good killer cells in her body attacking the cancer and killing it. At the end of the visualization, she doubted whether she had done it correctly and didn’t feel that it was working for her. So I asked her, “Are you a killer person?” I personally don’t feel good about creating a war in my body. I suggested that she change her visualization to one that was a little more gentle. I think it’s better to use images like the sun melting the sick cells, or a magician transforming them with his magic wand. When I had my cancer, I used the visualization of cool, clear water washing the diseased cells out of my body. We need to do visualizations that are not so offensive to us on the subconscious level.
Those of us who have family or friends who are sick do them an injustice by continually seeing them sick. Visualize them well. Send them good vibrations. However, remember that getting well is really up to them. There are many good audiotapes with guided visualizations and meditations that you can give them to help them through this process if they are open. If not, just send them love.
Everyone can visualize. Describing your home, having a sexual fantasy, imagining what you would do to a person who hurt you are all visualizations. It is amazing what the mind can do.
5. The next step is to praise yourself. Criticism breaks down the inner spirit, and praise builds it up. Acknowledge your Power, your God self. We are all expressions of the Infinite Intelligence. When you berate yourself, you belittle the Power that created you. Begin with little things. Tell yourself that you are wonderful. If you do it once and then stop, it doesn’t work. Keep at it, even if it’s one minute at a time. Believe me, it does get easier. The next time you do something new, or different, or something you are just learning and you’re not too adept at it, be there for yourself.
It was a big thrill the first time I spoke at the Church of Religious Science in New York. I remember it vividly. It was a Friday noon meeting. People wrote questions and put them in a basket for me, the speaker. I brought the basket to the podium and answered the questions and did a small treatment after each. After I finished, I walked away from the podium and said to myself, “Louise, you were fantastic considering this was the first time out. By the time you do this about six times, you are going to be a pro.” I didn’t berate myself and say, “Oh, you forgot to say this or that.” I didn’t want to have the second time be something that would frighten me.
If I beat myself up the first time, I would beat myself up the second time, and I would dread speaking in the end. After a couple of hours, I thought of what I could change to improve. I never made myself wrong. I was very careful to praise myself and congratulate myself for being wonderful. By the time I had conducted six meetings, I was a pro. I think we can apply this method in all areas of our lives. I continued speaking at the meetings for quite some time. It was a wonderful training ground because it taught me how to think on my feet.
Allow yourself to accept good whether you think you deserve it or not. I’ve discussed how believing that we are not deserving is our unwillingness to accept good in our lives. It’s what stops us from having what we want. How could we say anything good about ourselves if we think we don’t deserve to be good.
Think about the laws of deserving in your home. Did you feel good enough, smart enough, tall enough, pretty enough, whatever? And what do you have to live for? You know you are here for a reason, and it’s not to buy a new car every few years. What are you willing to do to fulfill yourself? Are you willing to do affirmations, visualizations, treatments? Are you willing to forgive? Are you willing to meditate? How much mental effort are you willing to exert to change your life and make it the life you want?
6. Loving yourself means supporting yourself. Reach out to friends and allow them to help you. You really are being strong when you ask for help when you need it. So many of you have learned to be so self-reliant and self-sufficient. You can’t ask for help because your ego won’t let you. Instead of trying to do it all yourself and then getting angry at yourself because you can’t make it, try asking for help next time.
There are support groups in every city. There are 12- Step Programs for almost every problem, and in some areas there are healing circles and church-affiliated organizations. If you can’t find what you want, you can start your own group. It’s not as scary as you might think. Gather together two or three friends who have the same issues that you have, and set up a few guidelines to follow. If you do it with love in your heart, your little group will grow. People will be attracted like a magnet. Don’t worry if it starts to grow and your meeting space gets too small. The Universe always provides. If you don’t know what to do, write to my office, and we’ll send you guidelines on how to conduct a group. You really can be there for each other.
I started The Hayride in Los Angeles in 1985 with six men with aids in my living room. We didn’t know what we were going to do about this intense crisis. I told them we weren’t going to sit around playing “ain’t it awful” because we already knew that. We did what we could on a positive level to support each other. We’re still meeting today, and we have about 200 people coming every Wednesday night to West Hollywood Park.
It’s an extraordinary group for people with aids, and everyone is welcome. People come from all over the world to see how this group functions and because they feel supported. It’s not only me, it’s the group. Everyone contributes to making it effective. We meditate and do visualizations. We network and share information about alternative therapies and the latest medical methods. There are energy tables at one end of the room where people can lie down, and others share healing energies by laying on hands or praying for them. We have Science of Mind Practitioners they can talk to. At the end we sing and hug one another. We want people to go out feeling better than they came in, and sometimes people receive a positive lift that lasts for several days.
Support groups have become the new social form and they are very effectual tools in this complex day and age. Many “new thought” churches such as Unity and Religious Science have ongoing weekly support groups. Many groups are listed in new age magazines and newspapers. Networking is so important. It sparks you and gets you going. I suggest that people who have similar ideas share time with one another on a regular basis.
When people work together on a common goal, they bring their pain, confusion, anger, or whatever, and come together, not to moan, but to find a way to go be
yond, to rise above, and grow up in a way.
If you are very dedicated, very self-disciplined, and very spiritual, you can do a lot of work on yourself by yourself. When you are with a group of people doing the same thing, you can make quantum leaps because you learn from one another. Every single person in the group is a teacher. So if you have issues that need working on, I would suggest, if possible, that you get into a group of some sort where you can work them through.
7. Love your negatives. They are all part of your creation, just as we are all part of God’s creation. The Intelligence that created us doesn’t hate us because we make mistakes or get angry at our children. This Intelligence knows that we are doing the best we can and loves all of Its creation, as we can love ours. You and I have all made negative choices, and if we keep punishing ourselves for them, it becomes a habit pattern and we’ll find it very tiresome to let them go and move on to more positive choices.
If you keep repeating, “I hate my job. I hate my house. I hate my illness. I hate this relationship. I hate this. I hate that,” very little new good can come into your life.
No matter what negative situation you are in, it’s there for a reason; otherwise you wouldn’t have it in your life. Dr. John Harrison, the author of Love Your Disease, says that patients are never to be condemned for having multiple operations or illnesses. Actually, patients can congratulate themselves for finding a safe way to have their needs met. We have to understand that whatever issue or problem we have, we contributed to creating it in order to handle certain situations. Once we realize this, then we can find a positive way to fulfill our needs.
Sometimes people with cancer or other terminal illnesses have such a hard time saying “no” to an authoritative figure in their life, that on an unconscious level they will create a major disease to say “no” for them. I knew a woman who, when she realized the illness she was creating for herself was just to be able to refuse her father’s demands, decided to begin to live for herself for once. She began to say “no” to him. And while it was difficult for her at first, as she continued to stand up for herself she was delighted to find herself getting well.
Whatever our negative patterns are, we can learn to fulfill those needs in more positive ways. That’s why it’s so important to ask yourself the question, “What is the payoff from this experience? What am I getting that’s positive?” We don’t like to answer that question. However if we really look within and are honest with ourselves we will find that answer.
Perhaps your answer would be, “It’s the only time I get loving attention from my spouse.” Once realized, you can begin to look for more positive ways to achieve this.
Humor is another potent tool—it helps us release and lighten up during stressful experiences. At the Hayride, we set time aside for jokes. Sometimes we have a guest speaker called the “the laugh lady”. She has a contagious laugh and puts everyone on a laughter cycle. We can’t al ways take ourselves too seriously, and laughter is very healing. I also recommend watching old comedies such as those of Laurel and Hardy when you are feeling low or down.
When I did private counseling I would do my best to get people to begin to laugh at their problems. When we can see our lives as a stage play with soap opera and drama and comedy, we get a better perspective and we are on the way to healing. Humor enables us to pull back from the experience and to see it in a larger perspective.
8. Take care of your body. Think of it as this marvelous house in which you live for a while. You would love your house and take care of it, wouldn’t you? So, watch what you put into your body. Drug and alcohol abuse is so prevalent because they are two of the most popular methods of escape. If you are into drugs it doesn’t mean you are a bad person; it means you haven’t found a more positive way of fulfilling your needs.
Drugs beckon to us: “Come and play with me, and we’ll have a good time.” It’s true. They can make you feel wonderful. However, they alter your reality so much, and although it isn’t evident at first, you have to pay a terrible price in the end. After taking drugs for a while, your health deteriorates immensely, and you feel awful most of the time. Drugs affect your immune system, which can lead to numerous physical ailments. Also, after repeated use, you develop an addiction, and you have to wonder what made you start taking drugs in the first place. Peer pressure may have compelled you to take them in the beginning, but continued and repeated use is another story.
I’ve yet to meet anyone who really loves him or herself and who is hooked on drugs. We use drugs and alcohol to escape our childhood feelings of not being good enough and when they wear off, we feel worse than before. Then we usually have a load of guilt, too. We have to know that it’s safe to feel our feelings and acknowledge them. The feelings pass, they don’t stay.
Stuffing food into our bodies is another way to hide our love. We can’t live without food because it fuels our bodies and helps to create new cells. Even though we may know the basics of good nutrition, often we still use food and diets to punish ourselves and create obesity.
We’ve become a nation of junk food addicts. We have been on what I call the Great American Diet for decades, filling ourselves with processed foods of every sort. We’ve allowed the food companies and their advertising gimmicks to influence our eating habits. Doctors aren’t even taught nutrition in medical schools, unless they take it as an extracurricular subject. Most of what we consider conventional medicine, at the moment, concentrates on drugs and surgery, so if we really want to learn about nutrition, it’s an issue that we must take into our own hands. It’s an act of loving ourselves to become aware of what we put into our mouths and how it makes us feel.
If you eat lunch, and an hour later, you start feeling sleepy, you might ask yourself, “What did I eat?” You may have consumed something that isn’t good for your body at that particular time. Start noticing what gives you energy and what depletes you and brings you down. You can do it by trial and error, or you could find a good nutritionist who can answer some of your questions.
Remember that what’s right for one person isn’t necessarily right for another—our bodies are different. A macrobiotic diet is wonderful for many people. So is Harvey and Marilyn Diamond’s Fit For Life method. They are totally different concepts, and yet they both work. Every body is different from every other body, so we can’t say that only one method works. You have to find out which way works best for you.
Find exercise that you enjoy, that is fun to do. Create a positive mental attitude about your exercise. Often, you create obstacles in your bodies primarily as a result of what you absorb from other people. Again, you need to forgive yourself and stop putting anger and resentment into your body if you want to create changes. Combining affirmations with your exercise is a way to reprogram negative concepts about your body and its shape.
We are in a time now where new technologies for health are multiplying, and we are learning to combine some ancient healing methods such as Ayurvedic medicine with sound wave technology. I have been studying how sound can stimulate our brain waves and accelerate our learning and healing. There is research that shows that we can cure illness by mentally changing our DNA structure. I think between now and the end of the century, we are going to explore a range of possibilities that will be enormously beneficial to much of the populace.
9. I often emphasize the importance of mirror work in order to find out the cause of an issue that keeps us from loving ourselves. There are several ways that you can practice mirror work. I like to look in the mirror the first thing in the morning and say: “I love you. What can I do for you today? How can I make you happy?” Listen to your inner voice, and start following through with what you hear. You may not get any messages to begin with because you’re so used to scolding yourself, and you don’t know how to respond with a kind, loving thought.
If something unpleasant happens to you during the day, go to the mirror and say: “I love you anyway. “ Events come and go, but the love that you have for yourself
is constant, and it is the most important quality you possess in your life. If something wonderful happens, go to the mirror and say, “Thank you.” Acknowledge yourself for creating this wonderful experience.
You can forgive in the mirror, too. Forgive yourself and forgive others. You can talk to other people in the mirror, especially when you are afraid to talk to them in per son. You can clean up old issues with people—parents, bosses, doctors, children, lovers. You can say all sorts of things that you would be afraid to say otherwise, and remember to end by asking them for their love and approval because that is what you really want.
People who have problems loving themselves are almost always people who are not willing to forgive because not forgiving shuts that particular door. When we forgive and let go, not only does a huge weight drop off our shoulders, but the doorway to our own self-love opens up. People will say, “Oh, such a load has dropped off!” Well, of course it has, because we’ve been carrying this burden forever. Dr. John Harrison states that forgiveness of both the self and the parents, coupled with the release of past hurts, cures more illness than any antibiotic ever could.
It takes a lot to make children stop loving their parents, but when they do, it takes even more for them to forgive them. When we won’t forgive, when we won’t let go, we’re binding ourselves to the past, and when we are stuck in the past, we cannot live in present time, and if we are not living in the present, how can we create our glorious future? Old garbage from the past just creates more garbage for the future.