We are now well into summer, and in my world, life is flying by!! My newsletter, Cheers to You, is back after taking a long hiatus! It is an honor to once again communicate with each of you. I also am excited about my new and updated website. Feel free to check it out here.
What if we actually heard each other’s thoughts?
It has been said that 70% of our thoughts are negative whether it be in the form of worrying, judging or just plain negative thinking. I am fortunate to know quite a few people who are very positive with what they say. What I’m talking about is the quality of our thoughts, not what actually comes out of our mouths. What if we actually heard each other’s thoughts? Would we pay more attention to our thoughts and clean them up?Our thoughts truly play a vital role in the quality of our lives.
“Change the way you look at things, and the things you look at change.”
Wayne W. Dyer
I know this to be true and have played with this concept quite a bit. I am playing with it right now while I am writing this newsletter! I catch myself with thoughts about my writing abilities, and I am not so kind to me. Would I treat a friend this way? I certainly hope not! So here are a couple of questions I am asking myself to turn this situation around.
1. How are my thoughts contributing to what I want? Honestly, they are NOT!
2. What do I really want? I want to write a newsletter that is clear, concise, interesting and pertinent. I’m hoping that someone will gain some insight from these words – even if it is only one person.
There is a simple technique that I have found very effective in the book, The Great Little Book of Afformations, by Noel St. John and Denise Berard. In this book, St. John tells a story about a woman who came to him because of a fear of success. She realized one major fear was that if she became too successful, her husband might be jealous and feel threatened by her success. St. John suggested that she write what he calls “afformations” for the outcome she wanted. (Yes, he calls them afformations which are empowering questions, not affirmations which are positive statements.) So she wrote, ”Why is my husband so supportive of me and my success?” She then wrote herself a letter filling the page with dozens of positive afformations asking why her husband was so supportive of her and her desires. (This exercise is not about answering the questions, just asking.) It helps you re-focus your mind on what you want. And the more we focus on what we want, the more we get what we want. It allows for more expansive thinking and feeling instead of the narrow focused, non-productive thinking and feeling that worry and negativity bring.
As the story continues, she called St. John the following week, and said it was like a miracle! After she had written the letter, she felt much better but decided not to show it to her husband and just wanted to wait and see what happened.
St. John writes in his book, “As she was getting ready for work and her husband was down stairs – doing the same routine they had been doing for 20 years – she was afforming to herself her new, positive questions. Suddenly, something happened that, she told me, had never happened in 20 years of marriage. Her husband called up the stairs and said, “Have a great day, honey, I love you!” Then, later in the day, he called her after one of her meetings and asked, “How did your meeting go?” She said he had never once called her before to see how her day was going.”
St. John goes on to say, “She told me it was the most remarkable experience of her life – and she never even showed him the letter with all of her afformations.”
So my first positive afformation is “Why am I such a good writer?” And yes, eventually if I really answer it, my thought is that I am not. So the trick is to continue to ask more and more afformations focusing on what you really want. And as I ask myself more and more “afformations”, I am getting more and more excited about writing this newsletter!!!
I invite you to have fun with this little exercise. Let me hear about your results!
Cheers to YOU!
JoAnne