Thought Ignite

I was asked this question a few days back and guess I got a logically correct answer today! Is the grace and guidance of God really required for us to live a full life or is it enough we have a positive mind, lots of self confidence and loads of love for all living / nonliving things in this world???  Pretty tough to decide, what with all the new ra ra on self development going on.

I can tell you this - Grace and Guidance from God is a MUST if you want to live a meaningful life. Lets assume you are on a road driving a car that has no headlamps. Now you are a great driver and the mechanics of the car are well within your levels of knowledge. Anybody’s guess is that it would serve you great during the day, but come the night and you could do with atleast a weak ray of light. No amount of your knowledge and powerful self beliefs would be able to help. For all I know you could, in a sharp instant undo all the good you meant for you, your car and your destination, if you took one small mis-step in the dark. God’s guidance is something like the light from your headlamps. Without that, you would do well only when the going is good. When the times are challenging - which most of the time is so for anyone on the path of growth, it is better sense to understand the divine, unassuming, never seen but always felt presence of God and let it guide you.

Think, and may be you would get a better answer than mine to believe in the grace of God even more! And when you do, may I also know it?

You can create your own affirmation anytime. Just take a fear of negative belief that seems to be plaguing you all the while. Write it down on a paper as detailed as you can. Elaborate it even further on paper. Read over the same over and over again until you are clear that your essay contains the belief explicitly. Once done, bring the entire essay back again to a single sentence. This should take a while to do. But once you are convinced that your ONE SENTENCE contains the essence of the negative belief, then take another sheet of paper and write the exact opposite of this belief. The emerging belief will be a positive one. Now elaborate this on paper as much as you can. Go ahead and be as positive as you can and as imaginative as you never were. You should be able to write pages here. Once done just read through the same and gather the essence. Now simplify the entire positive writings into one single strong sentence. You now have a powerful new affirmation. Dramatically tear the paper on which you have written and elaborated all about the negative belief and do away with it once and for all in your mind. With a lot of affection - like the kind you have for your newborn baby - read over the affirmation repeatedly, all the while accepting it whole heartedly.

PS: While you are writing your new affirmation ensure that you use no negative words like ‘don’t', ‘not, ‘never’, ‘hate’ etc. For example: ‘I don’t smoke cigarettes again’ carries the same meaning as ‘I am a non-smoker’. But while composing an affirmation care is to be taken on the words chosen. Use something like ‘Every time I feel like smoking a cigarette, I crush the desire, as I understand the importance of living with health, and then, I choose to focus on something positive immediately.’ OR ‘Every time I feel like smoking a cigarette, I simply remember my breathing exercises I did in the morning, the clear feel of my lungs, and the deep breathing I am able to do as a result of healthy living.’ You see: the point is to refrain from using any kind of negative situational words or sequence.

I had this question asked to me by an interesting client today. Yes of course. Affirmations do change as you keep using them. Your goal will remain the same. But the Affirmations being used must change and be adapted as per the situation demands. For example if you are shooting a target at a long range then the kind of focus is different than when you are shooting the same target at a closer range. The focal length varies and so does many other factors.

As you draw closer to your goal, your confidence levels would be much different than it was when you started your journey towards the goal. The kind of affirmations you started out with then, helped you move ahead and get this far. Now if you want to move further then you need affirmations which suit the situation where you have reached - the words, the temperament you say it, the feel it draws - and a whole load of other things vary. Hence, it is mandatory you make the necessary changes else you will get stuck easily. And the best thing is - you might never realize the reason why you are stuck. It will lead to a classic statement then - Affirmations don’t work!!! Wrong! Affirmations do work and if you ask me - Affirmations are the only things that keep things going. Since it happens naturally at a deep level, many people do not even realize that they are affirming their wants and demands. This is clear when you do achieve something, you tend to think “I knew this would happen all along!” Well that is an affirmation too.

I have been experimenting on this classy subject for quite sometime and while I do acknowledge that 8 years is too short a time to judge anything, I do know this: Affirmations work. It has worked very well and is working now - even now for me and to the multitude of clientèle I have worked with creating personalized affirmations.