In Part 1 of this article we discussed why most affirmations end up on your desk gathering dust or in the waste basket. It stands to reason that what you put your attention on most of the time is what you will get. That’s the main theme of the Law of Attraction as made widely known in the Secret. So, this makes a lot of sense and we get excited and write a long laundry list of affirmations about what we want to see happen in our lives. I know I did. I wanted to lose weight, I wanted to get along better with my kids, I wanted to grow my business exponentially, so I wrote all that down and started to write them and repeat them every single day. For a few days, maybe even a week and then my subconscious would start feeding me every reason in the book why I should stop this foolishness right now. We also learned that the reasons for this were two fold
1. We can’t get past our belief filters in our subconscious minds long enough to make the affirmations stick – this is was covered in Part 1, and
2. We don’t really know how to handle negative situations or how to put the brakes on a negative tailspin, so when we start feeling this way, we abandon our affirmations because if they were working we wouldn’t feel this way, right!
There are lots of things that can happen in a day to set us up for one of those downward tailspins. You get up on the wrong side of the bed and it’s all downhill from there, right? That used to happen to me a lot. I used to have a saying, “I’ve earned this depression and I’m going to enjoy it for awhile.” What a crazy belief, but believe it I did. Somehow I really thought I was getting something out of being nasty and grumpy. But the Law of Attraction states that what you spend most of your time thinking about and focusing on is what you will get. You can probably guess that I was getting lots of reasons to be nastier and grumpier, that’s for sure.
But, when you look at the other side of the coin, the more you can focus on what you want to have in your life, the quicker it will come to you. If you can focus on it with emotion and feeling, well then, so much the better. So it makes sense that the more time you can spend feeling good and keeping the dark clouds at bay, then the easier it would be to bring about your desires.
So most teachers of the Law of Attraction stress that you need to control your thinking and CHANGE your negative thoughts to positive ones. Just DO IT, right? But that is not as easy as it sounds. The usual recommendations are affirmations – been there done that – some wonderful books to read or beautiful meditations (which I love to do), but it is not normally easy to drop everything and find a quiet space to meditate, or find the perfect passage in a book to help you in the moment. These are all long term strategies, but it’s rare to be in the middle of a crisis situation and be able to stop RIGHT NOW and meditate until you feel better.
In times like this, you can’t wait for the right quiet moment to come along to work on your feelings later. You need something to grab onto RIGHT NOW, in the very moment that you realize the tailspin is starting. You need to have a tool available to you that will literally turn your emotions around, just like flipping a switch on and off. That’s what you need to find.
Most people have been suffering in their negativity for so long that the idea of changing their thoughts in an instant seems literally impossible. But my suggestion is to put in some thought today, this minute when you are feeling pretty positive, about how you might flip the switch the next time you are feeling down and out. What could you say or do or sing that might turn it around on a dime. Get something stuck in your head – a little jingle or something that the minute you recognize that – “Geez, here we go again” – you can say – “NO, not this time.” Something that you can apply without giving it any thought, it just goes on autopilot. Something that your ‘Belief Detective’ won’t recognize as an affirmation. Song lyrics are great for that because you suspend your disbelief when you are singing. You don’t have to believe the words, it’s just a song.
So the moral is – be prepared. Think about it right now, while you are reading this. Don’t wait until the next time that life hands you lemons to wonder why it is happening again and again. Take the bull by the horns and be ready with your own secret weapon. You’ve been to the Pity Party enough times and there’s nothing there for you any more. Be ready!
