Excuses Begone! Part 5 of 12: Negative Speak
September 30, 2009 by dr. lam
In Dyer’s chapter entitled “Alignment”, he tries to get us to start thinking positively by first cleaning up our mental language. When we think in terms of scarcity, we attract that situation. If our mind is plagued with words like can’t, shouldn’t, wouldn’t, won’t, couldn’t possibly, we begin to live that out in our own reality. Also words that exist in our excuses catalog we talked about yesterday become problematic as well: risky, not strong enough, not rich enough, don’t have enough money, no time to do that, too fat, too skinny, too stupid, not educated enough, too old, too young, not the right race, not the right gender, etc. We start to live within the sphere of our own excuses because the language we choose to use reflects our inner state.
Dyer talks about an invisible energy that radiates all around us, which I believe in. This is not a voodoo thing but a reflection of our inner spirit. When we are nervous, we radiate that to everyone even before our words are expressed or our mannerisms give us away. The tension we hold is manifest to anyone in our near vicinity and beyond. When we try to enlist “Divine guidance” for our situation, we oftentimes go to God out of necessity by remaining in a state of want. However, the Divine is unlimited and positive. We are limited and negative. It is very difficult to hear any Divine messages when we are confined by our own negative thinking. When we live by ego, scarcity, fear, and anxiety, then we live in ego, scarcity, fear, and anxiety. When we see our own Divine nature, we can then tap into Divine providence, Divine messages, and Divine guidance.
How do we do that more precisely? Instead of living in a fearful state of wanting more and fearing less, we live in a state of unbridled gratitude for what we have. At the end of each yoga session that I do I bow down 3 times with my hands in Namaste pose in gratitude for His Divine favor upon me and upon all mankind. Interestingly, Dyer talks about a happiness index that was undertaken to measure how happy a particular country is. Nigera, an impoverished country by Western standards, came out on top; and the United States ranked 46 out of 50. Why? Simply put, no matter how scarce Nigerians may be physically, their mental state did not see the deprivation. Conversely, Americans oftentimes live in a state of ego demanding that they need more (when they don’t) and they fear less (scarcity mentality). That is misalignment: when you are well off and you still think you do not have enough.
This week focus on removing negative mental and verbal speak from your language. When you catch yourself with any of the above excuses catalog or negative commentary than runs in your head, replace them with an ego-less gratitude for your abundant condition and be thankful.
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4 Responses to “Excuses Begone! Part 5 of 12: Negative Speak”
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This is very interesting. I’ve found personally that there are more aspects to the self-talk we give ourselves. I mean, we have our conscious minds that we can either feed ourselves positive or negative language (which has an effect on the subconscious over time), but there is the energy around us from our experiences and feedback we get from others that has a subconscious effect on the way we view ourselves. If everyone around us tells us we are no good or treats us poorly, our experiences feed our subconscious minds negativity, and we believe that that is reality, which is only reality to us because we have limited ourselves to believe it because of our experience with what we think is reality. Also, people that have constant appraisal from others, such as movie stars and celebs, can develop an over-ego because of the constant positive feedback that the environment is feeding their conscious and subconscious minds. Of course, we can override that by positive self-assurance, and also override positive feedback by negative self-talk or neutral self-talk, but ultimately I think our experiences control our personal outlook about ourselves. This does not mean that we can’t end up in complete control about how we view ourselves, because we can control who we hang around and so forth to a degree and the way we handle feedback from the environment. Now, I have no clue if I made an ounce of sense here, but it made sense to me…lol
I love your twist of removing our minds from thinking in a limited state to becoming unbridled in gratitude for what we do have. That was an excellent point.
Great idea to remove negative thoughts and to catch excuses as a focus this week. I’m also going to try to think about the positives instead of focusing on the negatives and also try to create a positive environment to those around me by complimenting them and giving off invisible positive energy. Also, I’m going to try to hang around positive people. Awesome!
very nice subtle comments about over positive remarks. i think that is true definitely for people seeking that praise. when we become more of the spirit, we simply do not need any of those reinforcements positive or negative.
thanks!
Oops, actually, didn’t mean that people need outside positivity and assurance for their personal self-esteem (some are codependent in that area) as my point, just that people’s self-esteems are sort of developed subconsciously by their experiences and feedback from others. I mean, this is natural. Someone could give a speech in front of a crowd and if the feedback is that everyone is yawning or leaving the room, the individual would probably subconsciously or consciously conclude that his/her speeches need some improvement, but if everyone in the audience was roaring in laughter, the individual would think that s/he is a pretty good speaker. I guess what I meant was that self-esteem is established by more than just the good and bad self-talk that we give ourselves, that there are other aspects to it, such as feedback from our environment which can be conscious and subconscious, and understanding that can help someone gain greater control over his/her overall self-esteem. But then this is waaayyy off the topic. Leave it to me to go off on some extreme tangent…lol Sorry, Dr. Lam…lol
no, nice point heather!