Staying
in the Positive
by Marie T. Russell
"We
are what we eat" they say. I would add that we are
what we think and what we listen to. Everything that we
are exposed to registers in our brain and adds to our
complex programming. It all registers—from the
billboard advertising to the radio slogans to the
pictures of 'American life' on the T.V. We see those
things and our brain registers them as if they were
true. We watch violent movies and we begin to expect
violence in our lives. We see others lie and cheat and
we begin to feel it is ok to do the same.
Another
thing we can be 'watchful' of is what comes in
through our ears, what we listen to. This of course
includes what others say to us, what we listen to on T.V.
and also which music we listen to on the radio. These
days, I often reach over to turn off the radio or
sometimes speed over a portion of a cassette. Why? The
lyrics. I don't want to program myself with such
statements as 'I can't live if living is without you',
or 'I'll never get over losing you', or 'Love is
just a four letter word', or 'Everywhere I go, it's
the same line, money worries, money troubles', etc.
etc.
When I
realized that my sub-conscious was picking up all these
comments, I really limited my 'radio intake'. Why
load myself with negative programming by listening to
popular music when my goal is to clean up my
subconscious programming with affirmations. It's
self-defeating. On the one hand I'm getting rid of 'stuff'
and on the other I'm letting it in by listening to the
songs.
I have
noticed that even if the music is playing softly in the
background and I can't hear the words, or even if the
music is an instrumental version of a song, somehow the
lyrics get into my mind. Often I have found myself
getting edgy listening to instrumental versions of
popular tunes or oldies. When I would reflect and
remember what the lyrics of that song were, I would see
that they were negative. I found that my mood had been
affected even if the lyrics weren't being sung out
loud.
Of
course my mental computer (subconscious) knows all the
lyrics to all the songs it has ever heard. It is even
said that your mind remembers (subconsciously of course)
all the license numbers of every license plate you have
ever seen. How's that for memory? So, it's no big
deal for that same incredible mind to remember lyrics of
songs. And, while the instrumental version of a song is
playing, your mind is busy putting the pieces together
so to speak. It is plugging in the words.
What was
the solution for me? My answer was to cut down the
amount of time spent listening to the radio or T.V. I
don't miss the news because that's mostly all
negative programming anyway. When I want to hear music,
I either sing to myself changing the words as necessary
(re-programming) or I listen to 'new age' music. I
find that in my car I can listen to the radio a little
more easily because it is very easy to reach over and
turn it off or switch to another radio station.
It is
also good to be careful as to what we agree to when
people are speaking to us. For example, someone says,
'Life is so hard' and we politely or distractedly
murmur 'Uh, huh!' Or they say 'It's so hard to
earn a living these days', or "All men are
liars", and again our social being agrees politely
with 'I know what you mean.' And once again we have
programmed ourselves with that negative thought.
A friend
of mine uses the following technique. If someone is
speaking negative programming in his presence, he tells
them 'I am not trying to change you, but for my own
protection I can't agree with what you're saying.'
That usually has the double effect of making the other
person think about what they have said without feeling
attacked, and also of protecting my friend from
absorbing the programming by disagreeing with it.
Studies
have shown that the image of an object gives out the
same energy as the object itself. One study involved
measuring the energy of a picture of a pyramid and of
the pyramid itself. The finding was that both did indeed
emit the same energy vibration. So if a picture
registers the same energy level as the real thing, every
time we see a picture of violence or of a gun, or hear
about a rape or murder, our subconscious registers it as
if it had experienced the reality of it.
The plus
side of that is that it makes visualization a powerful
tool. If you can imagine it, your mind perceives it as
being real and then will contribute to creating it 'for
real' in your life. Try this one for an experiment: If
you find yourself craving a food, object, or person,
imagine (as vividly as you can) actually experiencing
that thing or person. Sit there, close your eyes and
create a movie of yourself eating a gigantic plate of
ice cream (if that was the craving). Eat (in the
visualization) as much as you desire. Go overboard if
you wish and see yourself eating more than you feel you
'should'. Your mind will see the picture you create
and not differentiate it from three dimensional reality.
It will believe you actually experienced it.
We all
know the importance of staying in a positive frame of
mind—having positive thoughts, saying positive things
and taking positive actions. Give out positive
vibrations and in return you will get positive results.
Rather than waste time imagining negative endings to the
situations in your life, expect the positive. Pay
attention to what you expect. Do you expect people to
"rob you blind", to "take advantage of
you", to "hurt you", etc. etc. What you
expect is what you attract to yourself. It is what I
call a "negative visualization".
We often
spent time doing exercises to visualize what we want,
yet what we need to realize is that the rest of the time
we are visualizing as well... but we may be visualizing
the opposite of what we want. We visualize arriving
somewhere late, we imagine someone being angry with us,
we expect to fail. We are constantly visualizing, but
are we visualizing what we want, or what we fear?
I once
lived in a small town where everyone watched everyone
else. The important thing is for us to watch
ourselves... and not worry about what the others are
doing. What we think, what we hear, what we say, and of
course what we do. To keep on moving in the positive,
you have to surround yourself with positive. And since
you create your own reality, you're the one who can
make a difference in the world. You're it!
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