[00:00:00]
Louise Hay: Hello, this is Louise Hay. Before I begin, there are a few suggestions I'd like to make. I have set up my book to take you through a session, just as I would if you came to me as a private client or attended one of my workshops. This will work just as well for you as a listener. If you will do the exercises progressively as they appear in the text. By the time you have finished, you will have begun to change your life. I suggest you listen through the tape once, then listen again. Only this time, do each exercise in depth. Give yourself time to work with each one. Each chapter opens with an affirmation. Each one of these is good to use when you are working on that area of your life. Take two or three days to study and work with each chapter. Keep saying and writing the affirmation that opens the chapter. The chapters close with a treatment. This is a flow of positive ideas designed to change consciousness. Go through this treatment several times a day. Know that when you work with these ideas, my loving support is with you.
[00:01:22]
Louise Hay: You you can heal your life. Chapter One. What I Believe. The gateways to wisdom and knowledge are always open. Life is really very simple. What we give out, we get back. What we think about ourselves becomes the truth for us. I believe that everyone, myself included, is responsible for everything in our lives. The best and the worst. Every thought we think is creating our future. Each one of us creates our experiences by our thoughts and our feelings. The thoughts we think and the words we speak create our experiences. We create the situations. And then we give our power away by blaming the other person for our frustration. No person, no place and no thing has any power over us. For we are the only thinkers in our mind. When we create peace and harmony and balance in our minds, we will find it in our lives.
[00:02:30]
Louise Hay: Which of these statements sound like you? People are out to get me? Or everyone is always helpful. Each one of these beliefs will create quite different experiences. What we believe about ourselves and about life becomes true for us. The universe totally supports us in every thought we choose to think and believe. Put another way, our subconscious mind accepts whatever we choose to believe. What I believe about myself and about life becomes true for me. What you choose to think about yourself and about life becomes true for you. And we have unlimited choices about what we can think. When we know this, then it makes sense to choose everyone is always helpful rather than people are out to get me. The universal power never judges or criticizes us. It only accepts us at our own value. Then it reflects our beliefs in our lives.
[00:03:39]
Louise Hay: If I want to believe that life is lonely and that nobody loves me, then that is what I will find in my world. However, if I am willing to release that belief and to affirm for myself that love is everywhere and I am loving and lovable and to hold on to that new affirmation and to repeat it often, then it will become true for me. Now loving people will come into my life. The people already in my life will be more loving to me and I will find myself easily expressing love to others. Most of us have foolish ideas about who we are and many, many rigid rules about how life should be lived. This is not to condemn us, for each of us is doing the very best we can at this very moment. If we knew better, if we had more understanding and awareness, then we would do it differently. Please don't put yourself down for being where you are. The very fact that you have found this tape and have discovered me, means that you are ready to make a new and positive change in your life. Acknowledge this for yourself.
[00:04:52]
Louise Hay: Men don't cry, women can't handle money. What limiting ideas to live with. When we are very little, we learn how to feel about ourselves and about life by the reactions of the adults around us. It is the way we learn what to think about ourselves and about our world. Now, if you lived with people who were very unhappy or frightened or guilty or angry, then you learned a lot of negative things about yourself and about your world. I never do anything right. It's all my fault. If I get angry, I'm a bad person. Beliefs like this create a frustrating life. When we grow up, we have a tendency to recreate the emotional environment of our early home life. This is not good or bad, right or wrong. It is just what we know inside as home.
[00:05:56]
Louise Hay: We also tend to recreate in our personal relationships, the relationships we had with our mothers or with our fathers, or that they had between them. How often have you had a lover or a boss who was just like your mother or father? We also treat ourselves the way our parents treated us. We scold and punish ourselves in the same way. You can almost hear the words when you listen. We also love and encourage ourselves in the same way. If we were loved and encouraged as children. You never do anything right. It's all your fault. How often have you said this to yourself? You are wonderful. I love you. How often do you tell yourself this? However, I would not blame our parents. We are all victims of victims, and they could not possibly have taught us anything they did not know.
[00:07:00]
Louise Hay: If your mother did not know how to love herself or your father did not know how to love himself, then it would be impossible for them to teach you to love yourself. They were doing the best they could with what they had been taught as children. If you want to understand your parents more, get them to talk about their own childhood. And if you listen with compassion, you will learn where their fears and rigid patterns came from. Those people who did all that stuff to you were just as frightened and scared as you are.
[00:07:39]
Louise Hay: I believe we choose our parents. Each one of us decides to incarnate upon this planet at particular points in time and space. We have chosen to come here to learn a particular lesson that will advance us upon our spiritual evolutionary pathway. We choose our sex, our color, our country, and then we look around for the particular set of parents who will mirror the pattern we are bringing in to work on in this lifetime. Then, when we grow up, we usually point our fingers accusingly at our parents and whimper you did it to me.
[00:08:21]
Louise Hay: But really we chose them because they were perfect for what we wanted to work on overcoming. We learn our belief systems as very little children, and then we move through life creating experiences to match our beliefs. Look back in your own life and notice how often you have gone through the same experience. Well, I believe you created those experiences over and over because they mirrored something you believed about yourself. It doesn't really matter how long we've had a problem or how big it is, or how life threatening it is. The point of power is always in the present moment.
[00:09:06]
Louise Hay: All the events you have experienced in your lifetime up to this moment have been created by thoughts and beliefs you have held in the past. They were created by the thoughts and words you used yesterday, last week, last month, last year, 10, 20, 30, 40 or more years ago, depending on how old you are. However, that is your past. It is over and done with. What is important in this moment is what you are choosing to think and believe and say right now. These thoughts and words will create your future. Your point of power is in this present moment, forming the experiences of tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, et cetera. You might notice what thought you are thinking at this moment. Is it negative or positive?
[00:10:03]
Louise Hay: Do you want this thought to be creating your future? Just notice and be aware. The only thing we're ever dealing with is a thought. And a thought can be changed no matter what the problem is. Our experiences are just outer effects of inner thoughts. Even self hatred is only hating a thought you have about yourself. You have a thought that says I'm a bad person and this thought produces a feeling and you buy into the feeling. However, if you don't have the thought, you won't have the feeling and thoughts can be changed. Change the thought and the feeling must go. This is only to show us where we get many of our beliefs. But let us not use this information as an excuse to stay stuck in our pain. The past has no power over us.
[00:11:04]
Louise Hay: It doesn't matter how long we've had a negative pattern. The point of power is in the present moment. What a wonderful thing to realize. We can begin to be free in this moment. Believe it or not, we do choose our thoughts. We may habitually think the same thought over and over so that it does not seem like we are choosing the thought. But we did make the original choice. We can refuse to think certain thoughts. Look how often you have refused to think a positive thought about yourself. You can also refuse to think a negative thought about yourself. It seems to me that everyone on this planet who I know or have worked with is suffering from self hatred and guilt to one degree or another.
[00:11:57]
Louise Hay: The more self hatred and guilt we have, the less our life works. And the less self hatred and guilt we have, the better our lives work on all levels. The innermost belief for everyone I have worked with is always, I'm not good enough. And we often add to that and I don't do enough or I don't deserve. Does this sound like you often saying or implying or feeling that you are not good enough? But for whom? And according to whose standards? If this belief is very strong in you, then how can you possibly have created a loving, joyous, prosperous, healthy life? Somehow your main subconscious belief would always be contradicting it. Somehow you would never quite get it together, for something would always be going wrong somewhere.
[00:12:55]
Louise Hay: I find that resentment, criticism, guilt and fear cause more problems than anything else. These four things cause the major problems in our bodies and in our lives. These feelings come from blaming others and not taking responsibility for our own experiences. You see, if we are all responsible for everything in our lives, then there is no one to blame. Whatever is happening out there is only a mirror of our own inner thinking. I'm not condoning other people's poor behavior, but it is our beliefs that attract people who will treat us that way. If you find yourself saying, everyone always does such and such to me, criticizes me, is never there for me, uses me like a doormat, abuses me, then this is your pattern. There is some thought in you that attracts people who exhibit this behavior. When you no longer think that way, they will go elsewhere. You will no longer attract them.
[00:14:06]
Louise Hay: On the physical level, resentment, long held, can eat away at the body and become the disease we call cancer. Criticism as a permanent habit can often lead to arthritis in the body. Guilt always looks for punishment, and punishment creates pain. Fear and the tension it produces can create things like baldness, ulcers and even sore feet. I have found that forgiving and releasing resentment will dissolve even cancer. While this may sound simplistic, I have seen and experienced it working. We can change our attitude toward the past. The past is over and done. We cannot change that now. Yet we can change our thoughts about the past.
[00:15:05]
Louise Hay: How foolish for us to punish ourselves in the present moment because someone hurt us in the long ago past. I often say to people who have deep resentment patterns, please begin to dissolve the resentment now, when it is relatively easy. Don't wait until you're under the threat of a surgeon's knife or on your deathbed, when you may have to deal with panic too. When we are in a state of panic, it is very difficult to focus our minds on the healing work. We have to take time out to dissolve the fears first.
[00:15:41]
Louise Hay: If we choose to believe we are helpless victims, then the universe will support us in that belief and we will just go down the drain. It is vital that we release these foolish, outmoded, negative ideas and beliefs that do not support us and nourish us. Even our concept of God needs to be one that is for us, not against us. To release the past, we must be willing to forgive. We need to choose to release the past and forgive everyone, ourselves included. We may not know how to forgive and we may not want to forgive, but the very fact that we say we are willing to forgive begins the healing process. It is imperative for our own healing that we release the past and forgive everyone. I forgive you for not being the way I wanted you to be. I forgive you and I set you free. This affirmation sets us free.
[00:16:51]
Louise Hay: All disease comes from a state of unforgiveness. Whenever we are ill, we need to search our hearts to see who it is we need to forgive. The very person you find it hardest to forgive is the one you need to let go of the most. Forgiveness means giving up, letting go. It has nothing to do with condoning poor behavior, it's just letting the whole thing go. We do not have to know how to forgive. All we need to do is to be willing to forgive. The universe will take care of the house. We understand our own pain so well how hard it is for most of us to understand that they, whoever it is we need most to forgive, were also in pain. We need to understand that they were doing the best they could with the understanding, awareness and knowledge that they had at that time.
[00:17:55]
Louise Hay: When people come to me with a problem, I don't care what it is poor health, lack of money, unfulfilling relationships or stifled creativity. There is only one thing I ever work on, and that is loving the self. I find that when we really love and accept and approve of ourselves exactly as we are, then everything in life works. It's as if little miracles are everywhere. Our health improves, we attract more money, our relationships become more fulfilling, and we begin to express ourselves in creatively, fulfilling ways. All this seems to happen without our even trying. Loving and approving of yourself, creating a space of safety, trusting and deserving and accepting will create organization in your mind. Create more loving relationships in your life, attract a new job and a new and better place to live, and even enable your body weight to normalize.
[00:19:06]
Louise Hay: People who love themselves and their bodies neither abuse themselves nor others. Self approval and self acceptance in the now are the main keys to positive changes in every area of our life. Loving the self, to me, begins with never ever criticizing ourselves for anything. Criticism locks us into the very pattern we are trying to change. Understanding and being gentle with ourselves helps us to move out of it. Remember, you have been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn't worked. Approve of yourself and see what happens.
[00:19:58]
Louise Hay: In the infinity of life, where I am, all is perfect, whole and complete. I believe in a power far greater than I am that flows through me every moment of every day. I open myself to the wisdom within, knowing that there is only one intelligence in this universe. Out of this one intelligence comes all the answers, all the solutions, all the healings, all the new creations. I trust this power and intelligence knowing that whatever I need to know is revealed to me and that whatever I need comes to me in the perfect time, space and sequence. All is well in my world.
[00:20:50]
Louise Hay: Chapter Two. What is the problem? It is safe to look within. My body doesn't work. It hurts, bleeds, aches, oozes, twists, blood, blows up, limps, burns, ages, can't see, can't hear, rots away plus whatever else you may have created. I think I've heard them all. My relationships don't work. They are smothering, absent, demanding. Don't support me, always criticizing me, unloving, never leave me alone. Pick on me all the time, don't want to be bothered with me, walk all over me, never listen to me. Plus whatever else you may have created. Yes, I've heard them all too. My finances don't work, they are nonexistent, seldom, there never enough just out of reach, go out faster than they come in, won't cover the bills, slip through my fingers. Plus whatever else you may have created. Of course I've heard them all.
[00:21:55]
Louise Hay: My life doesn't work. I never get to do what I want to do. I can't please anyone. I don't know what I want to do. There's never any time for me. My needs and desires are always left out. I'm only doing this to please them. I'm just a doormat. Nobody cares what I want to do. I have no talent, I can't do anything right. All I do is procrastinate. Nothing ever works for me. Plus whatever else you have created for yourself all these I have heard and more. Whenever I ask a new client what is going on in their life, I usually get several of those answers. I know these complaints are only outer effects of inner thought patterns. Beneath inner thought patterns is another, deeper, more fundamental pattern that is the basis of all the outer effects.
[00:22:56]
Louise Hay: I listen to the words they use as I ask some basic questions what is happening in your life? How is your health? What do you do for a living? Do you like your work? How are your finances? How is your love life? How did the last relationship end? And the relationship before that? How did it end? Tell me about your childhood briefly. I watch body postures and facial movements. Mostly I really listen to the words they say. Thoughts and words create our future experiences. As I listen, I understand why clients have particular problems. The words we speak are indicative of our inner thought patterns.
[00:23:53]
Louise Hay: Sometimes the words they use do not match the experiences they describe. Then I know either they are not in touch with what is really going on or they are lying to me. Either one is a starting point and gives us a basis from which to begin. Exercise, I should. The next thing I do is to give them a pad and pen and ask them to write on the top of the page, I should. I ask them to list several ways to finish the sentence. Some people find it difficult to begin and some have so many things to write. Then I ask them to read the list to me one at a time, beginning each sentence with I should. As they read each one, I ask, why? The answers that come out are interesting and revealing, such as my mother said I should because I'm afraid not to. Because I have to be perfect. Well, everybody has to do that. Because I'm too lazy, too short, too tall, too fat, too thin, too dumb, too ugly, too worthless.
[00:25:03]
Louise Hay: These answers show where they're stuck in their beliefs and limitations. You see, I believe that should is one of the most damaging words in our language. Every time we use should, we are in effect, saying wrong. Either we are wrong or we were wrong, or we're going to be wrong. I don't think we need more wrongs in our life. We need to have more freedom of choice. I would like to take the word should and remove it from the vocabulary forever. I replace it with the word could. Could gives us a choice and we are never wrong. Then I ask them to reread the list one at a time, except this time to begin each sentence by saying if I really wanted to, I could.
[00:25:54]
Louise Hay: This puts a whole new light on the subject. And as they do this, I ask them gently why haven't you? And now we hear different answers. I don't want to. I'm afraid. I don't know how because I'm not good enough. Too often people berate themselves for years for something they never wanted to do in the first place. Or they criticize themselves for not doing something that someone else said they should do. When they can see that, they can just drop it from the should list. What a relief that is. Look at all the people who force themselves for years into a career they don't like only because their parents said they should become a dentist or a teacher. How often have we felt inferior because we were told we should be smarter or richer or more creative?
[00:26:52]
Louise Hay: What is there on your should list that could be dropped with a sense of relief? We notice that many of the things we thought we should do are things we never wanted to do and that we were only trying to please others. So many times it is because we are afraid or feel that we're not good enough. We start a process of releasing the feeling of being wrong because we are not fitting someone else's standards. Next I explain to my clients my philosophy of life. Remember, I believe life is really very simple. What we give out, we get back. The universe supports every thought we choose to think and to believe.
[00:27:39]
Louise Hay: When we are little, we learn how to feel about ourselves by the reactions of the adults around us. These beliefs will be recreated as experiences as we grow up. With thought patterns, the point of power is always in the present moment. Changes can begin in this moment. In sessions with clients, I explain that no matter what their problem seems to be, there is only one thing I ever work on with anyone. This is loving the self. Love is the miracle cure. Loving ourselves works miracle. I'm not talking about vanity or arrogance or being stuck up for that is not love, that is only fear. I am talking about having a great respect for ourselves and a gratitude for the miracle of our body and of our mind.
[00:28:36]
Louise Hay: Love to me is appreciation to such a degree that it fills my heart to overflowing. Love goes in any direction. I can feel love for the very process of life itself, the joy of being alive, the beauty I see, another person knowledge. The process of the mind, our bodies and the way they work animals, birds, fishes, vegetation in all its forms, the universe and the way it works.
[00:29:16]
Louise Hay: What can you add to this list? Let's look at some of the ways. We don't love ourselves. We scold and criticize ourselves endlessly, we mistreat our bodies with food or alcohol or drugs. We choose to believe we are unlovable. We are afraid to charge a decent price for our services, we create illnesses and pain in our bodies, we procrastinate on things that would benefit us. We live in chaos and disorder we create debt and burdens, we attract lovers and mates that belittle us.
[00:30:04]
Louise Hay: What are some of your ways? If we deny our good in any way, it is an act of not loving ourselves. I remember I worked with a client who wore glasses, and one day we released an old fear from childhood. And the next day, she awakened to find that her contact lenses were bothering her too much to wear. And she looked around and found her eyesight was perfectly clear. Yet she spent the whole day saying, I don't believe it. I don't believe it. And the next day she was back to wearing contacts. Our subconscious mind has no sense of humor. She couldn't believe that she had created perfect eyesight.
[00:30:50]
Louise Hay: Lack of self worth is another expression of not loving ourselves. Tom was a very good artist and he had several wealthy clients who loved to have him decorate a wall or two in their homes yet somehow he was always behind in his own bill paying. His original quote was never enough to cover the time involved to complete the work.
[00:31:15]
Louise Hay: Anyone who gives a service or creates a one of a kind product can charge any price. People with wealth love to pay for what they get. It gives the item more value. More examples of lack of self worth. Our partner is tired and grouchy and we wonder what we have done wrong to cause it. He takes us out once or twice and never calls again. We think something is wrong with us. Our marriage ends and we are sure we're a failure. We're afraid to ask for a raise. Our bodies do not match those in gentlemen's quarterly or Vogue magazine, and we feel inferior. We don't make the sale or get the part, and we're sure we're not good enough. We're afraid of intimacy and allowing anyone to get too close, so we have anonymous sex. We can't be can't make decisions because we're sure they'll be wrong. How do you express your lack of self worth? How perfect you were when you were a tiny baby. Babies do not have to do anything to become perfect. They are already perfect and they act as if they know it. They know they are the center of the universe.
[00:32:38]
Louise Hay: They're not afraid to ask for what they want. They freely express their emotions. You know when a baby is angry. In fact, the whole neighborhood knows. You also know when they're happy, when their smiles light up a room and they are full of love. Tiny babies will die if they do not get love. Once we are older, we learn to live without love, but babies will not stand for it. Babies also love every part of their bodies, even their own feces. They have incredible courage and they have no guilt and no shame. We were all like that. Then we began to listen to adults around us who had learned to be fearful, and we began to deny our own magnificence. I never believe it when clients try to convince me how terrible they are or how unlovable they are. My work is to bring them back to the time when they really knew how to love themselves. Mirror exercise. I suggest a mirror exercise. I ask a client to pick up a small mirror, to look into their eyes, and to say their name, and I love and accept you exactly as you are. This exercise is so difficult for many people.
[00:34:04]
Louise Hay: Seldom do I get a calm reaction, let alone an enjoyment of the exercise. Some are close to tears, some get angry, some belittle their features or qualities, some insist they can't do it. I even had one man throw the mirror across the room. It took him several months before he could begin to relate to himself in the mirror. For years, I looked into the mirror only to criticize what I saw there. Recalling the endless hours I spent plucking my eyebrows, trying to make myself barely acceptable amuses me now. I also remembered it used to frighten me to look into my own eyes. This simple mirror exercise shows us so much. Usually in less than an hour, I am able to get some of the core issues beneath the outer problem. If we only work on the level of the problem, we can spend endless time working out each and every detail, and the minute we think we have it all fixed up, it will crop up somewhere else. The problem is rarely the real problem. She was so concerned with her looks and especially with her teeth. She went from dentist to dentist, feeling each one had made her look only worse.
[00:35:26]
Louise Hay: She went to have her nose fixed and they did a poor job. Each professional was mirroring her belief that she was ugly. Her problem was not with her looks, but that she was convinced something was wrong with her. There was another woman who had terrible breath. It was uncomfortable to be around her. She was studying to be a Minister, and her outer demeanor was pious and spiritual. Beneath this was a raging current of anger and jealousy that exploded now and then when she thought someone might be threatening her position. Her inner thoughts were expressed through her breath, and she was offensive even when she pretended to be loving. No one threatened her but herself. He was only 15 when his mother brought him to me with Hodgkin's disease and three months to live. His mother was understandably hysterical and difficult to deal with. But the boy was bright and clever and wanted to live. He was willing to do anything I told him to, including changing the way he thought and spoke. His separated parents were always arguing, and he really did not have a settled home life. He wanted desperately to be an actor.
[00:36:42]
Louise Hay: The pursuit of fame and fortune far outweighed his ability to experience joy. He thought he could be acceptable and worthwhile only if he had fame. I taught him to love and accept himself, and he got well. He has now grown up and appears on Broadway with regularity. As he learned to experience the joy of being himself, the parts in plays opened up for him. Being overweight is another example of how we waste a lot of energy trying to correct a problem that is not the real problem. People often spend years and years fighting fat and are still overweight. They blame all their problems on being overweight. The excess weight is only an outer effect of a deep inner problem. When we feel frightened or insecure or not good enough, many of us will put on extra weight for protection. To spend our time berating ourselves for being too heavy, to feel guilty about every bite of food we eat, to do all the numbers we do on ourselves when we gain weight are just a waste of time. 20 years later, we can still be in the same situation because we have not even begun to deal with the real problem.
[00:38:06]
Louise Hay: All we have done is to make ourselves more frightened and insecure, and then we need more weight for protection. So I refuse to focus on excess weight or on diets. The only diet that does work is a mental diet, dieting from negative thoughts. I say to clients, Let's just put that issue to one side for the time being while we work on a few other things first. They will often tell me that they can't love themselves because they are so fat, or as one girl put it, too round at the edges. I explain that when we begin to love and approve of ourselves, it's amazing how weight just disappears from our bodies. Sometimes clients even get angry with me as I explain how simple it is to change their lives. They may feel I do not understand their problem. One woman became very upset and said, I came here to get help with my dissertation, not learn to love myself. To me, it was so obvious that her main problem was a lot of selfhatred and that this permeated every part of her life, including writing her dissertation. She could not succeed at anything as long as she felt so worthless.
[00:39:28]
Louise Hay: She couldn't hear me and left in tears, coming back one year later with the same problem, plus a lot of other problems. Some people are not ready and there is no judgment. We all begin to make our changes in the right time space sequence for us. The real problem. Here is a client who has just looked into the harmlessless little mirror and they are all upset. I smile with delight and say, Good, now we are looking at the real problem. Now we can begin to clear out what is really standing in your way. I talk more about loving the self, about how for me, loving the self begins with never, ever criticizing ourselves for anything. I watch their faces as I ask them if they criticize themselves. Their reactions tell me so much. Well, of course I do. All the time. Not as much as I used to. Well, how am I going to change if I don't criticize myself? Doesn't everyone? To the latter, I answer, We are not talking about everyone. We are talking about you. Why do you criticize yourself? What is wrong with you? And as they talk, I make a list.
[00:40:50]
Louise Hay: What they often say coincides with their should list. They may feel they are too tall, too short, too fat, too thin, too dumb, too old, too young, too ugly, or that they're too late, too early, too lazy, and on and on and on. It's almost always too something. Finally, we get down to the bottom line and they say I am not good enough. Hurrah. Hurrah. We've finally found the central issue. They criticize themselves because they have learned to believe they are not good enough. Clients are always amazed at how fast we've gotten to this point. Now we do not have to bother with any of the side effects like body problems, relationship problems, money problems, or the lack of creative expression. We can put all our energy into dissolving the cause of the whole thing, not loving the self.
[00:41:50]
Louise Hay: In the infinity of life, where I am, all is perfect, whole and complete. I am always divinely protected and guided. It is safe for me to look within myself. It is safe for me to look into the past. It is safe for me to enlarge my viewpoint of life. I am far more than my personality, past, present or future. I now choose to rise above my personality problems to recognize the magnificence of my being. I am totally willing to learn to love myself. All is well in my world.
[00:42:40]
Louise Hay: Chapter Three where does it come from? The past has no power over me. All right. We've gone through a lot of stuff and we've sifted through what we thought the problem was. Now we come up with what I believe is the real problem. We feel we are not good enough and there is a lack of self love. From the way I look at life, if there is any problem, then this has to be true. So let us look at where this belief came from. How did we go from being a tiny baby who knows the perfection of itself and of life to being a person who has problems and feels unworthy and unlovable to one degree or another? People who already love themselves can love themselves even more. Think of a rose from the time it is a tiny bud as it opens to full flower till the last petal falls.
[00:43:42]
Louise Hay: It is always beautiful, always perfect, always changing. And so it is with us. We are always perfect, always beautiful and ever changing. We are doing the best we can with the understanding, awareness and knowledge that we have. As we gain more understanding, awareness and knowledge, we will do things differently. Mental House Cleaning. Now is the time to take a look at some of the beliefs that have been running us. Some people find this part of the cleansing process very painful, but it need not be. We must look at what is there before we can clean it out. If you want to clean a room thoroughly, you will pick up and examine everything in it. Some things you will look at with love and you will dust them or polish them to give them new beauty.
[00:44:40]
Louise Hay: Some things you will see need refinishing or repair and you will make a note to do that. Some things will never serve you again and it becomes time to let those things go. Old magazines and newspapers and dirty paper plates can be dropped into the waste basket very quickly. There is no need to get angry in order to clean a room. It is the same thing when we are cleaning our mental house. There is no need to get angry just because some of the beliefs in it are ready to be tossed out. Let them go. As easily as you would scrape bits of food into the trash after a meal, would you really dig into yesterday's garbage to make tonight's meal? Do you dig into old mental garbage to create tomorrow's experiences? If a thought or belief does not serve you, let it go.
[00:45:39]
Louise Hay: There is no written law that says that because you once believed something that you have to continue to believe it forever. Look at some of these limited beliefs and where they came from the limiting belief I'm not good enough and where it may have come from a father who repeatedly told him he was stupid. He said he wanted to be a success so his daddy could be proud of him. But he was riddled with guilt, which created resentment and all he could produce was one failure after another. Daddy kept financing businesses for him. One after another, they failed.
[00:46:18]
Louise Hay: He used failure to get even. He made his daddy pay and pay and pay. And of course he was the biggest loser. Limiting belief, lack of self love where it came from trying to win Daddy's approval the last thing she wanted was to be like her father. They couldn't agree on anything and were always arguing. She only wanted his approval, but instead all she got was criticism. Her body was full of pains. Her father had exactly the same kind of pain. She did not realize her anger was creating her pains, just as her father's anger was creating pain for him.
[00:47:00]
Louise Hay: Limiting belief life is dangerous. Where it came from? A frightened father. Another client saw life as grim and harsh. It was difficult for her to laugh and when she did she would become frightened that something bad would happen. She had been reared with the admonition don't laugh or they might get you. Limiting belief I'm not good enough where it came from being abandoned and ignored it was difficult for him to talk. Silence had become a way of life for him. He had just come off drugs and alcohol and was convinced he was terrible. I discovered his mother had died when he was very young and he had been reared by an aunt. The aunt seldom spoke except to give an order and he was brought up in silence. He even ate alone in silence. And stayed quietly in his room day after day.
[00:48:00]
Louise Hay: He had a lover who was also a silent man, and they spent most of their time alone in silence. The lover died, and once again he was alone. Exercise. The next exercise is to make a list of all the things your parents said were wrong with you. What were the negative messages you heard? Give yourself enough time to remember as many as you can. What did they say about money? What did they say about your body? What did they say about love and relationships? What did they say about your creative talents? What were the limiting or negative things they said to you? If you can just look objectively at these items and say to yourself, so that's where that belief came from. Now let's dig a little deeper. What other negative messages did you hear as a child? From relatives, from teachers, from friends, from authority figures, from your church? Write them all down. Take your time and be aware of what feelings are going on in your body.
[00:49:22]
Louise Hay: What you have are the thoughts that need to be removed from your consciousness. These are the very beliefs you have that are making you feel not good enough. Seeing yourself as a child. If we were to take a three year old child and put it in the middle of the room, and you and I were to start yelling at the child, telling it how stupid it was, how it could never do anything right, how it should do this and shouldn't do that and look at the mess it made and maybe we hit it a few times we will end up with a frightened little child who sits in the corner or one who tears up the place. The child will go one of these two ways. But we will never know the potential of that child.
[00:50:10]
Louise Hay: If we take the same little child and tell it how much we love it how much we care that we love the way it looks and love how bright and clever it is that we love the way it does things. And that it's okay for it to make mistakes as it learns and that we will always be there for it, no matter what. Then the potential that comes out of that child will blow your mind. Each one of us has a three year old child within us, and we often spend most of our time yelling at that kid in ourselves, then we wonder why our lives don't work. If you had a friend who was always criticizing you, would you want to be around that person? Perhaps you were treated this way as a child, and that is sad. However, that is a long time ago. And if you are now choosing to treat yourself in the same way, then it is sadder still. Now, here in front of us, we have a list of the negative messages we heard as a child. How does this list correspond with what you believe to be wrong with you?
[00:51:22]
Louise Hay: Are they almost the same? Probably yes. We base our life script on our early messages. We are all good little children and obediently accept what they tell us as truth. It would be very easy just to blame our parents and be victims for the rest of our lives. But that wouldn't be very much fun, and it certainly wouldn't get us out of our stuck position. Blaming your family. Blame is one of the surest ways to stay in a problem. In blaming another, we give our power away. Understanding enables us to rise above the issue and take control of our future. The past cannot be changed. The future is shaped by our current thinking. It is imperative for our freedom to understand that our parents were doing the best they could with the understanding, awareness, and knowledge that they had. Whenever we blame someone else, we are not taking responsibility for ourselves.
[00:52:34]
Louise Hay: Those people who did all those terrible things to you were just as frightened as you are. They felt just the same helplessness as you. The only things they could possibly teach you are what they had been taught. How much do you know about your parents' childhood, especially before the age of 10? If it is still possible for you to find out, ask them. If you're able to find out about your parents' childhoods, you will more easily understand why they did what they did. Understanding will bring you compassion. If you can't find out, try to imagine what it must have been like for them. What childhood would create an adult like that? You need this knowledge for your own freedom. You can't free yourself until you free them.
[00:53:33]
Louise Hay: You can't forgive yourself until you forgive them. If you demand perfection from them, you will demand perfection from yourself, and you will be miserable all your life. Choosing our parents. I agree with the theory that we choose our parents. The lessons we learn seem perfectly matched to the weaknesses of the parents we have. I believe that we are all on an endless journey through eternity. We come to this planet to learn particular lessons that are necessary for our spiritual evolution. We choose our sex, our color, our country, and then we look around for the perfect set of parents who will mirror our patterns. Our visits to this planet are like going to school. If you want to become a beautician, you go to beauty school. If you want to become a mechanic, you go to mechanic school. If you want to become a lawyer, you go to law school. The parents you pick this time around are the perfect couple who are experts in what you have chosen to learn. When we grow up, we have a tendency to point our fingers accusingly at our parents and say, You did it to me, but I believe we chose them.
[00:54:58]
Louise Hay: Listening to others, our older brothers and sisters are like gods to us when we are little. If they were unhappy, they probably took it out on us physically or verbally. They might have said things like, I'll tell on you for... Instilling guilt. You're just a baby. You can't do that. You're too stupid to play with us. Teachers at school often influence us greatly. In the fifth grade, a teacher told me emphatically that I was too tall to be a dancer. I believed her and put away my dancing ambitions until I was too old to make dancing a career. Did you understand that tests and grades were only to see how much knowledge you had at a given time? Or were you a child who allowed tests and grades to measure your self worth? Our early friends share their own misinformation about life with us. The other kids at school can tease us and leave lasting hurts. When I was a child, my last name was Loney, and the kids used to call me lunatic. Neighbors also have an influence, not only because of their remarks, but also because we're asked, What will the neighbors think?
[00:56:19]
Louise Hay: Think back to what other authority figures were influential in your childhood. And of course, there are the strong and very persuasive statements made by advertisements and periodicals and on television. All too many products are sold by making us feel we are unworthy or wrong if we don't use them. We are all here to transcend our early limitations, whatever they were. We are here to recognize our own magnificence and divinity, no matter what they told us. You have your negative beliefs to overcome, and I have my negative beliefs to overcome.
[00:57:04]
In the Infinity of life where I am, all is perfect, whole, and complete. The past has no power over me because I am willing to learn and to change. I see the past as necessary to bring me where I am today. I am willing to begin where I am right now to clean the rooms of my mental house. I know it does not matter where I start, so I now begin with the smallest and the easiest rooms. And in that way, I will see results quickly. I am thrilled to be in the middle of this adventure, for I know that I will never go through this particular experience again. I am willing to set myself free and all is well in my world.
[00:58:02]
Louise Hay: Chapter Four, Is It True? Truth is the unchangeable part of me. The question, is it true or real? Has two answers, yes and no. It is true if you believe it to be true. It is not true if you believe it isn't true. The glass is both half full and half empty, depending on how you look at it. There are literally billions of thoughts we can choose. Most of us choose to think the same kinds of thoughts our parents used to think, but we don't have to continue to do this. There is no law written that says we can only think in one way. Whatever you choose to believe becomes true for you. Examine your thoughts. Whatever we believe becomes true for us. If you have a sudden financial disaster, then on some level you may believe you are unworthy of being comfortable with money, or you believe in burdens and debt, or you believe that nothing good ever lasts. Do you believe that life is out to get you? Or as I hear so often, I just can't win. If you seem unable to attract a relationship, you may believe nobody loves me, or I am unlovable.
[00:59:33]
Louise Hay: Perhaps you fear being dominated as your mother was, or maybe you think people are just out to hurt me. If you have poor health, you may believe illness runs in our family, or that you are a victim of the weather, or perhaps it's I was born to suffer, or it's just one thing after another. Or you may have a different belief. Perhaps you're not even aware of your belief. Most people really aren't. They just see the outer circumstances as being the way the cookie crumbles. Until someone can show you the connection between the outer experience and the inner thought, you remain a victim of life.
[01:00:20]
Louise Hay: The problem could be a financial disaster and the belief may be I'm not worthy of having money. Or the problem could be no friends with the belief nobody loves me. Or problems with work could come from a belief that I'm not good enough. Or always pleasing others could be the problem that comes from the belief I never get my way. The problem comes from a thought pattern, and thought patterns can be changed. It may feel true. It may seem true. All these problems we're wrestling with and juggling in our lives. However, no matter how difficult an issue we are dealing with, it is only an outer result or the effect of an inner thought pattern. If you don't know what thoughts are creating your problems, look at the problems in your life. Ask yourself, what kinds of thoughts am I having that are creating this? If you allow yourself to sit quietly, your inner intelligence will show you the answer. It's only a belief you learned as a child. Some of the things we believe are positive and nourishing. These thoughts serve us well all of our lives, such as look both ways before you cross the street.
[01:01:43]
Louise Hay: Other thoughts are very useful at the beginning, but as we grow older, they are no longer appropriate. Don't trust strangers may be good advice for a small child, but for an adult to continue this belief will only create isolation and loneliness. We so seldom sit down and ask ourselves, Is this really true? For instance, why do I believe things like, It's difficult for me to learn? Is that true for me now? Where did that belief come from? Do I still believe it because a first grade teacher told me that over and over? Would I be better off if I dropped that belief? Beliefs that boys don't cry and girls don't climb trees create men who hide their feelings and women who are afraid to be physical. If we were taught as a child that the world is a frightening place, then everything we hear that fits that belief we will accept as true for us. The same is true for don't trust strangers. Don't go out at night or people cheat you. On the other hand, if we could be taught early in life that the world is a safe place, then we would hold other beliefs.
[01:03:02]
Louise Hay: We could easily accept that love is everywhere and people are so friendly and I always have whatever I need. If you were taught as a child that it's all my fault, then you will walk through your life feeling guilty no matter what happens. Your belief will turn you into someone who's constantly saying, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. If you learn to believe as a child, I don't count, then this belief will always keep you at the end of the line wherever you are. Sometimes you will feel you're invisible when others fail to notice you. Did your childhood circumstances teach you to believe nobody loves me? Then surely you will be lonely. Even when you bring a friend or a relationship into your life, it will be short lived. Did your family teach you there is not enough? Then I'm sure you often feel as though the cupboard is bare, or you find you just get by, or are always in debt. I had a client who had been brought up in a household where they believed everything is wrong and can only get worse. His main joy in life was playing tennis, and then he hurt his knee.
[01:04:19]
Louise Hay: He went to every doctor he could find, and it only became worse. Finally, he could not play at all. Another person had been brought up as a preacher's son, and as a child, he was taught that everybody else comes first. The preacher's family always came last. Today, he's wonderful at helping his clients get the best deal, yet he's usually in debt with little pocket money. His belief still makes him last in line. If you believe it, it seems true. How often have we said, That's the way I am, or That's the way it is. Those words are saying that that's what we believe to be true for us. Usually what we believe is someone else's opinion we have incorporated into our belief systems. No doubt it fits right in with all the other things we believe. Are you one of the many people who will get up in the morning, see that it's raining and say, Oh, what a lousy day. It is not a lousy day. It is only a wet day. If we wear the appropriate clothing and change our attitude, we can have a lot of rainy day fun. If it is really our belief that rainy days are lousy days, then we will always greet rain with a sinking heart.
[01:05:40]
Louise Hay: We will fight the day rather than flow with what is happening at the moment. There is no good or bad weather. There is just weather and our individual reactions to it. If we want a joyous life, we must think joyous thoughts. If we want a prosperous life, we must think prosperous thoughts. If we want a loving life, we must think loving thoughts. Whatever we send out mentally or verbally will come back to us in like form. Each moment is a new beginning. The point of power is always in the present moment. You are never stuck. This is where changes take place right here and right now in our own minds. It doesn't matter how long we've had a negative pattern or an illness or a poor relationship, or lack of finances or selfhatred. We can begin to make a shift today. Your problem no longer needs to be the truth for you. It can now fade back to the nothingness from whence it came. You can do it. Remember, you are the only person that thinks in your mind. You are the power and authority in your world. Your thoughts and beliefs of the past have created this moment, and all the moments up to this moment.
[01:07:09]
Louise Hay: What you are now choosing to believe and think and say will create the next moment, and the next day, and the next month, and the next year. Yes, you, darling. I could give you marvelous advice coming from my years of experience. Yet you can continue to choose to think the same old thoughts. You can refuse to change and keep all your problem. You are the power in your world. You get to have whatever you choose to think. This moment begins the new process. A new beginning for you is right here and right now. Isn't that great to know? This moment, the point of power is where the change begins. Stop for a moment and catch your thought. What are you thinking right now? If it is true that your thoughts shape your life, would you want what you were just thinking right now to become true for you? If it's a thought of worry or anger or hurt or revenge or fear, how do you think this thought will come back to you? It is not always easy to catch our thoughts because they move so swiftly. However, we can begin right now to watch and listen to what we say.
[01:08:32]
Louise Hay: If you hear yourself expressing negative words of any sort, stop in midsentence. Either rephrase the sentence or just drop it. You could even say to it, out. Imagine yourself in line at a criteria, or perhaps at a buffet table in a luxurious hotel. Instead of dishes of food, there are dishes of thoughts. You get to choose any and all thoughts you wish. These thoughts create your future experiences. Now, if you choose thoughts that will create problems and pain, that's rather foolish. It's like choosing food that always makes you ill. We may do this once or twice, but soon we learn which foods upset our bodies. We stay away from them. Let us stay away from thoughts that create problems and pain. One of my early teachers, Dr. Raymond Charles Barker, would repeatedly say, When there is a problem, there is not something to do, there is something to know. Our minds create our future. When we have something in our present that is undesirable, then we must use our minds to change the situation, and we can begin to change it this very second. It is my deep desire that the topic, how your thoughts work, be the very first subject taught in school.
[01:10:01]
Louise Hay: I have never understood the importance of having children memorize battle dates. It seems such a waste of mental energy. Instead, we could teach them important subjects such as how the mind works, how to handle finances, how to invest money for financial security, how to be a parent, how to create good relationships and how to create and maintain self esteem and self worth? Imagine what a whole generation of adults would be like if they had been taught these subjects along with a regular curriculum. Think how these truths would manifest. We would have happy people who feel good about themselves. We would have people who are comfortable financially and who enrich the economy by investing their money wisely. They would have good relationships. They would be comfortable in parenthood and create another generation of children who feel good about themselves. Within all this, each person would remain an individual expressing their own creativity. There's no time to waste. Let's continue with our work.
[01:11:16]
Louise Hay: In the infinity of life where I am, all is perfect, whole and complete. I no longer choose to believe in old limitations and lack. I now choose to begin to see myself as the universe sees me perfect, whole and complete. I am now perfect, whole and complete. I will always be perfect, whole and complete. I now choose to live my life from this understanding. I am in the right place at the right time, doing the right thing. All is well in my world.
[01:12:06]
Louise Hay: Chapter five. What do we do now? I see my patterns and I choose to make changes. We decide to change, throwing up our hands in horror at what we may call the mess of our lives. And just giving up are the ways many people react. Others get angry at themselves or at life and also give up. By giving up, I mean deciding it's all hopeless and impossible to make any changes, so why try? The rest of it goes. Just stay the way you are. At least you know how to handle that pain. You don't like it, but it's familiar and you hope it won't get any worse. To me, habitual anger is like sitting in a corner with a dunce hat on. Does this sound familiar? Something happens and you get angry. Something else happens and you get angry again.
[01:13:03]
Louise Hay: Something else happens and once again you get angry. But you never go beyond getting angry. What good does that do? It seems foolish to waste your time getting angry. It's also a refusal to see life in a new and different way. It would be helpful to ask yourself how you are creating so many situations to become angry at. What are you believing that causes all these frustrations? What are you giving out that attracts in others the need to irritate you? Why do you believe that to get your way, you need to get angry? Whatever you give out comes back to you. The more you give out anger, the more you are creating situations for you to get angry at. Like sitting in a corner wearing a dunce hat going nowhere. Do these statements bring up feelings of anger? Good, it must be hitting home. This is something you could be willing to change. Make a decision to be willing to change. If you really want to know how stubborn you are, just approach the idea of being willing to change. We all want to change, to have situations become better and easier. However, we do not want to change. We would rather they change.
[01:14:27]
Louise Hay: In order to have this happen, we must change inside. We must change our way of thinking, change our way of speaking, change our way of expressing ourselves. Only then will the outer changes occur. This is the next step. We are now fairly clear on what the problems are and where they come from. Now it is time to be willing to change.
[01:15:46]
Louise Hay: Exercise creating new changes.Now is the time to take your list of things that were wrong and turn them into positive affirmations. Or you can list all the changes you want to make and have and do. Then select three from this list and turn them into positive affirmations. Say your negative list was something like this, my life is a mess. I should lose weight. Nobody loves me. I want to move, I hate my job, I should get organized. I don't do enough, I'm not good enough. You can then turn them around to this I am willing to release the pattern in me that created these conditions. I am in the process of positive changes.
[01:16:34]
Louise Hay: I have a happy, slender body. I experience love wherever I go. I have the perfect living space. I now create a wonderful new job. I am now very well organized. I appreciate all that I do. I love and approve of myself. I trust the process of life to bring me my highest good. I deserve the best and I accept it now. Out of this group of affirmations will come all the things you want to change on your list. Loving and approving of yourself, creating a space of safety, trusting and deserving and accepting will enable your body weight to normalize. They will create organization in your mind, create loving relationships in your life. Attract a new job and a new place to live. It is miraculous the way a tomato plant grows. It is miraculous the way we can demonstrate our desires. Exercise, deserving your good.
[01:17:51]
Louise Hay: Do you believe you deserve to have what you desire? If you don't, you won't allow yourself to have it. Circumstances beyond your control will crop up to frustrate you. Look in your mirror again and say I deserve to have or be and I accept it. Now say that two or three times I deserve to have and I accept it now. How do you feel? Always pay attention to your feelings, to what's going on in your body. Does it feel true or do you still feel unworthy? If you have any negative feelings in your body, then go back to Affirming. I release the pattern in my consciousness that is creating resistance to my good. I deserve.
[01:18:46]
Louise Hay: Repeat this until you get the acceptance feelings. Even if you have to do it several days in a row. In our approach to building the new, we want to use a Holistic approach. The Holistic philosophy is to nurture and nourish the entire being. The body, the mind and the spirit. If we ignore any of these areas, we are incomplete. We lack wholeness. It doesn't matter where we start as long as we also include the other areas. If we begin with the body, we would want to work with nutrition to learn the relationship between our choice of food and beverages and how they affect the way we feel. We want to make the best choices for our body.
[01:19:38]
Louise Hay: There are herbs and vitamins, homeopathy Bach f lour remedies. We might even explore kalan length. We would also want to find a form of exercise that appeals to us. Exercise is something that strengthens our bones and keeps our bodies young. In addition to sports and swimming, there are dancing, tai chi, martial arts and yoga. I love my trampoline and use it daily, and my slant board enhances my periods of relaxation. We might want to explore some form of body work, such as rawing or work or traeger massage, foot reflexology, acupuncture or chiropractic work are all beneficial. There are also the Alexander method, bioenergetics, feldenchrist, touch for health.
[01:20:28]
Louise Hay: Now, with the mind, we could explore visualization techniques, guided imagery and affirmations. There are lots of psychological techniques gestalt, hypnosis, rebirthing, psychodrama, past life regressions, art therapy, even dream work. I give very little nutritional advice because I've discovered that all systems work for some people. I do have a local network of good practitioners in the holistic field, and I refer clients to them when I see the necessity for nutritional knowledge. This is an area where you must find your own way or go to a specialist who can test you.
[01:21:12]
Louise Hay: Many of the books on nutrition have been written by persons who were very ill and worked out a system for their own healing. However, everyone is not alike. For instance, the macrobiotic and the natural raw food diets are two totally different approaches. The raw food people never cook anything, seldom eat bread or grains, and are very careful not to eat fruits and vegetables at the same meal. And they never use salt. The macrobiotic people cook almost all of their food, have a different system of food combining, and use a lot of salt. Both systems work. Both systems have healed bodies. My personal nutritional approach is simple if it grows, eat it. If it doesn't grow, don't eat it.
[01:22:00]
Louise Hay: Be conscious of your eating. It's like paying attention to our thoughts. We can also learn to pay attention to our bodies and the signals we get when we eat different things. Cleaning the mental house after a lifetime of indulging in negative mental thoughts is like going on a good nutritional program. After a lifetime of indulging in junk foods, they both can often create healing crises. As you begin to change your physical diet, the body begins to throw off the accumulation of toxic residue. And as this happens, you can feel rather rotten for a few days. So it is when you make a decision to change mental thought patterns, your circumstances can begin to seem worse for a while. Recall for a moment the end of a Thanksgiving dinner. The food is all eaten and it's time to clean the turkey pan.
[01:23:00]
Louise Hay: The pan is all burnt and crusty, so you put in hot water and soap and let it soak for a while. Then you begin to scrape the pan. Now you really have a mess, and it looks worse than ever. But just keep scrubbing away and soon you'll have a pan as good as new. It's the same thing with cleaning up a dried on crusty mental pattern. When we soak it with new ideas, all the gook comes to the surface to look at. Keep doing the new affirmations and soon you will have totally cleared an old limitation. So we have decided we are willing to change and we will use any method that works for us. Let me describe one of the methods I have used with myself and with others. First, go look in a mirror and say to yourself I am willing to change.
[01:23:56]
Louise Hay: Notice how you feel. If you are hesitant or resistant, or just don't want to change, ask yourself why? What old belief are you holding on to? Please don't scold yourself. Just notice what it is. I'll bet that belief has been causing you a lot of trouble. I wonder where it came from. Do you know? Whether we know where it came from or not? Let's do something to dissolve it now. Again, go to the mirror and, looking deep into your own eyes, touch your throat and say out loud ten times I am willing to release all resistance. I am willing to release all resistance.
[01:24:52]
Louise Hay: Mirror work is very powerful. As children, we received most of our negative messages from others looking us straight in the eye and perhaps shaking a finger at us. Whenever we look into the mirror today, most of us will say something negative to ourselves. We either criticize our looks or berate ourselves for something. To look yourself straight in the eye and make a positive declaration about yourself is, in my opinion, the quickest way to get results with affirmations.
[01:25:29]
Louise Hay: In the infinity of life where I am, all is perfect, whole and complete. I now choose calmly and objectively to see my old pattern and I am willing to make changes. I am teachable. I can learn. I am willing to change. I choose to have fun doing this. I choose to react as though I have found a treasure. When I discover something else to release, I see and feel myself changing moment by moment. Thoughts no longer have any power over me. I am the power in my world. I choose to be free. All is well in my world.
[01:26:24]
Louise Hay: Chapter Six. Resistance to Change. I am in the rhythm and flow of ever changing life. Awareness is the first step in healing or changing. When we have some pattern buried deeply within us, we must become aware of it in order to heal the condition. Perhaps we begin to mention the condition, to complain about it, or to see it in other people. It rises to the surface of our attention in some way and we begin to relate to it. We often attract a teacher, a friend, a class or workshop or a book to ourselves that begins to awaken new ways to approach the dissolving of the problem. My awakening began with a chance remark of a friend who had been told about a meeting. My friend did not go but something within me responded and I went. That little meeting was the first step on my pathway of unfoldment. I didn't recognize the significance of it until sometime later.
[01:27:34]
Louise Hay: Often our reaction to this first step is to think the approach is silly or that it doesn't make sense. Perhaps it seems too easy or unacceptable to our thinking. We don't want to do it. Our resistance comes up very strong. We may even feel angry about the thought of doing it. Such a reaction is very good if we can understand that it is the first step in our healing process. I tell people that any reaction they may feel is there to show them they are already in the process of healing or changing. Many people think nothing is happening until the total healing takes place. But that is not true. The process begins the moment we begin to think about making a change.
[01:28:24]
Louise Hay: Impatience is only another form of resistance. It is resistance to learning and to changing. When we demand that it be done right now, completed at once, then we don't give ourselves time to learn the lessons involved with the problems we have created. If you want to move to another room, you have to get up and move step by step in that direction. Just sitting in your chair and demanding that you be in the other room will not work. It's the same thing. We all want our problems to be over with, but we don't want to do the small things that will add up to the solution. Now is the time to acknowledge our responsibility in having created the situation or condition. I'm not talking about having guilt, nor about being a bad person for being where you are. I am saying to acknowledge the power within you that transforms your every thought into experience. In the past, we unknowingly use this power to create things we did not want to experience. We were not aware of what we were doing. Now, by acknowlendging our responsibility, we become aware and learn to use this power conciously, positive ways for our benefit.
[01:29:50]
Louise Hay: Often when I suggest a solution to the client, a new way to approach a matter of forgiving the person involved. I will see the jaw begin to clench and jut out and the arms cross tightly over the chest. Maybe even fists will form. Resistance is coming to the fore and I know we have hit upon exactly what needs to be done. We all have lessons to learn. The things that are so difficult for us are only the lessons we have chosen for ourselves. If things are easy for us, then they are not lessons, but are things we already know. Lessons can be learned through awareness. If you think of the hardest thing for you to do and how much you resist it, then you're looking at your greatest lesson at the moment. Surrendering, giving up the resistance and allowing yourself to learn what you need to learn will make the next step even easier.
[01:30:54]
Louise Hay: Don't let your resistance stop you from making the changes. We can work on two levels looking at the resistance and still making the mental changes. Observe yourself, watch how you resist and then go ahead anyway. Our actions often show our resistance. For instance, changing the subject, leaving the room, going to the bathroom, being late, getting sick, procrastinating by doing something else, doing busy work, wasting time, looking away or out the window, flipping through a magazine, refusing to pay attention, eating, drinking or smoking. Creating or ending a relationship. Creating breakdowns, cars, appliances, plumbing, et cetera. We often assume things about others to justify our resistance. We make statements like, it wouldn't do any good anyway. My husband wife won't understand. I would have to change my whole perspective. Only crazy people go to therapists. They couldn't help me with my problem. They couldn't handle my anger. My case is different.
[01:32:15]
Louise Hay: I don't want to bother them. It'll work itself out. Nobody else does it. We grow up with beliefs that become our resistance to changing. Some of our limiting ideas are, it's not done. It's just not right. It's not right for me to do that. That wouldn't be spiritual. Spiritual people don't get angry. Men, women just don't do that. My family never did that. Love is not for me. That's just silly. It's too far to drive. It's too much work. It's too expensive. It'll take too long. I don't believe in it. I'm not that kind of person. We give our power to others and use that excuse as our resistance to changing.
[01:33:09]
Louise Hay: We have ideas like, God doesn't approve. I'm waiting for the stars to say it's okay. This isn't the right environment. They won't let me change. I don't have the right teacher book class tools. My doctor doesn't want me to. I can't get time off from work. I don't want to be under their spell. It's all their fault. They have to change first. As soon as I get then I'll do it. You. They don't understand. I don't want to hurt them. It's against my upbringing, religion, philosophy. We have ideas about ourselves that we use as limitations or resistance to changing.
[01:33:55]
Louise Hay: They are too old, too young, too fat, too thin, too short, too tall, too lazy, too strong, too weak, too dumb, too smart, too poor, too worthless, too frivolous, too serious, too stuck. Maybe it's all just too much. Our resistance often expresses itself as delaying tactics. We use excuses like, I'll do it later. I can't think right now. I don't have the time right now. It would take too much time from my work. Yes, that's a good idea. I'll do it later. I have too many other things to do. I'll think about it tomorrow. I'll do it as soon as I get through with or as soon as I get back from this trip. The time isn't right. It's too late or too soon.
[01:34:46]
Louise Hay: Denial. This form of resistance shows up in denial of the need to do any changing things like, there's nothing wrong with me. I can't do anything about this problem. I was all right the last time. What good would it do to change? If I ignore it, maybe the problem will go away. By far the biggest category of resistance is fear. Fear of the unknown. Listen to these, I'm not ready yet. I might fail. They might reject me.
[01:35:21]
Louise Hay: What would the neighbors think? I don't want to open that can of worms. I'm afraid to tell my husband or wife. I don't know enough. I might get hurt. I may have to change. It might cost me money. I would rather die first or get a divorce first. I don't want anyone to know I have a problem. I'm afraid to express my feelings. I don't want to talk about it. I don't have the energy. Who knows where I might end up? I may lose my freedom. It's too hard to do. I don't have enough money now. It might hurt my back. I wouldn't be perfect. I might lose my friends. I don't trust anyone.
[01:36:11]
Louise Hay: It might hurt my image. I'm not good enough. And on and on and on the list goes. Do you recognize some of these as the way you resist? Look for the resistance in these examples. A client came to me because she was in a lot of pain. She had broken her back, her neck and her knee in three separate auto accidents. Yet she was late, got lost and then was stuck in traffic. It was easy for her to tell me all her problems. But the minute I said, Let me talk for a moment, all sorts of turmoil began. Her contact lenses began to bother her. She wanted to sit in another chair. She had to go to the bathroom. Then her lenses had to come out. I could not keep her attention for the rest of the session. It was all resistance. She wasn't ready to let go and be healed. I discovered her sister also had broken her back twice, and so had her mother. Another client was an actor, a mime, a street performer, and quite good at it. He bragged at how clever he was at cheating others, especially institutions. He knew how to get away with almost anything, and yet he got away with nothing.
[01:37:30]
Louise Hay: He was always broke, at least a month behind in the rent, often without a telephone. His clothes were tacky, work was very sporadic. He had lots of pains in his body, and his love life was zilch. His theory was that he couldn't stop cheating until some good came into his life. Of course, with what he was giving out, no good could come into his life. He had to stop cheating first. His resistance was that he was not ready to let go of the old ways. Leave Your Friends Alone too often, instead of working on our own changes, we decide which of our friends needs to change. This, too, is resistance. In the early days of my work, I had a client who would send me to all her friends in the hospital. Instead of sending them flowers, she would have me go to fix up their problems. I would arrive with my tape recorder in hand, usually finding someone in bed who didn't know why I was there or understand what I was doing.
[01:38:32]
Louise Hay: This was before I learned never to work with anyone unless they requested. Sometimes clients come to me because a friend has given them a session as a present. This usually doesn't work too well, and they seldom come back for further work. When something works well for us, we often want to share it with others, but they may not be ready to make a change at that point in time and space. It's hard enough to make changes when we want to, but to try to make someone else change when they don't want to is impossible, and it can ruin a good friendship. I push my clients because they come to me. I leave my friends alone.
[01:39:15]
Louise Hay: Mirror Work. Mirrors reflect back to us our feelings about ourselves. They show us clearly the areas to be changed if we want to have a joyous, fulfilling life. I ask people to look in their eyes and say something positive about themselves every time they pass a mirror. The most powerful way to do affirmations is to look in a mirror and say them out loud. You are immediately aware of the resistance and can move through it quicker.
[01:39:49]
Louise Hay: Use it often for affirmations and to check where you are resisting and where you are open and flowing. Now look in a mirror and say to yourself, I am willing to change. Notice how you feel. If you are hesitant, resistant, or just don't want to change, ask yourself why? What old belief are you holding on to? This is not a time to scold yourself. Just notice what is going on and what belief rises to the surface. That is the one that has been causing you a lot of trouble. Can you recognize where it came from?
[01:40:31]
Louise Hay: When we do our affirmations and they don't feel right or nothing seems to happen, it's so easy to say, oh, affirmations don't work. It's not that the affirmations don't work, it's that we need to do another step before we begin the affirmations. Repeated patterns show us our needs. For every habit we have, for every experience we go through, over and over, for every pattern we repeat, there is a need within us for it. The need corresponds to some belief we have.
[01:41:10]
Louise Hay: If there were not a need, then we wouldn't have it, do it or be it. There is something within us that needs the fat, the poor relationships, the failures, the cigarettes, the anger, the poverty or abuse or whatever it is that's a problem for us. How many times have we said, I won't ever do that again? And then before the day is up, we have the piece of cake, smoke the cigarette, say the hateful things to the ones we love, et cetera. Then we compound the whole problem by angrily saying to ourselves, oh, you have no willpower, no discipline, you're just weak.
[01:41:49]
Louise Hay: This only adds to the load of guilt we already carry. It has nothing to do with willpower or discipline. Whatever we are trying to release in our lives is just a symptom, an outer effect. Trying to eliminate the symptom without working on dissolving the cause is useless. The moment we release our willpower or discipline, the symptom crops up again. I say to clients, there must be a need in you for this condition or you wouldn't have it. Let's go back a step and work on the willingness to release the need.
[01:42:26]
Louise Hay: When the need is gone, you will have no desire for the cigarette or the overeating or the negative pattern. One of the first affirmations to use is I am willing to release the need for the resistance, or the headache, or the constipation, or the excess weight, or the lack of money or whatever. Say, I am willing to release the need for. If you are resisting at this point, then your other affirmations cannot work. The webs we create around ourselves need to be unwound. If you have ever untangled a ball of string, you know that yanking and pulling only makes it worse.
[01:43:12]
Louise Hay: Be gentle and patient with yourself as you untangle your own mental knots. Get help if you need it. Above all, love yourself in the process. The willingness to let go of the old is the key. When I say needing the problem, I mean that according to our particular set of thought patterns we need to have certain outer effects or experiences. Every outer effect is the natural expression of an inner thought pattern and to battle only the outer effect or symptom is wasted energy and often increases the problem. I am unworthy creates Procrastination. If one of my inner belief systems or thought patterns is I am unworthy, then one of my outer effects will probably be procrastination.
[01:44:09]
Louise Hay: After all, procrastination is one way to keep us from getting where we say we want to go. Most people who procrastinate will spend a lot of time and energy berating themselves for procrastinating. They will call themselves lazy and generally will make themselves out to feel they are bad persons. Resentment of Another's Good. I had a client who loved attention and usually came to class late so he could create a stir. He had been the baby of 18 children and he came last on the list of getting.
[01:44:45]
Louise Hay: As a child he watched everyone else have while he just longed for his own. Even now, when someone had good fortune, he would not rejoice with them. Instead he would say oh, I wish I had that or why don't I ever get that? His resentment of their good was a barrier to his own growth and change. Self worth opens many doors. A client who was 79 came to me. She taught singing and several of her students were making television commercials. She wanted to do this but was afraid. I supported her totally and explained there is nobody like you, just be yourself. I said do it for the fun of it. There are people out there looking for exactly what you have to offer. Let them know you exist.
[01:45:37]
Louise Hay: She called several agents and casting directors and said I'm a senior senior citizen and I want to do commercials. And in a short time she had a commercial and since then she's never stopped working. I often see her on TV and in the magazines. New careers can start at any age, especially if you do it for the fun of it. Self criticizing is totally missing the mark. It will only intensify procrastination and laziness the place to put the mental energy is into releasing the old and creating a new thought pattern.
[01:46:18]
Louise Hay: Say I am willing to release the need to be unworthy. I am worthy of the very best in life and I now lovingly allow myself to accept it. As I spend a few days doing this affirmation over and over, my outer effect pattern of procrastination will automatically begin to fade as I internally create a pattern of self worth. Then I no longer need to delay my own good. Do you see how this could apply to some of the negative patterns or outer effects in your own life? Let's stop wasting time and energy putting ourselves down for something we can't help doing. If we have certain inner beliefs, change the beliefs.
[01:47:11]
Louise Hay: No matter how you approach it or what subject matter we are talking about, we are only dealing with thoughts, and thoughts can be changed. When we want to change a condition, we need to say so. I am willing to release the pattern within me that is creating this condition. You can say this to yourself over and over every time you think of your illness or your problem. The minute you say it, you are stepping out of the victim class. You are no longer helpless. You are acknowledging your own power. You are saying, I am beginning to understand that I created this. I now take my own power back. I am going to release this old idea and let it go.
[01:48:00]
Louise Hay: Self Criticism. I have a client who will eat a pound of butter and everything else she can get a hold of when she cannot bear to be with her own negative thoughts. The next day, she'll be angry at her body for being heavy. When she was a little girl, she would walk around the family dinner table, finishing off everyone's leftovers and eating a whole stick of butter. The family would laugh and think it was cute. It was almost the only approval she got from her family.
[01:48:31]
Louise Hay: When you scold yourself, when you berate yourself, when you beat yourself up, who do you think you're treating this way? Almost all of our programming, both negative and positive, was accepted by us by the time we were three years old. Our experiences since then are based on what we accepted and believed about ourselves and about life at that time. The way we were treated when we were very little is usually the way we treat ourselves now. The person you are scolding is a three year old child within you.
[01:49:11]
Louise Hay: If you are a person who gets angry at yourself for being afraid and fearful, think of yourself as being three years old. If you had a little three year old child in front of you who was afraid, what would you do? Would you be angry at it? Or would you reach out your arms and comfort the child until it felt safe and at ease? The adults around you when you were a child, may not have known how to comfort you at that time. Now you are the adult in your life, and if you're not comforting that child within you, then that is very sad indeed. What was done in the past is done, and it is over now.
[01:49:55]
Louise Hay: But this is present time and you now have the opportunity to treat yourself the way you wish to be treated. Scolding yourself only makes you more frightened and there's nowhere to turn. When the child within feels unsafe, it creates a lot of trouble. Remember how it felt to be belittled when you were young. It feels the same way now to that child within. Be kind to yourself. Begin to love and approve of yourself. That's what that little child needs in order to express itself at its highest potential.
[01:50:42]
Louise Hay: In the infinity of life where I am, all is perfect, whole, and complete. I see any resistance patterns within me only as something else to release. They have no power over me. I am the power in my world. I flow with the changes taking place in my life as best I can. I approve of myself and the way I am changing. I am doing the best I can. Each day gets easier. I rejoice that I am in the rhythm and flow of my ever changing life. Today is a wonderful day. I choose to make it so. All is well in my world.
[01:51:35]
Louise Hay: Chapter 7. How to Change? I cross bridges with joy and with ease. I love how to's. All the theory in the world is useless unless we know how to apply it and make a change. I have always been a very pragmatic, practical person with a great need to know how to do things. The principles we will be working with at this time are nurturing the willingness to let go, controlling the mind, learning how forgiveness of self and others releases us. Releasing the need. Sometimes when we try to release a pattern, the whole situation seems to get worse for a while. This is not a bad thing. It is a sign that the situation is beginning to move. Our affirmations are working and we need to keep going.
[01:52:34]
Louise Hay: Example, we are working on increasing prosperity and we lose our wallet. We are working on improving our relationships and we have a fight. We're working on becoming healthy and we catch a cold. We're working on expressing our creative talents and abilities and we get fired. Sometimes the problem moves in a different direction and we begin to see and understand more. For example, let's assume you are trying to give up smoking and you are saying, I am willing to release the need for cigarettes. And as you continue to do this, you notice your relationships are becoming more uncomfortable. Don't despair. This is a sign of the process working.
[01:53:26]
Louise Hay: You might ask yourself a series of questions like, am I willing to give up uncomfortable relationships? Were my cigarettes creating a smoke screen so I wouldn't see how uncomfortable these relationships are? Why am I creating these relationships? You notice that the cigarettes are only a symptom and not a cause. Now you are developing insight and understanding that will set you free. You begin to say, I am willing to release the need for uncomfortable relationships. Then you notice the reason you're so uncomfortable is that other people always seem to be criticizing you. Being aware that we always create all of our experiences, you now begin to say, I am willing to release the need to be criticized.
[01:54:24]
Louise Hay: You then think about criticism, and you realize that as a child, you received a lot of criticism. That little kid inside of you only feels at home when it's being criticized. Your way of hiding from this had become creating a smokescreen. Perhaps you see the next step as affirming, I am willing to forgive. And as you continue to do your affirmations, you may find that cigarettes no longer attract you and the people in your life no longer criticize you. Then you know you have released your need. This usually takes a little while to work out. If you are gently persistent and are willing to give yourself a few quiet moments each day to reflect on your process of change, you will get the answers.
[01:55:25]
Louise Hay: The intelligence within you is the same intelligence that created this entire planet. Trust your inner guidance to reveal to you whatever it is you need to know. In a workshop situation, I would have you do the following exercise with a partner. However, you can do it equally as well using a big mirror. Think for a moment about something in your life you want to change. At the mirror, look into your eyes and say aloud, I now realize that I have created this condition and I am now willing to release the pattern in my consciousness that is responsible for this condition. Say it several times with feeling.
[01:56:20]
Louise Hay: If you were with a partner, I would have your partner tell you if they really thought you meant it. I would want you to convince your partner. Ask yourself if you really mean it. Convince yourself in the mirror that this time you are ready to step out of the bondage of the past. At this point, many people get scared because they don't know how to do this releasing. They're afraid to commit themselves until they know all the answers. That's only more resistance. Just pass through it. One of the great things is that we do not have to know how. All we need is willingness. The universal intelligence or your subconscious mind will figure out the hows. Every thought you think and every word you speak is being responded to, and the point of power is in this moment.
[01:57:24]
Louise Hay: The thoughts you are thinking and the words you are declaring at this moment are creating your future. Your mind is a tool. You are much more than your mind. You may think your mind runs the show, but that is only because you have trained your mind to think in this way. You can also untrain and retrain this tool of yours. Your mind is a tool for you to use in any way you wish. The way you now use your mind is only a habit, and any habit can be changed if we want to do so. Quiet the chatter of your mind for a moment and really think about this concept. Your mind is a tool you can choose to use any way you wish.
[01:58:18]
Louise Hay: The thoughts you choose to think create the experiences you have. If you believe that it is hard or difficult to change a habit or a thought, then your choice of this thought will make it true for you. If you would choose to think it's becoming easier for me to make changes, then your choice of this thought will make that true for you. There is an incredible power and intelligence within you constantly responding to your thoughts and your words. As you learn to control your mind by the conscious choice of thoughts, you align yourself with this power. Do not think your mind is in control. You are in control of your mind. You use your mind. You can stop thinking those old thoughts.
[01:59:14]
Louise Hay: When your old thinking tries to come back, saying it's so hard to change, take mental control. Tell your mind, I now choose to believe it is becoming easier for me to make changes. You may have this conversation with your mind several times before it will acknowledge that you are in control and that what you say goes. The only thing you ever have any control of is your current thought. Your old thoughts are gone. There is nothing you can do about them except live out the experiences they caused. Your future thoughts have not been formed and you do not know what they will be. Your current thought, the one you're thinking right now, is totally under your control.
[02:00:05]
Louise Hay: You know, if you have a little child who has been allowed to stay up as late as it wishes for a long time, and then you make a decision that you now want this child to go to bed at eight every night, what do you think the first night will be like? The child will rebel against this new rule and may kick and scream and do its best to stay out of bed. If you relent at this time, the child wins and will try to control you forever. However, if you calmly stick to your decision and firmly insist that this is the new bedtime, the rebelling will get less and less. In a few nights, the new routine will be established. It is the same with your mind. Of course, it will rebel at first. It does not want to be retrained, but you are in control. And if you stay focused and firm, in a very short time, the new way of thinking is established.
[02:01:03]
Louise Hay: And you will realize that you are not a helpless victim of your thoughts, but rather a master of your own mind. Let's do an exercise. Letting go. Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. As you exhale, allow all the tension to leave your body. Let your scalp and your forehead and your face relax. Let your tongue and your throat and your shoulders relax. Let your back and your abdomen and your pelvis relax. Let your breathing be at peace as you relax your legs and feet. Is there a big change in your body? Notice how much you hold on. If you are doing it with your body, you're doing it with your mind. In this relaxed, comfortable position, say with me, I am willing to let go. I release all tension. I release all fear. I release all anger. I release all guilt.
[02:02:30]
Louise Hay: I release all sadness. I let go of all old limitation. I let go and I am at peace. I am at peace with myself. I am at peace with the process of life. I am safe. Repeat this exercise several times. Feel the ease of letting go. Repeat it whenever you feel thoughts of difficulty coming up. It takes practice for the routine to become a part of you. Place yourself in this peaceful state first, and it becomes easy for your affirmations to take hold. You become open and receptive. There is no need to struggle or stress or strain. Just relax and think the appropriate thoughts. I assure you it is this easy.
[02:03:42]
Louise Hay: Physical releasing. Sometimes we need to experience a physical letting go. Experiences and emotions become locked in the body. Screaming in the car with all the windows rolled up can be very releasing. If we've been stifling our verbal expression. Beating the bed or kicking pillows is a harmless way to release pent up anger, as is playing tennis or running. A while ago, I had a pain in my shoulder for a day or two, and I tried to ignore it, but it wouldn't go away. Finally, I sat down and I asked myself, What's happening here? What am I feeling? It feels like burning, burning, burning. That means anger.
[02:04:26]
Louise Hay: What are you angry about? I couldn't think what I was angry about, so I said, Well, let's see if we can find out. I put two large pillows on the bed and I began to hit them with a lot of energy. After about 12 hits, I realized exactly what I was angry about. It was so clear. I beat the pillows even harder and made some noise and released the emotions from my body. When I got through, I felt much better. The next day, my shoulder was fine. Letting the past hold you back. Some people tell me they cannot enjoy today because of something that happened in the past. Because they did not do something or do it in a certain way, they cannot live a full life today.
[02:05:14]
Louise Hay: Because they no longer have something they had in the past, they cannot enjoy today. Because they were hurt in the past, they will not accept love now. Because something unpleasant happened when they did something once, they are sure it will happen again today. Because they once did something that they're sorry for, they are sure they are bad people forever. Because once someone did something to them, it is now all the other person's fault that their life is not where they want it to be. Because they became angry over a situation in the past, they will hold on to that self righteousness. Because of some very old experience where they were treated badly, they will never forgive and forget.
[02:06:04]
Louise Hay: Because I did not get invited to the high school prom, I cannot enjoy life today. Because I did poorly at my first audition, I will be terrified of auditions forever. Because I am no longer married, I cannot live a full life today. Because my first relationship ended, I can no longer be open to love. Because I was hurt by a remark once, I will never trust anyone again. Because I stole something once, I must punish myself forever. Because I was poor as a child, I will never get anywhere. What we often refuse to realize is that holding on to the past, no matter what it was or how awful it was, is only hurting us. They really don't care.
[02:06:55]
Louise Hay: Usually, they are not even aware. We are only hurting ourselves by refusing to live this moment to the fullest. The past is over and done and cannot be changed. Even when we grunge about the past, we experience our memory of it in this moment, and we lose the real experience of this moment in the process. Exercise, releasing. Let us now clean up the past in our minds. Release the emotional attachment to it. Allow the memories to be just memory. If you think back to what you used to wear in the third grade, usually there is no emotional attachment. It's just a memory. And it can be the same for all the past events in our life.
[02:07:45]
Louise Hay: As we let go, we become free to use all of our mental power to enjoy this moment and to create a grand future. Make a list of all the things you are willing to let go. How willing are you to do this? Notice your reaction. What will you have to do to let these things go? How willing are you to do so? What is your resistance level? Let's move to forgiveness. Forgiveness of ourselves and of others releases us from the past. The course in miracle says over and over that forgiveness is the answer to almost everything. I know that when we are stuck, it usually means there is some more forgiving to be done. When we do not flow freely with life in the present moment, it usually means we are holding on to a past moment.
[02:08:50]
Louise Hay: It can be regret, sadness, hurt, fear, or guilt, blame, anger, resentment, and sometimes even the desire for revenge. Each one of these states comes from a space of non forgiveness, a refusal to let go and come into the present moment. Love is always the answer to healing of any sort. And the pathway to love is forgiveness. Forgiveness dissolves resentment. There is an old Emmett Fox exercise for dissolving resentment that always works. He recommends that you sit quietly, close your eyes, and allow your mind and body to relax. Then imagine yourself sitting in a darkened theater, and in front of you is a small stage. And on that stage, place the person you resent the most.
[02:09:50]
Louise Hay: It could be past or present, living or dead. When you see this person clearly, visualize good things happening to this person, things that would be meaningful to them. See them smiling and happy. Hold this image for a few minutes and then let it fade away. I like to add another step. As they leave the stage, put yourself up there and see good things happening to you and see yourself smiling and happy. Be aware that the abundance of the universe is available for all of us. This exercise dissolves the dark clouds of resentment most of us carry. For some, it will be very difficult to do. Each time you do it, you may get a different person. Do it once a day for a month and notice how much lighter you feel.
[02:10:54]
Louise Hay: Here's an exercise for revenge. Those on the spiritual pathway know the importance of forgiveness. For some of us, there is a step that is necessary before we can totally forgive. Sometimes the little kid in us needs to have revenge before it is free to forgive. For that, this exercise is very helpful. Close your eyes, sit quietly and peacefully, and think of the person who is hardest to forgive. What would you really like to do to them? What do they need to do to get your forgiveness? Imagine that happening now and really get into the details. How long do you want them to suffer or do penance? When you feel complete, condense time and let it be over forever.
[02:11:56]
Louise Hay: Usually at this point, you feel lighter and it's easier to think about forgiveness. Now, to indulge in this every day would not be good for you, but to do it once as a closing exercise can be very freeing. Forgiveness. Now we're ready to forgive. Do this exercise with a partner if you can, or do it out loud if you are alone. Again, sit quietly with your eyes closed and say, The person I need to forgive is, and I forgive you for. The person I need to forgive is, and I forgive you for. And do this over and over. You will have many things to forgive some for and only one or two to forgive others for. If you have a partner, let them say to you, Thank you and I set you free now. If you do not, then imagine the person you are forgiving, saying it to you. Do this for at least five or 10 minutes. Search your heart for the injustices you still carry and then let them go.
[02:13:15]
Louise Hay: When you have cleared as much as you can for now, turn your attention to yourself and say out loud to yourself, I forgive myself for... And do this for another five minutes or so. These are powerful exercises and good to do at least once a week to clear out any remaining rubbish. Some experiences are easy to let go and some we have to chip away at until suddenly one day they just let go and dissolve. Here's another good exercise. Begin to visualize yourself as a little child of five or six, and look deeply into this little child's eyes. See the longing that is there, and realize that there is only one thing this little child wants from you, and that is love.
[02:14:20]
Louise Hay: So reach out your arms and embrace this child. Hold it with love and tenderness. Tell it how much you love it, how much you care. Admire everything about this child and say that it's okay to make mistakes while learning and promise that you'll always be there no matter what. And then let this little child get very small until it's just the size to fit into your heart. And put it there so whenever you look down, you can see this little face looking up at you and you can give it lots of love. Now visualize your mother as a little girl of four or five, frightened and looking for love and not knowing where to find it. Reach out your arms and hold this little girl and let her know how much you love her, how much you care.
[02:15:41]
Louise Hay: Let her know she can rely on you to always be there, no matter what. And when she calms down and begins to feel safe, let her get very small, just the size to fit into your heart. Put her there with your own little child, and let them give each other lots of love. Now imagine your father as a little boy of three or four, frightened and crying and looking for love. See the tears rolling down his little face as he doesn't know where to turn. You have become good at comforting frightened little children. Reach out your arms and hold his trembling little body. Comfort him. Crune to him. Let him feel how much you love him. Let him feel that you will always be there for him. And when his tears are dry and you feel the love and peace in his little body, let him get very small, just the size to fit into your heart.
[02:17:17]
Louise Hay: Put him there so those three little children can give each other lots of love and you can love them all. There is so much love in your heart that you could heal the entire planet. But just for now, let us use this love to heal you. Feel a warmth beginning to glow in your heart center, a softness, a gentleness. And let this feeling begin to change the way you think and talk about yourself.
[02:18:05]
Louise Hay: In the infinity of life where I am, all is perfect, whole, and complete. Change is the natural law of my life. I welcome change. I am willing to change. I choose to change my thinking. I choose to change the words I use. I move from the old to the new with ease and with joy. It is easier for me to forgive than I thought. Forgiving makes me feel free and light. It is with joy that I learn to love myself more and more. The more resentment I release, the more love I have to express. Changing my thoughts makes me feel good. I am learning to choose, to make today a pleasure to experience. All is well in my world.
[02:19:15]
Louise Hay: Chapter Eight. Building the New. The answers within me come to my awareness with ease. I don't want to be fat. I don't want to be broke. I don't want to be old. I don't want to live here. I don't want to have this relationship. I don't want to be like my mother or father. I don't want to be stuck in this job. I don't want to have this hair, this nose, this body. I don't want to be lonely. I don't want to be unhappy. I don't want to be sick. What you put your attention on grows. These statements show how we are culturally taught to fight the negative mentally, thinking that if we do so, the positive will automatically come to us. It doesn't work that way.
[02:20:7]
Louise Hay: How often have you lamented about what you didn't want? Did it ever bring you what you really wanted? Fighting the negative is a total waste of time. If you really want to make changes in your life. The more you dwell on what you don't want, the more of it you create. The things about yourself or your life that you've always disliked are probably still with you. What you put your attention on grows and becomes permanent in your life. Move away from the negative and put your attention on what it is you really do want to have or be. Let's turn those negative affirmations into positive affirmations. I am slender. I am prosperous. I am eternally young. I now move to a better place.
[02:21:02]
Louise Hay: I have a wonderful new relationship. I am my own person. I am filled with love and affection. I am joyous and happy and free. I am totally healthy. Learn to think in positive affirmations. Affirmations are any statements you make. Too often we think in negative affirmations. Negative affirmations only create more of what you say you don't want. Saying I hate my job will get you nowhere. Declaring I now accept a wonderful new job will open the channels in your consciousness to create that. Continuously make positive statements about how you want your life to be. However, there is one point that is very important always make your statements in present tense, such as I am or I have.
[02:22:03]
Louise Hay: Your subconscious mind is such an obedient servant that if you declare in future tense I want or I will have, then that is where it will always stay, just out of your reach in the future. The Process of Loving the Self as I have said before, no matter what the problem, the main issue to work on is loving the self. This is the magic wand that dissolves problems. Remember the times when you have felt good about yourself and how well your life was going. Remember the times when you were in love and for those periods you seemed to have no problems. Well, loving yourself is going to bring such a surge of good feelings and good fortune to you that you will be dancing on air. Loving yourself makes you feel good.
[02:22:55]
Louise Hay: It's impossible to really love yourself unless you have self approval and self acceptance. This means no criticism whatsoever. Oh, I can hear all the objections right now. But I've always criticized myself. How can I possibly like that about myself? My teachers, parents, lovers always criticize me. How will I be motivated? But it is wrong for me to do these things. How am I going to change if I don't criticize myself? Training the Mind. Self criticisms like these are just the mind going on with old chatter. See how you've trained your mind to berate you and be resistant to change. Ignore those thoughts and get on with the important work at hand. Let's go back to an exercise we did earlier.
[02:23:50]
Louise Hay: Look into the mirror again and say I love and approve of myself exactly as I am. How does that feel now? Is it a little easier after the forgiveness work we have done? This is still the main issue. Self approval and self acceptance are the keys to positive changes. In the days when my own self denial was so prevalent, I would occasionally slap my own face. I didn't know the meaning of self acceptance. My belief in my own lacks and limitations was stronger than anything anyone else could say. To the contrary, if someone told me I was loved, my immediate reaction was Why? What could they possibly see in me?
[02:24:38]
Louise Hay: Or the classic thought if they only knew what I was really like inside, they wouldn't love me. I was not aware that all good begins with accepting that which is within oneself and loving that self which is you. It took quite a while to develop a peaceful, loving relationship with myself. First, I used to hunt for the little things about myself I thought were good qualities. Even this helped, and my own health began to improve. Good health begins with loving the self. So do prosperity and love and creative self expression. Later, I learned to love and approve of all of me. Even those qualities I thought were not good enough.
[02:25:28]
Louise Hay: That was when I really began to make progress. Exercise. I approve of Myself. I have given this exercise to hundreds of people and the results are phenomenal. For the next month, say over and over and over to yourself, I approve of myself. I approve of myself. Do this three or 400 times a day at least. No, it's not too many times. When you are worrying, you go over your problem at least that many times. Let I approve of myself become a walking mantra, something you just say over and over and over to yourself almost nonstop. Saying I approve of myself is guaranteed to bring up everything buried in your consciousness that is in opposition. When the negative thought comes up like how can you approve of yourself when you are fat? Or It's silly to think this can do any good. Or you're no good. Or whatever your negative babble will be.
[02:26:36]
Louise Hay: This is the time to take mental control. Give it no importance. Just see the thought for what it is. Another way to keep you stuck in the past. Gently say to this thought, I let you go. I approve of myself. Even considering doing this exercise can bring up a lot of stuff like it feels silly or it doesn't feel true. Or It's a lie, it sounds stuck up. Or how can I approve of myself when I do that? Just let them all pass through. These are only resistance thoughts. They have no power over you, unless you choose to believe them. I approve of myself. I approve of myself. I approve of myself. No matter what happens, no matter who says what to you, no matter who does what to you, just keep it going. In fact, when you can say that to yourself, when someone is doing something you don't approve of, you will know you are growing and changing.
[02:27:38]
Louise Hay: Thoughts have no power over us unless we give it to them. Thoughts are only words strung together. They have no meaning whatsoever. Only we give meaning to them and we choose what sort of meaning we give to them. Let us choose to think thoughts that nourish and support us. Part of self acceptance is releasing other people's opinions. If I were with you and kept telling you you are a purple pig. You are a purple pig. You are a purple pig, you would either laugh at me or get annoyed with me and think I was crazy. It would be most unlikely that you would think it was true.
[02:28:23]
Louise Hay: Yet many of the things we have chosen to believe about ourselves are just as far out and untrue. To believe that you're self worth is dependent on the shape of your body is your version of believing that you are a purple pig. Often, what we think of as the things wrong with us are only our expressions of our own individuality. This is our uniqueness and what is special about us. Nature never repeats itself. Since time began on this planet, there have never been two snowflakes alike, nor two raindrobes the same. And every daisy is different from every other daisy. Our fingerprints are different and we are different. We are meant to be different. When we can accept this, then there is no competition and no comparison.
[02:29:19]
Louise Hay: To try to be like another is to shrivel our soul. We have come to this planet to express who we are. I didn't even know who I was until I began to learn to love myself as I am in this moment. Put your awareness into practice. Think thoughts that make you happy. Do things that make you feel good. Be with people who make you feel good. Eat things that make your body feel good. Go at a pace that makes you feel good. Think for a moment of a tomato plant. A healthy plant can have over a hundred tomatoes on it. In order to get this tomato plant with all these tomatoes on it, we need to start with a small dried seed.
[02:30:11]
Louise Hay: That seed doesn't look like a tomato plant. It doesn't taste like a tomato plant. However, let's say you plant this seed in fertile soil and you water it and let the sun shine on it. When the first tiny little shoot comes up, you don't stomp on it and say, that's not a tomato plant. Rather, you look at it and say, Oh, boy, here it comes. And you watch it grow with delight. In time, if you continue to water it and give it lots of sunshine and pull away any weeds, you might have a tomato plant with more than a hundred tomatoes on it. And it all began with that one tiny seed. It is the same with creating a new experience for yourself. The soil you plant in is your subconscious mind.
[02:31:00]
Louise Hay: The seed is the new affirmation. The whole new experience is in this tiny seed and you water it with repetition. You let the sunshine of positive thoughts beam on it. You weed the garden by pulling out the negative thoughts that come up. And when you see the first tiniest little evidence, you don't say, That's not enough. Instead, you look at this first breakthrough and you say with glee, Oh boy, here it comes. It's working. And then you watch it grow and become your desire and manifestation.
[02:32:10]
Louise Hay: Meditation in any of its forms is a wonderful way to quiet the mind and allow your own knowingness to come to the surface. I usually sit with my eyes closed and say, What is it I need to know? And then wait quietly for an answer. If the answer comes fine, if it doesn't find, it will come another day. There are groups that do workshops for all different tastes, such as insight training, loving relationships training, est, advocate experience, the Ken Keys group, actualizations, and many more. Many of these groups do weekend workshops. These weekends give you a chance to see a whole new viewpoint about life, just as my own weekend workshops do.
[02:32:58]
Louise Hay: No one workshop will totally clear up all your problems forever. However, they can assist you in changing your life in the here and now. In the spiritual realm, there is prayer, there is meditation, and becoming connected with your higher source, practicing forgiveness and unconditional love, to me, are spiritual practices. There are many spiritual groups. In addition to the Christian churches, there are metaphysical churches like religious science and unity. There are the self realization fellowships, the movement of inner spiritual awareness, transcendental meditation, the Siddha Foundation, and many more. There are many avenues you can explore. If one way doesn't work for you, try another. All these suggestions have proved to be beneficial. I cannot say which one is right for you. That is something you will have to discover for yourself. No one method or one person or one group has all the answers for everyone. I don't have all the answers for everyone. I'm just one more stepping stone on the pathway to holistic health.
[02:34:14]
Louise Hay: In the infinity of life where I am, all is perfect, whole, and complete. My life is ever new. Each moment of my life is new and fresh and vital. I use my affirmative thinking to create exactly what I want. This is a new day. I am a new me. I think differently, I speak differently, I act differently. Others treat me differently. My new world is a reflection of my new thinking. It is a joy and a delight to plant new seeds, for I know these seeds will become my new experiences. All is well in my world.
[02:35:08]
Louise Hay: Chapter Nine, Daily Work. I enjoy practicing my new mental skills. If a child gave up at the first fall, it would never learn to walk. Like any other new thing you are learning, it takes practice to make it part of your life. First, there is a lot of concentration, and some of us choose to make this hard work. I don't like to think of it as hard work, but rather as something new to learn. The process of learning is always the same no matter what the subject, whether you're learning to drive a car, or type, or play tennis, or think in a positive manner. First, we fumble and bumble as our subconscious mind learns by trial. And yet every time we come back to our practicing, it gets easier and we do it a little better. Of course, you won't be perfect the first day. You will be doing whatever you can do. That's good enough for a start.
[02:36:09]
Louise Hay: Say to yourself often, I'm doing the best I can. Always support yourself. I well remember my first lecture when I came down from the podium, I immediately said to myself, Louise, you were wonderful. You were absolutely fantastic for the first time. And when you've done it five or six times, you will be a pro. Then a couple of hours later, I said to myself, I think we could change a few things. Let's adjust this and let's adjust that. But I refused to criticize myself in any way. If I had come off the podium and started berating myself with, Oh, you were so awful. You made this mistake and you made that mistake, then I would have dreaded my second lecture. As it was, the second one was better than the first, and by the sixth one, I was feeling like a pro.
[02:37:03]
Louise Hay: Just before I began writing You Can Heal Your Life, I bought myself a word processor computer. I called her my magic lady. It was something new I chose to learn. I discovered that learning the computer was very much like learning the spiritual laws. When I learned the computer's laws, then she did indeed perform magic for me. When I did not follow her laws to the letter, then either nothing would happen or it would not work the way I wanted it to work. She would not give an inch. I could get as frustrated as I wanted while she patiently waited for me to learn her laws. And then she gave me magic. It took practice.
[02:37:45]
Louise Hay: It's the same with the work you're learning to do now. You must learn the spiritual laws and follow them to the letter. You cannot bend them to your old way of thinking. You must learn and follow the new language. And when you do, then magic will be demonstrated in your life. The more you can reinforce your new learning, the better. I suggest expressing gratitude, writing affirmations, sitting in meditation, enjoying exercise, practicing good nutrition, doing affirmations aloud, singing affirmations, taking time for relaxation exercises, using visualization, mental imagery, and reading and study.
[02:38:40]
Louise Hay: My Daily Work. My own daily work goes something like this. The first thoughts on awakening before I open my eyes are to be thankful for everything I can think of. After a shower, I take a half hour or so to meditate and to do my affirmations and prayers. Then about 15 minutes of exercise, usually on the trampoline. Sometimes I join the 06:00 a.m. Exercise program now on television. Now I'm ready for a breakfast consisting of fruit and fruit juices and herbal tea.
[02:39:16]
Louise Hay: I thank the Earth Mother for providing this food for me. And I thank the food for giving its life to nourish me. Before lunch, I like to go to a mirror and do some affirmations out loud. I may even sing them something like this louise, you are wonderful and I love you. This is one of the best days of your life. Everything is working out for your highest good. Whatever you need to know is revealed to you. Whatever you need comes to you. All is well.
[02:39:48]
Louise Hay: Lunch is often a large salad, and again the food is blessed and thanked. In the late afternoon, I spend a few minutes on my slant board, allowing my body to experience some deep relaxation. I may listen to a tape. At this time, dinner will often be steamed vegetables and a grain. Sometimes I'll eat fish or chicken. My body works best on simple food. I like to share dinner with others and we bless each other in addition to the food. Sometimes in the evening I take a few moments to read and study. There is always more to learn at this time. I may also write out my current affirmation ten or 20 times.
[02:40:32]
Louise Hay: As I go to bed, I collect my thoughts, I go over the day and I bless each activity. I affirm that I will sleep deeply and soundly. Awakening in the morning, bright and refreshed and looking forward to the new day. Sounds overwhelming, doesn't it? To begin with, it seems like a lot to cope with. But after a short period of time your new way of thinking will become as much a part of your life as bathing or brushing your teeth. You will do it automatically and easily. It would be wonderful for a family in the morning to do some of these things together. Meditating together in the morning to start the day or just before dinner brings peace and harmony to everyone.
[02:41:22]
Louise Hay: If you think you don't have the time, you might get up a half hour earlier. The benefits would be well worth the effort. How do you begin your day? What is the first thing you say in the morning when you wake up? We all have something we say almost every day. Is it positive or negative? I can remember when I used to awaken in the morning and say with a groan, Oh, God, another day. And that is exactly the sort of day I would have one thing after another going wrong. Now, when I awaken and before I even open my eyes. I thank the bed for a good night's sleep. After all, we spent the whole night together in comfort. Then, with my eyes still closed, I spend about 10 minutes just being thankful for all the good in my life.
[02:42:14]
Louise Hay: I program my day a bit, affirming that everything will go well and that I will enjoy it all. This is before I get up and do my morning meditation or prayers. Meditation. Give yourself a few minutes every day to sit in quiet meditation. If you're new at meditation, begin with 5 minutes. Sit quietly, observing your breathing, and allow the thoughts to pass gently through your mind. Give them no importance and they will pass on. It is the nature of the mind to think, so don't try to get rid of thoughts.
[02:42:55]
Louise Hay: There are many classes and books you can explore to find new ways to meditate. No matter how or where you begin, you will eventually create the method that is best for you. I usually just sit quietly and ask what is it I need to know? And I allow the answer to come if it wants to. If not, I know it will come later. There is no right or wrong way to meditate. Another form of meditation is to sit quietly and observe the breath as it goes in and out of your body. As you inhale, count one. As you exhale, count two. Continue counting until you get to ten, and then begin again at one.
[02:43:44]
Louise Hay: If you find your mind doing the laundry list, begin again at one. If you notice your counting takes you to 25 or so, just go back to one. There was one client who seemed to me to be so bright and intelligent. Her mind was unusually clever and quick, and she had a great sense of humor, yet she could not get her act together. She was overweight, broke, frustrated in her career and without a romance for many years. She could accept all the metaphysical concepts quickly. They made a lot of sense to her, yet she was too clever, too quick. She found it difficult to slow herself down enough to practice over a meaningful period of time the ideas she could grasp so quickly on a moment by moment basis.
[02:44:34]
Louise Hay: Daily meditation helped her enormously. We began with only 5 minutes a day and very gradually worked up to 15 or 20 minutes. Exercise. Daily affirmations take one or two affirmations and write them ten or 20 times a day. Read them aloud with enthusiasm. Make a song out of your affirmations and sing them with joy. Let your mind go over these affirmations all day long. Consistently used affirmations become beliefs and will always produce results, sometimes in ways we cannot even imagine. One of my beliefs is that I always have good relationships with my landlord. My last landlord in New York City was a man known to be extremely difficult, and all the tenants complained.
[02:45:31]
Louise Hay: In the five years I lived there, I saw him only three times. When I decided to move to California I wanted to sell all my possessions and start fresh and unencumbered with the past. And I began to do affirmations like these all my possessions are sold easily and quickly. The move is very simple to do. Everything is working in divine order and all is well.
[02:46:14]
Louise Hay: I did not think about how difficult it would be to sell things or where I would sleep the last few nights or any other negative ideas. I just kept doing my affirmations. Well, my clients and students quickly bought all the little stuff and most of the books. I informed my landlord in a letter that I would not be renewing my lease and to my surprise I received a phone call from him expressing his dismay at my leaving. He offered to write a letter of recommendation to my new landlord in California and asked if he could please buy my furniture as he had decided to rent the apartment furnished.
[02:46:40]
Louise Hay: My higher consciousness had put the two beliefs together in a way I could not have conceived of. I always have good relationships with my landlord and everything will sell easily and quickly. To the other tenants amazement, I was able to sleep in my own bed in a comfortably furnished apartment until the last moment and be paid for it. I walked out with a few clothes, my juicer, my blender, my hairdryer and my typewriter, plus a large check, and I leisurely took the train to Los Angeles. Do not believe in limitations. On arriving in California it was necessary for me to buy a car. Not having owned a car before or having made a major purchase before, I did not have any established credit.
[02:47:33]
Louise Hay: The banks would not give me credit. Being a woman and self employed did not help my case any. I did not want to spend all my savings to buy a new car. Establishing credit became a catch 22. I refused to have any negative thoughts about the situation or about the banks. I rented a car and kept affirming that I have a beautiful new car and it comes to me easily. I also told everybody I met that I wanted to buy a new car and that I had not been able to establish credit so far. In about three months time I met a businesswoman who instantly liked me. When I told her my story about the car, she said oh, well, I'll take care of that. And she called her friend at the bank who owed her a favor and told her that I was an old friend and gave me the highest references.
[02:48:28]
Louise Hay: And within three days I drove off a car dealer's lot with a beautiful new car. I was not excited so much as I was in awe of the process. I believe the reason it took me three months to manifest the car was that I had never committed myself to monthly payments before and the little kid in me was scared and needed time to get up the courage to make the step. Exercise I love myself. I assume you are already saying I approve of myself almost nonstop. This is a powerful basis. Keep it up for at least a month. Now take a pad of paper and at the top right I love myself therefore. And finish this sentence in as many ways as you can. Read it over daily and add to it as you think of new things.
[02:49:29]
Louise Hay: If you could work with a partner, do so. Hold hands and alternate saying I love myself, therefore. The biggest benefit of doing this exercise is that you learn it is almost impossible to belittle yourself when you say you love yourself. Exercise. Claim the new. Visualize or imagine yourself having or doing or being what you are working toward. Fill in all the details. Feel, see, taste, touch, hear. Notice other people's reactions to your new state and make it all okay with you, no matter what their reactions are. Exercise, expand your knowledge.
[02:50:25]
Louise Hay: Read everything you can to expand your awareness and understanding of how the mind works. There is so much knowledge out there for you. This is only one step on your pathway. Get other viewpoints. Hear other people say it in a different way. Study with a group for a while until you go beyond them. This is a life work. The more you learn, the more you know, the more you practice and apply, the better you get to feel and the more wonderful your life will be. Doing this work makes you feel good. Begin to demonstrate results. Practicing as many of these methods as you can. You will begin to demonstrate results. You will see the little miracles occur in your life.
[02:51:16]
Louise Hay: The things you are ready to eliminate will go of their own accord. The things and events you want will pop up in your life seemingly out of the blue. You will get bonuses you never imagined. I was so surprised and delighted when after a few months of doing my mental work, I began to look younger. And today I look ten years younger than I did ten years ago. Love who and what you are and what you do. Laugh at yourself and at life and nothing can touch you. It's all temporary anyway. Next lifetime you will do it differently. So why not do it differently right now?
[02:51:59]
Louise Hay: You could read one of Norman cousin's books. He cured himself of a fatal disease with laughter. Unfortunately fortunately, he didn't change the mental patterns that created that disease and so just created another one. However, he also laughed himself to health on that one too. There are so many ways you can approach your healing. Try them all and use the ones that appeal to you. When you go to bed at night, close your eyes and again be thankful for all the good in your life. It will bring more good in. Please do not listen to the news or watch it on the television. The last thing at night. The news is a list of disasters. You don't want to take that into your dream state. Much clearing work is done in the dream state and you can ask your dreams for help with anything you're working on. You will often find an answer by morning. Go to sleep peacefully.
[02:53:01]
Louise Hay: Trust the process of life to be on your side for your highest good and greatest joy. There is no need to make drudgery out of what you're doing. It can be fun. A game. It can be a joy. It's up to you. Even practicing forgiveness and releasing resentment can be fun. If you want to make it so, make up a little song about that person or situation that is so hard to release. When you sing a diddy, it lightens up the whole procedure. When I work with clients, I bring laughter into the procedure as soon as I can. The quicker we can laugh about the whole thing, the easier it is to let go. If you saw your problems on a stage in a play by Neil Simon, you would laugh yourself right out of the chair. Tragedy and comedy are the same things. It just depends on your viewpoint. Oh, what fools we mortals be. Do whatever you can to make your transformational change. A joy and a pleasure. Have fun.
[02:54:10]
Louise Hay: In the infinity of life where I am, all is perfect, whole and complete. I support myself and life supports me. I see evidence of the law working all around me and in every area of my life. I reinforce that which I learn in joyous ways. My day begins with gratitude and joy. I look forward with enthusiasm to the adventures of the day, knowing that in my life all is good. I love who I am and all that I do. I am the living, loving, joyous expression of life. All is well in my world.
[02:55:02]
Louise Hay: Chapter Ten. Relationships. All my relationships are harmonious. All of life is relationships. We have relationships with everything. You are even having a relationship now with me and my concepts. The relationships you have with objects and food and weather and transportation, and with people all reflect the relationship you have with yourself. The relationship you have with yourself is highly influenced by the relationships you had with the adults around you as a child. The way the adults reacted to us then is often the way we react towards ourselves now, both positively and negatively.
[02:55:51]
Louise Hay: Think for a moment of the words you use when you are scolding yourself. Aren't they the same words your parents used when they were scolding you? What words did they use when they praised you? I'm sure you use the same words to praise yourself. Perhaps they never praised you. So then you have no idea how to praise yourself and probably think you have nothing to praise. I am not blaming our parents because we're all victims of victims and they couldn't teach you anything they did not know. Sandra Ray, the great rebirther, who has done so much work with relationships, claims that every major relationship we have is a reflection of the relationship we had with one of our parents.
[02:56:40]
Louise Hay: She claims that until we clean up that first one, we will never be free to create exactly what we want in relationships. Relationships are mirrors of ourselves. What we attract always mirrors either the qualities we have or beliefs we have about relationships. This is true whether it is a boss, a coworker, an employee, a friend, a lover, or a spouse or a child. The things you don't like about these people are either what you yourself do or would like to do, or what you believe. You could not attract them or have them in your life if the way they are didn't somehow complement your life.
[02:57:29]
Louise Hay: Exercise. Us versus them. Look for a moment at someone in your life who bothers you and describe three things about this person that you don't like. Things that you want them to change. Now look deeply inside of you and ask yourself where am I like that? And when do I do the same things? Close your eyes and give yourself the time to do this. Then ask your self if you are willing to change when you remove those patterns, habits and beliefs from your thinking and behavior. Either these people will change or leave your life. If you have a boss who is critical and impossible to please, look within. Either you do that on some level or you have a belief that bosses are always critical and impossible to please.
[02:58:30]
Louise Hay: If you have an employee who won't obey or who doesn't follow through, look to see where you do that and clean it up. Firing someone is too easy. It doesn't clear your pattern. If there is a coworker who won't cooperate and be part of the team, look to see how you could have attracted this. Where are you being non cooperative? If you have a friend that is undependable and lets you down, turn within. Where in your life are you undependable? And when do you let others down? Is that your belief? If you have a lover who is cold and seems unloving, look to see if there is a belief within you that came from watching your parents and your childhood that says love is cold and undemonstrative.
[02:59:23]
Louise Hay: If you have a spouse who is nagging and nonsupportive, again, look to your childhood beliefs. Did you have a parent who was nagging and nonsupportive? Are you that way? If you have a child who has. Habits that irritate you, I will guarantee that they are your habits. Children learn only by imitating the adults around them. Clear it within you and you'll find that they change automatically. This is the only way to change others. Change ourselves first. Change your patterns and you will find they are different too. Blame is useless. Blaming only gives away our power. Keep your power. Without power, we cannot make changes. Attracting Love. Love comes when we least expect it, when we're not looking for it. Hunting for love never brings the right partner. It only creates longing and unhappiness.
[03:00:30]
Louise Hay: Love is never outside ourselves. Love is within us. Don't insist that love come immediately. Perhaps you're not ready for it, or you're not developed enough to attract the love you really want. Don't settle for anybody just to have someone set your standards. What kind of love do you want to attract? List the qualities you really want in the relationship. Develop those qualities in yourself and you will attract a person who has them. You might examine what may be keeping love away. Could it be criticism? Feelings of unworthiness? Unreasonable standards? Movie star images? Fear of intimacy? A belief that you are unlovable? Be ready for love. Prepare the field and be ready to nourish love. Be loving and you will be lovable. Be receptive to love.
[03:01:32]
Louise Hay: In the infinity of life, where I. Am, all is perfect, whole and complete. I live in harmony and balance with everyone I know. Deep at the center of my being. There is an infinite well of love. I now allow this love to flow to the surface. It fills my heart, my body, my mind, my consciousness, my very being and radiates out from me in all directions and returns to me multiplied. The more love I use and give, the more I have to give, the supply is endless. The use of love makes me feel good. It is an expression of my inner joy. I love myself, therefore I take loving care of my body. I lovingly groom it and dress it. And my body lovingly responds to me. with vibrant health and energy. I love myself, therefore I provide for myself a comfortable home, one that fills all my needs and is a pleasure to be. I fill the rooms with the vibration of love so that all who enter, myself included, will feel this love and be nourished by it. I love myself, therefore I work at a job I truly enjoy doing, one that uses my creative talents and abilities, working with and for people I love and who love me, and earning a good income.
[03:03:24]
Louise Hay: I love myself, therefore I behave and think in a loving way to all people, for I know that that which I give out returns to me multiply. I only attract loving people in my world, for they are a mirror of what I am. I love myself, therefore I forgive and totally release the past and all past experiences, and I am free. I love myself, therefore I live totally in the now, experiencing each moment as good, and knowing that my future is bright and joyous and secure, for I am a beloved child of the universe. And the universe lovingly takes care of me now and forevermore. All is well in my world.
[03:04:35]
Louise Hay: Chapter Eleven. Work. I am deeply fulfilled by all that I do. Wouldn't you love to have this affirmation be true for you? Perhaps you've been limiting yourself by thinking some of these thoughts, I can't stand this job. I hate my boss, I don't earn enough money, they don't appreciate me at work, I can't get along with the people at work. I don't know what I want to do. This is negative, defensive thinking. What kind of good position do you think this will get you? It is approaching the subject from the wrong end. If you are in a job you don't care for, if you want to change your position, if you're having problems at work, or if you're out of work, the best way to handle it is this, begin by blessing your current position with love.
[03:05:28]
Louise Hay: Realize that this is only a stepping stone on your pathway. You are where you are because of your own thinking patterns. If they are not treating you the way you would like to be treated, then there is a pattern in your consciousness that is attracting such behavior. So in your mind, look around your current job or the job you had last, and begin to bless everything with love. The building, the elevators or stairs, the rooms, the furniture and equipment, the people you work for and the people you work with, and each and every customer. Begin to affirm for yourself that I always work for the most wonderful bosses. That my boss always treats me with respect and courtesy. My boss is generous and easy to work for.
[03:06:26]
Louise Hay: These beliefs will carry forward with you all your life. And if you become a boss, you will be like that too. A young man was about to start a new job and was nervous and I remember saying why wouldn't you do well? Of course you'll be successful. Open your heart and let your talents flow out of you. Bless the establishment, the people you work with and the people you work for and each and every customer with love and all will go well. He did just that and had a great success. If you want to leave your job, then begin to affirm that you release your current job with love to the next person who will be delighted to have it. Know that there are people out there looking for exactly what you have to offer and that you are being brought together on the checkerboard of life even now.
[03:07:24]
Louise Hay: A good affirmation for work. I am totally open and receptive to a wonderful new position, one that uses all my talents and abilities and allows me to express myself creatively in ways that are fulfilling to me. I work with and for people who I love and who love and respect me. In a wonderful location and earning good money. If there is someone at work who bothers you again, bless them with love every time you think of them. In each and every one of us is every single quality. While we may not choose to do so, we are all capable of being a Hitler or a Mother Teresa.
[03:08:12]
Louise Hay: If this person is critical, begin to affirm that he or she is loving and full of praise. If they are grouchy, affirm that they are cheerful and fun to be around. If they are cruel, affirm that they are gentle and compassionate. If you see only the good qualities in this person, then that is what they will show you, no matter how they behave towards others.
[03:08:40]
Louise Hay: Example. His new job was to play a piano in a club where the boss was known for being unkind and mean. The employees used to call the boss Mr. Death behind his back. I was asked how to handle this situation and I replied inside each and every person are all the good qualities. No matter how other people react to him, it has nothing to do with you. Every time you think of this boss, bless him with love. Keep affirming for yourself. I always work for wonderful bosses. He took my advice and did exactly that. My client began to receive warm greetings and the boss soon began to slip him bonuses and hired him to play in several other clubs.
[03:09:28]
Louise Hay: The other employees who were sending out negative thoughts to the boss were still being mistreated. If you like your job but feel you're not getting paid enough, then begin to bless your current salary with love. Expressing gratitude for what we already have enables it to grow. Affirm that you are now opening your consciousness to a greater prosperity and that part of that prosperity is an increased salary. Affirm that you deserve a raise, not for negative reasons, but because you are a great asset to the company and they want to share their profits with you. Always do the best you can on the job, for then the universe will know that you are ready to be lifted out of where you are to the next and even better place. Your consciousness put you where you are now. Your consciousness will either keep you there or lift you to a better position. It's up to you.
[03:10:34]
Louise Hay: In the infinity of life, where I am, all is perfect, whole and complete. My unique creative talents and abilities flow through me and are expressed in deeply satisfying ways. There are people out there who are always looking for my services. I am always in demand and can pick and choose what I want to do. I earn good money doing what satisfies me. My work is a joy and a pleasure. All is well in my world.
[03:11:16]
Louise Hay: Chapter Twelve. Success. Every experience is a success. What does failure mean anyway? Does it mean that something did not turn out the way you wanted it to, or the way you were hoping? The law of experience is always perfect. We out picture our inner thoughts and beliefs perfectly. You must have left out a step or had an inner belief that told you you did not deserve or that you felt unworthy. It's the same way as when I work with my computer. If there's a mistake, it's always me. It is something I have not done to comply with the laws of the computer. It only means that there is something else for me to learn.
[03:12:05]
Louise Hay: The old saying, if at first you don't succeed, try and try again, is so true. It doesn't mean beat yourself up and try the same old way again. It means recognize your error and try another way until you learn to do it correctly. I think it's our natural birthright to go from success to success all our life. If we are not doing that, either we are not in tune with our innate capabilities or we do not believe it can be true for us. Or we do not recognize our successes. When we set standards that are much too high for where we are at this moment, standards that we cannot possibly achieve right now, then we will always fail.
[03:12:53]
Louise Hay: When a little child is learning to walk or talk, we encourage it and praise it for every tiny improvement the child makes. The child beams and eagerly tries to do better. Is this the way you encourage yourself when you're learning something new? Or do you make it harder to learn because you tell yourself that you're stupid or clumsy or a failure? Only by practicing over and over do we learn the new and make it a natural part of us. When you watch an accomplished professional in any field, you are looking at innumerable hours of practice. Don't do what I used to do. I would refuse to try anything new because I didn't know how to do it and I didn't want to appear foolish.
[03:13:44]
Louise Hay: Learning is making mistakes until our subconscious mind can put together the right pictures. It doesn't matter how long you've been thinking of yourself as a failure. You can begin to create a success pattern now. We need to plant the seeds of success. These seeds will grow into an abundant harvest. Here are some success affirmations you can use. Divine intelligence gives me all the ideas I can use. Everything I touch is a success. There is plenty for everyone, including me. There are plenty of customers for my services.
[03:14:31]
Louise Hay: I establish a new awareness of success. I move into the winning circle. I am a magnet for divine prosperity. I am blessed beyond my fondest dreams. Riches of every sort are drawn to me. Golden opportunities are everywhere for me and I accept them. Pick one of the affirmations and repeat it for several days. Then pick another and do the same. Allow these ideas to fill your consciousness. Don't worry about how to accomplish this. The opportunities will come your way. Trust the intelligence within you to lead you and guide you. You deserve to be a success in every area of your life.
[03:15:30]
Louise Hay: In the infinity of life where I am, all is perfect, whole and complete. I am one with the power that created me. I have within me all the ingredients for success. I now allow success to flow through me and manifest in my world. Whatever I am guided to do will be a success. I learn from every experience. I go from success to success and from glory to glory. My pathway is a series of stepping stones to ever greater successes. All is well in my world.
[03:16:15]
Louise Hay: Chapter 13. Prosperity. I deserve the best and I accept the best. Now, if you want this affirmation to be true for you, then you do not want to believe any of the following statements, money doesn't grow on trees. Money is filthy and dirty. I am poor but clean or good. I don't want to have money and be stuck up. I will never get a good job. I will never make any money. Money goes out faster than it comes in. I'm always in debt. Poor people can never get out from under. My parents were poor and I will be poor. Artists have to struggle. Only people who cheat have money.
[03:17:02]
Louise Hay: Everyone else comes first. Oh, I couldn't charge that much. I don't deserve. I'm not good enough to make money. Never tell anyone what I have in the bank. Don't lend money. A penny saved is a penny earned, save for a rainy day. A depression could come at any moment. I resent others having money. Money only comes from hard work. How many of these beliefs belong to you? Do you really think that believing any of them will bring you prosperity? It is old, limited thinking. Perhaps it was what your family believed about money. Because family beliefs stay with us unless we consciously release them. Wherever it came from, it must leave your consciousness if you want to prosper.
[03:18:03]
Louise Hay: To me, true prosperity begins with feeling good about yourself. It is also the freedom to do what you want to do when you want to do it. It is never an amount of money. It is a state of mind. Prosperity, or lack of it, is an outer expression of the ideas in your head. Deserving. If we do not accept the idea that we deserve to prosper, then even when abundance falls in our laps, we will refuse it somehow. Look at this example. A student in one of my classes was working to increase his prosperity. He came to class one night, so excited, for he had just won $500, and he kept saying I don't believe it. I never win anything. I don't believe it. We knew it was a reflection of his changing consciousness.
[03:18:59]
Louise Hay: He still felt he really didn't deserve it. And next week he could not come to class as he had broken his leg and the doctor bills came to $500. He had been frightened to move forward in a new, prosperous direction and felt undeserving, so he punished himself in this way. Whatever we concentrate on increases, so don't concentrate on your bills. If you concentrate on lack and debt, then you will create more lack and debt. There is an inexhaustible supply in the universe. Be aware of it. Take time to count the stars on a clear evening or the grains of sand in one handful, the leaves on one branch of a tree, the raindrops on a window pane, the seeds in one tomato. Each seed is capable of producing a whole vine with unlimited tomatoes on it. Be grateful for what you do have and you will find it increases.
[03:20:10]
Louise Hay: I like to bless with love all that is in my life now. My home, the heat, water, light, telephone, furniture, plumbing, appliances, clothing, my transportation, jobs, the money I do have, friends, my ability to see and feel and taste and touch and walk and to enjoy this incredible planet. Belief in lack and limitation is the only thing that is limiting us. What belief is limiting you? Do you want to have money only to help others? Then you are saying that you are worthless. And be sure you're not rejecting prosperity now. If a friend invites you to lunch or dinner, accept with joy and pleasure. Don't feel that you're just trading with people. If you get a gift, accept it graciously. If you can't use the gift, pass it on to someone else. Keep the flow of things moving through you. Just smile and say thank you.
[03:21:18]
Louise Hay: This way, let the universe know you are ready to receive your good. Make room for the new. Clean out your refrigerator. Get rid of all those little bits of stuff wrapped in foil. Clean out your closet. Get rid of all the stuff you've not used in the last six months or so. If you haven't used it in a year, definitely get it out of your home. Sell it, trade it, give it away or burn it. Cluttered closets mean a cluttered mind. As you clean the closet, say to yourself, I'm cleaning out the closets of my mind. The universe loves symbolic gestures. The first time I heard the concept, the abundance of the universe is available to everyone, I thought it was ridiculous.
[03:22:08]
Louise Hay: Look at all the poor people, I said to myself. Look at my own seemingly hopeless poverty. To hear your poverty was only a belief in your consciousness made me angry. It took me many years to realize and accept that I was the only person responsible for my lack of prosperity. It was my belief that I was unworthy and not deserving and that money is difficult to come by and that I do not have talents and abilities that kept me stuck in a mental system of not having. Money is the easiest thing to demonstrate. How do you react to this statement? Do you believe it? Are you angry? Are you indifferent? Are you ready to throw this tape across the room? If you have any of these reactions, good.
[03:23:02]
Louise Hay: I've touched something deep inside of you that very point of resistance to truth. And this is the area to work on. It is time to open yourself to the potential of receiving the flow of money and all good. Love your bill. It is essential that we stop worrying about money and stop resenting our bill. Many people treat bills as punishments, to be avoided if possible. A bill is an acknowledgment of our ability to pay. The creditor assumes you are affluent enough and gives you the service or the product first. I bless with love each and every bill that comes into my home.
[03:23:47]
Louise Hay: I bless with love and stamp a small kiss on each and every check I write. If you pay with resentment, money has a hard time coming back to you. If you pay with love and joy, you open the free flowing channel of abundance. Treat your money as a friend, not as something you wad up and crush into your pocket. Your security is not your job or your bank account or your investments, nor your spouse or parents. Your security is your ability to connect with the cosmic power that creates all things.
[03:24:27]
Louise Hay: I like to think that the power within me that breathes my body is the same power that provides all that I need and just as easily and simply. The universe is lavish and abundant, and it is our birthright to be supplied with everything we need unless we choose to believe to the contrary. I bless my telephone with love each time I use it, and I affirm often that it brings me only prosperity and expressions of love. I do the same with my mailbox, and each day it is filled to overflowing with money and love letters of all kinds from friends and clients and far off readers of my book.
[03:25:18]
Louise Hay: The bills that come in, I rejoice over. Thanking the companies for trusting me to pay. I bless my doorbell in the front door, knowing that only good comes into my home. I expect my life to be good and joyous. And it is. These ideas are for everyone. He was a hooker and wanted to increase his business. So he came to me for a prosperity session. He felt he was good at his profession and wanted to make a hundred thousand dollars a year. I gave him the same ideas I'm giving you and soon he had money to put into Chinese porcelains. He spent so much time at home. He wanted to enjoy the beauty of his ever increasing investments.
[03:26:04]
Louise Hay: Rejoice in others good Fortune. Don't delay your own prosperity by being resentful or jealous that someone else has more than you. Don't criticize the way they choose to spend their money. It's none of your business. Each person is under the law of their own consciousness. Just take care of your own thoughts. Bless another's good fortune and know that there is plenty for all. Are you a stingy tipper? Do you stiff washroom attendance with some self righteous statement? Do you ignore the porters in your office or apartment building at Christmas time? Do you pinch pennies when you don't need to? Buying day old vegetables or bread? Do you do your shopping in a thrift shop? Or do you always order the cheapest thing on the menu?
[03:27:00]
Louise Hay: There is a law of demand and supply. Demand comes first. Money has a way of coming to where it's needed. The poorest family can almost always get together the money for a funeral. Visualization. The ocean of abundance. Your prosperity consciousness is not dependent on money. Your flow of money is dependent upon your prosperity consciousness. As you conceive of more, more will come into your life. I love the visualization of standing at the seashore, looking out at the vast ocean and knowing that this ocean is the abundance that is available to me. Look down at your hands and see what sort of container you're holding. Is it a teaspoon nimble with a hole in it? A paper cup? A glass? A tumbler? A pitcher? A bucket? A washtub? Or perhaps you have a pipeline connected to this ocean of abundance.
[03:28:11]
Louise Hay: Look around you and notice that no matter how many people are there and no matter what kind of container they have, there is plenty for everyone. You cannot rob another and they cannot rob you, and in no way can you drain the ocean dry. Your container is your consciousness and it can always be exchanged for a larger container. Do this little exercise often to get the feeling of expansion and unlimited supply. Open your arms. I sit at least once a day with my arms stretched out to the side and say I am open and receptive to all the good and abundance in the universe.
[03:29:00]
Louise Hay: It gives me a feeling of expansion. The universe can only distribute to me what I have in my consciousness, and I can always create more in my consciousness. It's like a cosmic bank. I make mental deposits by increasing my awareness of my own abilities to create. Meditation, treatments and affirmations are mental deposits. Let's make a habit of making daily deposits. Just having more money is not enough. We want to enjoy the money. Do you allow yourself to have pleasure with money? If not, why not? A portion of everything you take in can go to pure pleasure. Did you have any fun with your money last week? Why not? What old belief is stopping you? Let it go.
[03:29:57]
Louise Hay: Money does not have to be a serious subject in your life. Put it into perspective. Money is a means of exchange and that's all it is. What would you do and what would you have if you didn't need money? Jerry Gillis, who has written Money Love, one of the best books I know on money, suggests that we create a poverty penalty for ourselves. Every time we think or say a negative about our money situation, we find ourselves a certain amount and put it in a container at the end of the week. We have to spend this money on pleasure. We need to shake up our money concepts. I have found it easier to teach a seminar on sexuality than one on money. People get very angry when their money beliefs are being challenged. Even people who come to a seminar wanting desperately to create more money in their lives will go crazy when I try to change their limiting beliefs.
[03:31:00]
Louise Hay: I am willing to change. I am willing to release old negative beliefs. Sometimes we have to work with these two affirmations a lot in order to open the space to begin creating prosperity. Let's release the fixed income mentality. Do not limit the universe by insisting that you have only a certain salary or income. That salary or income is a channel. It is not your source. Your supply comes from one source the very universe itself. There are an infinite number of channels. We must open ourselves to them. We must accept in consciousness that supply can come from anywhere and everywhere. Then when we walk down the street and find a penny or a dime, we say thank you to the source. It may be small, but new channels are beginning to open.
[03:32:00]
Louise Hay: I am open and receptive to new avenues of income. I now receive my good from expected and unexpected sources. Recognize prosperity. Begin to recognize prosperity everywhere and rejoice in it. Reverend Ike, the well known evangelist in New York City, remembers as a poor preacher, he used to walk by good restaurants and homes and automobiles and clothing establishments and say out loud, that's for me. That's for me. Allow fancy homes and banks and fine stores and showrooms of all sorts and yachts to give you pleasure. Recognize that all this is part of your abundance and you are increasing your consciousness to partake of these things if you desire. If you see a well dressed person, think, isn't it wonderful that they have so much abundance? There is plenty for all of us.
[03:33:06]
Louise Hay: We don't want to have someone else's good. We want to have our own good, and yet we do not own anything. We only use possessions for a period of time until they pass on to someone else. Sometimes a possession may stay in a family for a few generations, but eventually it will pass on. There is a natural rhythm and flow of life. Things come and things go, and I believe that when something goes, it is only to make room for something new and better. Accept Compliments. So many people want to be rich and yet they won't accept a compliment. I have many a budding actor and actress who want to be a star and yet they cringe at a compliment. Compliments are gifts of prosperity. Learn to accept them graciously.
[03:34:00]
Louise Hay: My mother taught me early to smile and say thank you when I received a compliment or a gift, and it's been an asset all my life. It's even better to accept the compliment and return it so that the giver feels as though they have received a gift. It is a way of keeping the flow of good going. Rejoice in the abundance of being able to awaken each morning and experience a new day. Be glad to be alive, to be healthy, to have friends, to be creative, to be a living example of the joy of living. Live to your highest awareness. Enjoy your transformational process.
[03:34:44]
Louise Hay: In the infinity of life, where I am, all is perfect, whole and complete. I am one with the power that created me. All my needs and desires are met before I even ask. I am divinely guided and protected and I make choices that are beneficial for me. I rejoice in others successes knowing there is plenty for us all. I am constantly increasing my conscious awareness of abundance and this reflects in a constantly increasing income. My good comes from everywhere and everyone. All is well in my world.
[03:35:34]
Louise Hay: Chapter 14. The Body. I listen with love to my body's messages. I believe we create every so called illness in our body. The body, like everything else in life, is a mirror of our inner thoughts and beliefs. The body is always talking to us if we will take the time to listen. Every cell within your body responds to every single thought you think every word you speak. Continuous modes of thinking and speaking produce body behaviors and postures and eases or diseases. The person who has a permanently scowling face did not produce that by having joyous loving thoughts. Older people's faces and bodies show so clearly a lifetime of thinking patterns.
[03:36:33]
Louise Hay: How will you look when you are elderly? Now let's explore a few of the more common conditions of just how we create these problems. Not every mental equivalent is 100% true for everyone. However, it does give us a point of reference to begin our search for the cause of the disease. Many people working in the alternative Healing therapies use heal your Body, my first book with their clients and find the mental causes run 90% to 95% true. Now the head represents us. This is what we show the world. It is how we are recognized. When something is wrong in the head area, it usually means we feel something is very wrong with us. The hair represents strength. When we are tense and afraid, we often create those bands of steel that originate in the shoulder muscles and come up over the top of the head and sometimes even down around the eyes.
[03:37:39]
Louise Hay: The hair shaft grows up through the hair follicle. When there is tension in the scalp, the hair shaft can be squeezed so tightly that the hair can no longer breathe. It dies and falls out. If this tension is continued and the scalp is not relaxed, then the follicle remains so tight that the new hair cannot grow through. The result is baldness. Female baldness has been on the increase ever since women have begun entering the business world with all its tensions and frustrations. We are not so aware of baldness in women because women's wigs appear natural and attractive. Unfortunately, most men's toupaze are still discernible.
[03:38:30]
Louise Hay: Tension is not being strong. Tension is weakness. Being relaxed and centered and peaceful is really being strong and secure. It would be good for us to relax our bodies more. And many of us need to relax our scalps too. Try it now. Tell your scalp to relax and feel if there is a difference. If you notice that your scalp relaxes, then I would suggest you do this little exercise. Often the ears represent the capacity to hear. When there are problems with the ears, it usually means something is going on you do not want to hear. An earache would indicate that there is anger about what is being heard. Earaches are common with children. They often have to listen to stuff going on in the household they really don't want to hear. Household rules often forbid a child's expression of anger. And the child's inability to change things creates an earache.
[03:39:40]
Louise Hay: Deafness represents long standing refusal to listen to someone. Notice that when one partner has a hearing impairment, the other partner often talks and talks and talks. The eyes represent the capacity to see. When there are problems with the eyes, it usually means there is something we do not want to see either about ourselves or about life, past, present or future. Whenever I see small children wearing glasses, I know there is stuff going on in their household they do not want to look at. If they can't change the experience, they will diffuse the sight so they don't have to see it so clearly.
[03:40:29]
Louise Hay: Many people have had dramatic healing experiences when they have been willing to go back into the past and clean up what it was they did not want to look at a year or two before they began wearing glasses. Are you negating what's happening right now? What don't you want to face? Are you afraid to see the present or the future? If you could see clearly, what would you see that you don't see now? Can you see what you're doing to yourself? Headaches come from invalidating the self. The next time you get a headache, stop and ask yourself where and how you have just made yourself wrong.
[03:41:17]
Louise Hay: Forgive yourself, let it go and the headache will dissolve back to the nothingness from whence it came. Migraine headaches are created by people who want to be perfect and who create a lot of pressure on themselves. A lot of suppressed anger is involved. Interestingly, migraine headaches can almost always be alleviated by masturbation. If you do it as soon as you feel a migraine coming on, the sexual release dissolves the tension and the pain. You may not feel like masturbating then, but it's certainly worth a try.
[03:42:45]
Louise Hay: Sinus problems felt right in the face and so close to the nose represent being irritated by someone in your life, someone who is close to you. You might even feel they are bearing down on you. We forget that we create the situation. Then we give our power away by blaming the other person for our frustration. No person, no place and no thing has any power over us, for we are the only thinkers in our mind. We create our experiences, our reality and everyone in it. When we create peace and harmony and balance in our mind, we will find it in our lives. The neck and throat are fascinating because so much stuff goes on there. The neck represents the ability to be flexible in our thinking, to see the other side of a question and to see another person's viewpoint.
[03:43:48]
Louise Hay: When there are problems with the neck, it usually means we are being stubborn about our own concept of a situation. Virginia Satir, the brilliant family therapist, says she did some silly research and found that there are more than 250 different ways to wash dishes depending on who is washing and the equipment used. If we are stuck in believing there is only one way or one viewpoint, then we are shutting out most of life. The throat represents our ability to speak up for ourselves, to ask for what we want to say, I am, et cetera. When we have throat problems, it usually means we do not feel we have the right to do these things. We feel inadequate to stand up for ourselves.
[03:44:41]
Louise Hay: Sore throats are always anger. If a cold is involved, then there is mental confusion too. Laryngitis usually means you are so angry you cannot speak. The throat also represents the creative flow in the body. This is where we express our creativity. And when our creativity is stifled and frustrated, we often have throat problems. We all know many people who live their whole lives for others. They never once get to do what they want to do. They are always pleasing mothers or fathers, or spouses, or lovers or bosses. Tonsillitis and thyroid problems are just frustrated creativity, not being able to do what you want to do.
[03:45:35]
Louise Hay: The energy center in the throat, the fifth chakra is the place in the body where change takes place. When we are resisting change or are in the middle of change or are trying to change. We often have a lot of activity in our throats. Notice when you cough or when someone else coughs. What has just been said? What are we reacting to? Is it resistance and stubbornness? Or is it the process of change taking place? In a workshop, I use coughs as a tool for selfdiscovery. Every time someone coughs, I have that person touch their throat and say out loud, I am willing to change or I am changing.
[03:46:23]
Louise Hay: The arms represent our ability and capacity to embrace the experiences of life. The upper arms have to do with our capacity and the lower arms with our abilities. We store old emotions in our joints and the elbows represent our flexibility in changing directions. Are you flexible about a changing direction in your life? Or are old emotions keeping you stuck in one spot? Hands grasp. Hands hold. Hands clench. We let things slip through our fingers. Sometimes we hold on too long. We are handy, tight fisted, open handed, penny pinchers butterfingers. We give handouts. We can handle ourselves or we can't seem to handle anything.
[03:47:18]
Louise Hay: We put a handle on something, it's hands down, hands off. Hanky panky. We give someone a hand. Our hand in hand. It's on hand or out of hand, underhanded or overhanded, we have helping hands. Hands can be gentle or they can be hard. With naughty knuckles from overthinking or arthritic criticism. Grasping hands come from fear. Fear of loss, fear of never having enough, fear that it won't stay if you hold lightly. Tightly grasping a relationship only has the partner run away in desperation. Tightly clenched hands cannot take in anything new. Shaking the hands freely from the wrists gives a feeling of looseness and openness.
[03:47:18]
Louise Hay: That which belongs to you cannot be taken from you. So relax. The fingers each have meaning. Problems in the fingers show where you need to relax and let go. If you cut your index finger, there is probably anger and fear that has to do with your ego. In some current situation the thumb is mental and represents worry. The index finger is the ego and fear. The middle finger has to do with sex and with anger. When angry, hold your middle finger and watch the anger dissolve. Hold the right finger if your anger is at a man and the left finger if it is at a woman.
[03:48:55]
Louise Hay: The ring finger is both unions and grief. The little finger has to do with the family and pretending. The back represents our support system. Problems with the back often mean we feel we are not being supported. Too often we think we are only supported by our job or by our family or spouses. In reality we are totally supported by the universe, by life itself. The upper back has to do with feeling the lack of emotional support. My husband, wife, lover, friend, boss doesn't understand me or support me. The middle back has to do with guilt. All that stuff that is in back of us. Are you afraid to see what is back there? Or are you hiding what is back there? Do you feel stabbed in the back?
[03:49:54]
Louise Hay: Do you really feel burnt out? Are your finances in a mess or do you worry about them excessively? Then your lower back may be bothering you. The lack of money or the fear of money will do it. The amount you have has nothing to do with it. So many of us feel that money is the most important thing in our lives and that we could not live without it. This is not true. There is something far more important and precious to us, without which we could not live. What is that? It is our breath. Our breath is the most precious substance in our lives. And yet we totally take for granted when we exhale that our next breath will be there. If we did not take another breath, we would not last three minutes.
[03:49:54]
Louise Hay: Now, if the power that created us has given us enough breath to last for as long as we shall live, can we not trust that everything else we need will be supplied? The lungs represent our capacity to take in and give out life. Problems with the lungs usually mean we are afraid to take in life. Or perhaps we feel we do not have the right to live fully. Women have traditionally been very shallow breathers and have often thought of themselves as second class citizens who did not have the right to take up space and sometimes not even the right to live. Today this is changing. Women are taking their place as full members of society and breathing deeply and fully.
[03:51:41]
Louise Hay: It pleases me to see women in sports. Women have always worked in the field but this is the first time in history, as far as I know, that women have gone into sports and it's wonderful to see the magnificent bodies that are emerging. Emphysema and heavy smoking are ways of denying life. It covers a deep feeling of being totally unworthy of existing. Scolding will not change the habit of smoking. It is the basic belief that must change first. The breasts represent the mothering principle. When there are problems with the breasts, it usually means we are overmothering either a person, a place or a thing or even an experience. Part of the mothering process is to allow the child to grow up. We need to know when to take our hands off and when to turn over the reins and let them be.
[03:52:45]
Louise Hay: Being overprotective does not prepare the other person to handle their own experience. Sometimes our overbearing attitudes literally cut off nourishment in a situation. If cancer is involved, then there is also deep resentment. Release the fear and know the intelligence of the universe resides in each of us. We need to nourish ourselves. The heart, of course, represents love, while our blood represents joy. Our hearts lovingly pump joy throughout our bodies. When we deny ourselves joy and love, the heart shrivels and becomes cold. As a result, the blood gets sluggish and we creep our way to anemia, angina and heart attacks. The heart does not attack us. We get so caught up in the soap opera and dramas we create that we often forget to notice the little joys that surround us.
[03:53:51]
Louise Hay: We spend years squeezing all the joy out of the heart and it literally falls over in pain. Heart attack people are never joyous people. If they do not take the time to appreciate the joys of life they will just recreate another heart attack in time. Heart of gold, cold hearted, open heart, black heart, loving heart, warm hearted where is your heart? The stomach digests all the new ideas and experiences we have. What or who can't you stomach? What gets you in the gut? When there are stomach problems, it usually means we don't know how to assimilate new experiences. We are afraid.
[03:54:42]
Louise Hay: When commercial aeroplanes first became popular, getting inside a big metal tube that would carry us safely through the sky was a new idea we found hard to assimilate. And at every seat there were throw up bags and most of us were using them. We would use our little barf bags as discreetly as we could, wrap them up and hand them to the stewardess who spent a lot of her time running up and down the aisles collecting them. Now it is many years later and though the bags are still at every seat. They are seldom used. We have assimilated the idea of flying.
[03:55:21]
Louise Hay: Ulcers are tremendous fear of not being good enough. We fear not being good enough for a parent, but mostly not being good enough for a boss. We can't stomach who we are. We rip our guts apart trying to please others. No matter how important our job is, our inner self esteem is very low. We are afraid they will find out about us. Love is the answer here. People who love and approve of themselves never get ulcer. Be gentle and loving to the child within and give it all the support and encouragement you wanted when you were little.
[03:56:10]
Louise Hay: The genitals represent the most feminine part of a woman her femininity, or the most masculine part of a man, his masculinity. When we do not feel comfortable with either being a man or a woman, when we reject our sexuality, when we reject our bodies as dirty or sinful, then we often have problems in the genital area. I seldom come across a person who was reared in a household where the genitals and their functions were called by their right names. We all grew up with euphemisms of one sort or another. Remember the ones your own family used? It could have been as mild as down there. To names that made you feel your genitals were dirty and disgusting. Yes. We all grew up believing that something was not quite right between our legs.
[03:57:07]
Louise Hay: I feel the sexual revolution that exploded a few years ago was in one way a good thing. We were moving away from Victorian hypocrisy. Many of us began to enjoy the pleasure and freedom of our bodies in a new and open way. However, few of us thought to deal with what Rosa Lamont, the founder of the Self Communication Institute, calls Mama's god. Whatever your mother taught you about God when you were three years old is still there in your subconscious mind, unless you have done some conscious work to release it.
[03:57:47]
Louise Hay: Was that god an angry, offending God? What did that God feel about sex? If we are still carrying those early guilt feelings about our sexuality and our body, then we are surely going to create punishments for ourselves. Bladder problems, anal problems, vaginitis and prostate and penis problems all come under the same area. They stem from distorted beliefs about our bodies and the correctness of their functions. Every organ in our body is a magnificent expression of life with its own special function. We do not think of our livers or our eyes as dirty or sinful. Why do we choose to believe our genitals are?
[03:58:37]
Louise Hay: The anus is as beautiful as the ear. Without our anus, we would have no way to release what the body no longer needs, and we would die very quickly. Every part of our body and every function of our body is perfect and normal, natural and beautiful. I ask clients with sexual problems to begin to relate to their rectum penis or vagina with a sense of love and appreciation for their functions and their beauty. If you are beginning to cringe or get irate, ask yourself why. Who told you to deny any part of your body? Certainly not God. Our sexual organs were created as the most pleasurable part of our body. To deny this is to create pain and punishment.
[03:59:32]
Louise Hay: Sex is not only okay, it is glorious and wonderful. It is as normal for us to have sex as it is for us to breathe or to eat. Just for a moment, try to visualize the vastness of the universe. It is beyond our comprehension. Even our top scientists with their latest equipment cannot measure its size. And within this universe there are many galaxies. And in one of these smaller galaxies, in a far off corner, there is a minor sun. And around this sun revolves a few pinpoints, one of which is called planet Earth. I find it hard to believe that the vast, incredible intelligence that created this entire universe is only an old man sitting on a cloud above the planet Earth, watching my genitals.
[04:00:37]
Louise Hay: And yet so many of us were taught this concept as a child. It is vital that we release foolish, outmoded ideas that do not support us and nourish us. I feel strongly that even our concept god needs to be one that is for us, not against us. There are so many different religions to choose from. If you have one now that tells you you are a sinner and a lowly worm, get another one. I am not suggesting that everybody runs around having free sex. I am saying that some of our rules do not make sense and that is why so many people break them and become hypocrites. When we remove sexual guilt from people and teach them to love and respect themselves, then they will automatically treat themselves and others in ways that are for their highest good and greatest joy.
[04:01:41]
Louise Hay: The reason we have so many problems with our sexuality is because many of us have self hatred and self disgust, and so we treat ourselves and others badly. It is not enough to teach children in school the mechanics of sexuality. We need, on a very deep level to allow children to remember that their bodies, genitals and sexuality are something to rejoice about. I truly believe that people who love themselves and their bodies will not abuse themselves or others. I find that most bladder problems come from being pissed off, usually at a partner. Something makes us angry that has to do with our femininity or our masculinity.
[04:02:33]
Louise Hay: Women have more bladder problems than men because they are more prone to hide their hurt. Vaginitis, again, usually involves feeling romantically hurt by a partner. Men's prostate problems have a lot to do with self worth and also believing that as he gets older he becomes less of a man. Impotence adds fear, and sometimes is even related to spite against a previous mate. Frigidity comes from fear or a belief that it is wrong to enjoy the body. It also comes from self disgust, and it can be intensified by an insensitive partner. PMS premenstrual syndrome, which has reached epidemic proportions, is concurrent with the increase of media advertising. These ads continuously hammer home the concept that the female body must be sprayed and powdered and douched and overcleans in numerous ways to make it even barely acceptable.
[04:03:44]
Louise Hay: At the same time, women are coming into their own as equal beings, while being bombarded negatively with the idea that the feminine processes are not quite acceptable. This, combined with the tremendous amounts of sugar being consumed today, creates a fertile breeding ground for PMS. The feminine processes, all of them, including menstruation and menopause, are normal natural processes. We must accept them as that. Our bodies are beautiful, magnificent and wondrous. It is my belief that venereal disease is almost always sexual guilt. It comes from a feeling, often subconscious, that it is not right to express ourselves sexually.
[04:04:36]
Louise Hay: A carrier with a venereal disease can have many partners, but only those whose mental and physical immune systems are weak will be susceptible to it. In addition to the old standard diseases, in recent years we have created an increase of herpes. This is a disease that comes back again and again to punish us for our belief that we are bad. Herpes has a tendency to flare up when we're emotionally upset, and that tells us a lot right there. Now, let's take that same theory over into the gay community, where they have all the same problems everybody else has, plus much of society pointing their fingers at them and saying bad. Usually their own mothers and fathers are also saying you're bad.
[04:05:28]
Louise Hay: This is a very heavy load to carry. So now we have a disease called AIDS, which is a much more frightening disease than herpes and can even be fatal. In the heterosexual society, many women dread growing old because of the belief system we have created around the glory of youth. It is not so difficult for the men because they become distinguished with a bit of gray hair. The older man often gets respect and people may even look up to him. Not so for most gay men, for they have created a culture that places tremendous emphasis on youth and beauty.
[04:06:10]
Louise Hay: While everyone is young to start with, only a few fit the standard of beauty. So much emphasis has been placed on the physical appearance of the body that the feelings inside have been totally disregarded. If you are not young and beautiful, it's almost as though you don't count only the body. This way of thinking is another way of saying gay is not good enough. Because of the ways gay people often treat other gays, the experience of getting old can be something to dread. It is almost better to die than to get old, and AIDS is a disease that often kills.
[04:06:54]
Louise Hay: Too often gay men feel that when they get older they will be useless and unwanted. It is almost better to destroy themselves first, and many have created a destructive lifestyle. Some of the concepts and attitudes that are so much a part of the gay lifestyle the meat rack, the constant judging, the refusal to get close to another, et cetera, are monstrous. And AIDS is a monstrous disease. These sorts of attitudes and behavior patterns can only create guilt on a very deep level, no matter how much we may camp. Camping, which can be such fun, can also be extremely destructive both to the givers and the recipients. It's another way of avoiding closeness and intimacy.
[04:07:50]
Louise Hay: In no way am I trying to create guilt for anyone. However, we need to look at the things that need to be changed in order for all of our lives to function with love and joy and respect. 50 years ago, almost all gay men were closeted, and now they have been able to create pockets in society where they can at least be relatively open. I feel it is unfortunate that much of what they have created gives so much pain to their gay brothers. While it is often deplorable the way straights treat gays, it is tragic the way many gays treat other gays. Men traditionally have always had more sexual partners than women. And when men get together, of course, there will be a great deal more sex. That's all fine and good. However, some men like having lots of partners to satisfy their deep need for self esteem rather than for the joy of it.
[04:08:56]
Louise Hay: I do not believe there is anything wrong with having several partners when safe sex is practiced. However, if we need several partners in a day just to prove our self worth, then we are not coming from a nourishing space and we need to make some mental changes. This is a time for healing, for making whole, not for condemnation. We must rise out of the limitations of the past. We are all divine, magnificent expressions of life. And let us claim that now. The colon represents our ability to let go, to release that which we no longer need. The body, being in the perfect rhythm and flow of life, needs a balance of intake, assimilation and elimination.
[04:09:50]
Louise Hay: It is only our fears that block the releasing of the old. Even if constipated people are not actually stingy, they usually do not trust that there will ever be enough. They hold on to an old relationship that gives them pain. They are afraid to throw out clothes that have been in the closet for years because they might need them someday. They stay in a stifling job or never give themselves pleasure because they must save for that rainy day. We do not rummage in last night's garbage to find today's meal. Learn to trust the process of life always to bring you what you need.
[04:10:38]
Louise Hay: Our legs carry us forward in life. Leg problems often indicate a fear of moving forward or a reluctance to move forward in a certain direction. We run with our legs, we drag our legs, we pussyfoot, we are knock knee pigeon toed and we have big, fat, angry thighs filled with childhood resentment. Not wanting to do things will often produce minor leg problems. Varicose veins represent standing in a job or a place we hate. The veins lose their ability to carry joy. Knees like the neck have to do with flexibility. Only they express bending and pride and ego and stubbornness. Often when moving forward we are fearful of bending and we become inflexible this stiffens the joints.
[04:11:39]
Louise Hay: We want to move forward, but we do not want to change our ways. This is why knees take so long to heal. Our ego is involved and we get our pride and our self righteousness involved. The next time you have a knee problem, ask yourself where you are being self righteous, where you are refusing to bend. Drop the stubbornness and let it go. Life is flow, life is movement and to be comfortable we must be flexible and move with it. A willow tree bends and sways and flows with the wind and is always graceful and at ease with life. Our feet have to do with our understanding our understanding of ourselves and of life past, present and future.
[04:12:34]
Louise Hay: Many old people have a difficult time walking. Their understanding has been warped and they often feel there is no place to go. Little children move on happy dancing feet. Elderly people often shuffle as if they were reluctant to move. Our skin represents our individuality. Skin problems usually mean we feel our individuality is being threatened somehow. We feel that others have power over us. We are thin skinned. Things get under our skin. We feel skinned alive. Our nerves are right under our skin. One of the quickest ways to heal skin problems is to nurture yourself by saying in your mind I approve of myself several hundred times a day. Take back your own power.
[04:13:32]
Louise Hay: Accidents are no accident like everything else in our lives, we create them. It is not that we necessarily say I want to have an accident, but we do have the mental thought patterns that can attract an accident to us. Some people seem to be accident prone and others go for a lifetime without ever getting a scratch. Accidents are expressions of anger. They indicate built up frustrations at not feeling the freedom to speak up for oneself. Accidents also indicate rebellion against authority. We get so mad we want to hit people and instead we get hit.
[04:14:20]
Louise Hay: When we are angry at ourselves, when we feel guilty, when we feel the need for punishment. An accident is a marvelous way of taking care of that. An accident is not our fault. An accident allows us to turn to others for sympathy and attention. We get our wounds bathed and attended to. We often get bed rest, sometimes for an extended period of time, and we get pain. Where this pain occurs in the body gives us a clue to which area of life we feel guilty about. The degree of physical damage lets us know how severely we felt we needed to be punished and how long the sentence should be.
[04:15:08]
Louise Hay: Anorexia, bulimia is denying the self life an extreme form of self hatred? Food is nourishment on the most basic level. Why would you deny yourself nourishment? Why do you want to die? What is going on in your life that is so awful that you want to get out completely? Self hatred is only hating a thought you have about yourself and thoughts can be changed. What is so terrible about you? Were you reared in a critical family? Did you have critical teachers? Did your early religious training tell you you were not good enough as you are? So often we try to find reasons that make sense to us for why we are not loved and accepted just as we are. Because of the fashion industry's obsession with Slenderness, many women who believe I'm not good enough what's the use? Will use their bodies as a focal point for self hatred.
[04:16:19]
Louise Hay: On one level they are saying if I were only thin enough, then they would love me. But it doesn't work. Nothing works from the outside. Self approval and self acceptance are the key. Arthritis is a disease that comes from a constant pattern of criticism. First of all criticism of the self and then criticism of other people. Arthritic people often attract a lot of criticism because it is their pattern to criticize. They are cursed with perfectionism, the need to be perfect at all times, in every situation. Do you know of anyone on this planet who is perfect? I do not. Why do we set up standards that say we have to be super person in order to be barely acceptable?
[04:17:20]
Louise Hay: It's such a strong expression of not being good enough and such a heavy burden to carry. Asthma we call Smother Love there is a feeling that you do not have the right to breathe for yourself. Asthmatic children often have overdeveloped consciences. They take on guilt feelings for whatever seems wrong in their environment. They feel unworthy, therefore guilty and in the need of self punishment. Geographic cures sometimes work with asthma, especially if the family does not go along. Usually asthmatic children will outgrow their disease. This really means they go away to school, get married, or leave home somehow and the disease dissolves.
[04:18:13]
Louise Hay: Later in life, an experience may happen that pushes an old button within them and they have another attack. When that happens, they are not really responding to the current circumstances, but rather to what used to go on in their childhood. Boils and burns, cuts, fevers, sores, itis and inflammations all are indications of anger expressing in the body. Anger will find its way to express no matter how much we try to suppress it. Steam that is built up must be released. We fear our anger lest we destroy our world. Yet anger can be released as simply as saying I'm angry about this. True, we can't always say this to our bosses. We can, however, beat the bed or scream in the car or play tennis or run.
[04:19:08]
Louise Hay: These are harmless ways of physically releasing anger. Spiritual people often believe they shouldn't get angry. True, we are all working towards the time when we no longer blame others for our feelings. But until we arrive there, it is healthier to acknowledge what we do feel in the moment. Cancer is a disease caused by deep resentment held for a long time till it literally eats away at the body. Something happens in childhood that destroys the sense of trust. This experience is never forgotten, and the individual lives with a sense of self pity, finding it hard to develop and maintain long term meaningful relationships.
[04:20:01]
Louise Hay: Because of that belief system, life seems to be a series of disappointments. A feeling of hopelessness and helplessness and loss permeates the thinking and it becomes easy to blame others for all our problems. People with cancer are also very self critical. To me, learning to love and accept the self is the key to healing cancer. Overweight represents a need for protection. We seek protection from hurts, slights, criticism, abuse, sexuality and sexual advances, from a fear of life in general, and also specifically. Take your choice.
[04:20:49]
Louise Hay: I am not a heavy person, yet I have learned over the years that when I am feeling insecure and not at ease, I will put on a few pounds. When the threat is gone, the excess weight goes away by itself. Fighting fat is a waste of time and energy. Diets don't work. The minute you stop, the weight goes back up. Loving and approving of yourself, trusting in the process of life and feeling safe because you know the power of your own mind make up the best diet I know of. Go on a diet from negative thoughts and your weight will take care of itself. Too many parents stuff food in the baby's mouth. No matter what the problem is, these babies grow up to stand in front of an open refrigerator saying I don't know what I want. Whenever there's a problem.
[04:21:48]
Louise Hay: Pain of any sort, to me, is an indication of guilt. Guilt always seeks punishment, and punishment creates pain. Chronic pain comes from chronic guilt, often so deeply buried that we're not even aware of what it is. Guilt is a totally useless emotion. It never makes anyone feel better, nor does it change a situation. Your sentence is now over, so let yourself out of prison. Forgiving is only letting go. Strokes are blood clots. Congestion in the bloodstream, in the area of the brain, cutting off the blood supply to the brain. The brain is the computer of the body. Blood is joy. The veins and arteries are channels of joy. Everything works under the law and the action of love. There is love in every bit of intelligence in the universe. It is impossible to work and function well without love and joy being experienced.
[04:22:58]
Louise Hay: Negative thinking clogs up the brain and there is no room for love and joy to flow in its free and open way. Laughter cannot flow if it is not allowed to be free and foolish. It is the same with love and joy. Life is not grim unless we make it so, unless we choose to look at it in that way. We can find total disaster in the smallest upset and we can find some joy in the greatest tragedy. It is up to us. Sometimes we try to force our life to go in a certain way when it's not for our highest good. Sometimes we create strokes to force us to go in a totally different direction to reevaluate our lifestyle.
[04:23:49]
Louise Hay: Stiffness in the body represents stiffness in the mind. Fear makes us cling to old ways and we find it difficult to be flexible. If we believe there is only one way to do something, we often find ourselves becoming stiff. We can always find another way to do things. Remember Virginia Satir and her 250 different ways to do dishes. Surgery has its place. It is good for broken bones and accidents and for conditions beyond the abilities of a beginner to dissolve. It may be easier under these conditions to have the operation and concentrate all the mental healing work on seeing that the condition is not recreated.
[04:24:42]
Louise Hay: More and more each day there are many wonderful people in the medical profession who are truly dedicated to helping humanity. More and more doctors are turning to holistic ways of healing, treating the whole person. Yet most doctors do not work with the cause of any illness. They only treat the symptom, the effect. They do this in one of two ways they poison or they mutilate. Surgeons cut, and if you go to surgeons, they will usually recommend cutting. However, if the decision for surgery is made, prepare yourself for this experience so it will go as smoothly as possible and you will heal as rapidly as possible.
[04:25:31]
Louise Hay: Ask the surgeon and staff to cooperate with you in this. Surgeons and their staffs in the operating rooms are often unaware that even though the patient is unconscious, they are still hearing and picking up everything said on a subconscious level. With my own clients, I always suggest they affirm that every hand that touches me in the hospital is a healing hand and expresses only love, and the operation goes quickly and easily and perfectly. Another is I am totally comfortable at all times. After the surgery, have some soft and pleasant music playing as much as possible and affirm to yourself, I am healing rapidly, comfortably and peacefully.
[04:26:24]
Louise Hay: Tell yourself every day, I feel better and better. If you can make yourself a tape of a series of positive affirmations, take your tape recorder to the hospital and let these play over and over while you rest and recuperate. Notice sensations, not pain. Imagine love flowing from your own heart down through your arms and into your hands. And place your hands over the part that is healing and say to this place I love you and I'm helping you to get well.
[04:27:02]
Louise Hay: Swelling of the body represents clogging and stagnation in the emotional thinking. We create situations where we get hurt and we cling to these memories. Swelling often represents bottled up tears, feeling stuck and trapped, or blaming others for our own limitations. Release the past. Let it wash away. Take back your own power. Stop dwelling on what you don't want. Use your mind to create what you do want. Let yourself flow with the tide of life. Tumors are false growth. An oyster takes a tiny grain of sand and to protect itself grows a hard and shiny shell around it. We call it a pearl and think it is beautiful.
[04:27:57]
Louise Hay: We can take an old herd and nurse it and keep pulling the scab off it, and in time we have a tumor. I call this running the old movie. I believe the reason women have so many tumors in the uterus area is that they take an emotional hurt, a blow to their femininity and nurse it. I call this the he done me wrong syndrome. Just because a relationship ends does not mean there is something wrong with us, nor does it lessen our self worth. It is not what happens, it is how we react to it. We are each 100% responsible for all our experiences. What belief about yourself do you need to change in order to attract more loving kinds of behavior?
[04:28:54]
Louise Hay: In the infinity of life where I am, all is perfect, whole and complete. I recognize my body as a good friend. Each cell in my body has divine intelligence. I listen to what it tells me and know that its advice is valid. I am always safe and divinely, protected and guided. I choose to be healthy and free. All is well in my world.
[04:29:33]
Louise Hay: Chapter 15. I am healthy, whole and complete. Chapter 15 of the book is a list which correlates diseases you may have had or are having, and the probable causes. That list can be found on the tape from my book entitled Heal Your Body. Chapter 16. My Story. Will you tell me a little about your childhood? Briefly? This is a question I've asked so many clients. It is not that I need to hear all the details. If they have problems now, the patterns that created them began a long time ago. When I was a little girl of 18 months, I experienced my parents divorcing. I don't remember that as being so bad. What I do remember is when my mother went to work as a live in domestic and boarded me out.
[04:30:29]
Louise Hay: The story goes that I cried nonstop for three weeks. The people taking care of me couldn't handle that, and my mother had to make other arrangements. How she managed as a single parent brings my admiration today. Then, however, all I knew and cared about was that I was not getting all the loving attention I once had. I have never been able to determine if my mother loved my stepfather or whether she married him in order to provide a home for us. This man had been brought up in Europe in a heavy Germanic home with much brutality, and he had never learned any other way to manage a family. My mother became pregnant with my sister, and then the 1930s depression descended upon us, and we found ourselves stuck in a home of violence. I was five years old.
[04:31:23]
Louise Hay: To add to the scenario, it was just about this time that a neighbor, an old Wino, as I remember, raped me. The doctor's examination is still vivid in my mind, as was the court case in which I was the star witness. The man was sentenced to 15 years in prison. I was told repeatedly, it was your fault, and I spent many years fearing that when he was released, he would come and get me for being so terrible as to put him in jail. Most of my childhood was spent enduring both physical and sexual abuse. With a lot of hard labor thrown in, my self image became lower and lower, and few things seemed to go right for me. I began to express this pattern in the outside world.
[04:32:14]
Louise Hay: There was an incident in the fourth grade that was so typical of what my life was like. We were having a party in school one day, and there were several cakes to share. Most of the children in this school, except for me, were from comfortable, middle class families. I was poorly dressed, with a funny bowl haircut, high top black shoes, and I smelled from the raw garlic I had to eat every day to keep the worms away. We never had cake. We couldn't afford it. There was an old neighborhood woman who gave me on my birthday, and at Christmas, the $0.10 went into the family budget, and the dollar bought my underwear for the year at the dime store. So this day we were having a party at school, and there was so much cake that as they were cutting it, some of the kids who could have cake almost every day were getting two and three pieces.
[04:33:11]
Louise Hay: When the teacher finally got around to me, and of course, I was last, there was no cake left, not one piece. I can see clearly now that it was my already confirmed belief that I was worthless and did not deserve anything that put me at the end of the line with no cake. It was my pattern. They were only being a mirror for my beliefs. When I was 15, I could not take the sexual abuse any longer, and I ran away from home and from school. The job I found as a waitress in a diner seemed so much easier than the heavy yard work I had to do at home. Being starved for love and affection and having the lowest of self esteem. I willingly gave my body to whoever was kind to me. And just after my 16th birthday, I gave birth to a baby girl.
[04:34:08]
Louise Hay: I felt it was impossible to keep her. However, I was able to find her a good, loving home. I found a childless couple who longed for a baby, and I lived in their home for the last four months. And when I went to the hospital, I had the child in their name. Under such circumstances, I never experienced the joys of motherhood, only the loss and the guilt and shame. Then it was only a shameful time to get over with as soon as possible. I only remember her big toes, which were unusual like mine. If we ever do meet, I will know for sure if I see her toes. I left when the child was five days old. I immediately went back home and said to my mother, who had continued to be a victim, come on, you don't have to take this any longer. I'm getting you out of here.
[04:35:01]
Louise Hay: And she came with me, leaving my ten year old sister, who had always been Daddy's darling, to stay with her father. After helping my mother get a job as a domestic in a small hotel and settling her into an apartment where she was free and comfortable, I felt my obligations were through. I left for Chicago with a girlfriend to stay a month and did not return for over 30 years. The violence I experienced as a child, combined with the sense of worthlessness I had developed along the way, attracted men into my life who mistreated me and often beaten. I could have spent the rest of my life berating men, and I probably would still be having the same experiences.
[04:35:47]
Louise Hay: Gradually, however, through positive work experiences, my self esteem grew and those kinds of men began to leave my life. They no longer fit my old pattern of unconsciously, believing I deserved abuse. I do not condone their behavior, but if it were not my pattern, they would not have been attracted to me. Now, a man who abuses women does not even know I exist. Our patterns no longer attract. After a few years in Chicago doing rather menial work, I went to New York and was lucky enough to become a high fashion model. Yet even modeling for the big designers did not help my self esteem very much.
[04:36:36]
Louise Hay: It only gave me more ways to find fault with myself. I refused to recognize my own beauty. I was in the fashion industry for many years. I met and married a wonderful, educated English gentleman. We traveled the world, met royalty, and even dined at the White House. Though I was a model and had a wonderful man, still my self esteem remained low until years later when I began the inner work. One day after 14 years of marriage, he announced his desire to marry another just when I was beginning to believe that good things can last. Yes, I was crushed. But time passes and I lived on. I could feel my life changing. A numerologist one spring confirmed it by telling me that in the fall, a small event would occur that would change my life.
[04:37:35]
Louise Hay: It was so small that I didn't notice it till several months later. Quite by chance, I had gone to a meeting at the Church of Religious Science in New York City. While their message was new to me, something within me said, pay attention and so I did. I not only went to the Sunday services, but I began to take their weekly classes. The beauty in fashion world was losing its interest for me. How many years could I remain concerned with my waist measurement or the shape of my eyebrow? From a high school dropout who never studied anything, I now became an avaricious student, devouring everything I could lay my hands on that pertained to metaphysics and healing.
[04:38:23]
Louise Hay: The Church of Religious Science became a new home for me. Even though most of my life was going on as usual, this new course of study began to take up more and more of my time. The next thing I knew, it was three years later, and I was eligible to apply to become one of the Church's licensed practitioners. That's where I began as a Church counselor many years ago. It was a small beginning. During this time, I became a transcendental meditator. My Church was not giving the ministerial training program for another year, so I decided to do something special for myself. I went to College, MIU, Maharishi's International University in Fairfield, Iowa.
[04:39:12]
Louise Hay: It was the perfect place for me at that time. In the freshman year, every Monday morning, we began a new subject, things I had only heard of, such as biology and chemistry, even the theory of relativity. Every Saturday morning, there was a test. Sunday was free, and Monday morning we began anew. There were none of the distractions so typical of my life in New York City. After dinner, we all went to our rooms to study. I was the oldest kid on campus and loved every moment of it. No smoking, drinking, or drugs were allowed, and we meditated four times a day. The day I left, I thought I would collapse from the cigarette smoke in the airport. Back in New York, I resumed my life. I took the ministerial training program. I became very active in the Church and in its social activities.
[04:40:08]
Louise Hay: I began speaking at their noon meetings and seeing clients. This quickly blossomed into a full-time career. Out of the work I was doing, I was inspired to put together the little book Heal Your Body, which began as a simple list of metaphysical causations for physical illnesses in the body. I began to lecture and travel and hold small classes. Then one day, I was diagnosed as having cancer. With my background of being raped at five and having been a battered child, it was no wonder I manifested cancer in the vaginal area. Like anyone else who has just been told they have cancer, I went into total panic. Yet because of all my work with clients, I knew that mental healing worked, and here I was being given a chance to prove it to myself. After all, I had written the book on mental patterns, and I knew cancer is a disease of deep resentment that has been held for a long time until it literally eats away at the body.
[04:41:17]
Louise Hay: I had been refusing to be willing to dissolve all the anger and resentment at them over my childhood. There was no time to waste. I had a lot of work to do. The word incurable, which is so frightening to so many people, means to me that this particular condition cannot be cured by any outer means and that we must go within to find the cure. If I had an operation to get rid of the cancer and did not clear the mental pattern that created it, then the doctors would just keep cutting Louise until there was no more Louise to cut. I didn't like that idea. If I had the operation to remove the cancerous growth and also cleared the mental pattern that was causing the cancer, then it would not return.
[04:42:12]
Louise Hay: If cancer or any other illness returns, I do not believe it is because the doctors did not get it all out, but rather that the patient has made no mental changes. They just recreate the same illness, perhaps in a different part of the body. I also believe that if I could clear the mental pattern that created this cancer, then I would not even need the operation. So I barganed for time and the doctors grudgingly gave me three months when I said I did not have the money. I immediately took responsibility for my own healing. I read and investigated everything I could find on alternative ways to assist my healing process. I went to several health food stores and bought every book they had on the subject of cancer. I went to the library and did more reading. I checked out foot reflexology and colon therapy and thought they would both be beneficial to me.
[04:43:14]
Louise Hay: I seemed to be led to exactly the right people. After reading about foot reflexology, I wanted to find a practitioner. I attended a lecture and while I usually sit in the front row, this night I was compelled to sit in the back. Within a minute, a man came and sat beside me and guess what? He was a foot reflexologist. We met three times a week for two months, and it was a great help. I also knew I had to love myself a great deal more. There was little love expressed in my childhood, and no one had made it okay for me to feel good about myself. I had adopted their attitudes of continually picking on and criticizing me, which became second nature.
[04:44:02]
Louise Hay: I came to the realization through my work with the Church that it was okay and even essential for me to love and approve of myself. Yet I kept putting it off, rather like the diet you will always start tomorrow. But I could no longer put it off. At first it was very difficult for me to do things like stand in front of the mirror and say, Louise, I love you. I really love you. However, as I persisted, I found that several situations came up in my life where in the past I would have been raised mated myself, and now, because of the mirror exercise and other work, I was not doing so. I was making some progress.
[04:44:46]
Louise Hay: I knew I had to clear the patterns of resentment I'd been holding since childhood. It was imperative for me to let go of the blame. Yes, I had had a very difficult childhood with lots of abuse, mental, physical, and sexual, but that was many years ago, and it was no excuse for the way I was treating myself now. I was literally eating my body with cancerous growth because I had not forgiven. It was time for me to go beyond the incidents themselves and to begin to understand what types of experiences could have created people who would treat a child that way. With the help of a good therapist, I expressed all the old bottled up anger by beating pillows and howling with rage. This made me feel cleaner.
[04:45:39]
Louise Hay: Then I began to piece together the scraps of stories my parents had told me of their own childhood. I started to see a larger picture of their lives. With my growing understanding and from an adult viewpoint, I began to have compassion for their pain and the blame slowly began to dissolve. In addition, I hunted for a good nutritionist to help me cleanse and detoxify my body from all the junky foods I had eaten over the years. I learned that junky foods accumulate and create a toxic body. Junkie thoughts accumulate and create toxic conditions in the mind. I was given a very strict diet with lots of green vegetables and not much else. I even had colonics three times a week for the first month.
[04:46:33]
Louise Hay: I did not have an operation, nor did I have radiation or chemotherapy. However, as a result of all the thorough mental physical cleansing, six months after my diagnosis, I was able to get the medical profession to agree with what I already knew that I no longer had even a trace of cancer. Now I knew from personal experience that disease can be healed if we are willing to change the way we think and believe and act. Sometimes what seems to be a big tragedy turns out to become the greatest good in our lives. I learned so much from that experience, and I came to value life in a new way. I began to look at what was really important to me, and I made a decision finally to leave the treeless city of New York and its extreme weather.
[04:47:33]
Louise Hay: Some of my clients insisted they would die if I left them, and I assured them I would be back twice a year to check on their progress. And telephones can reach everywhere. So I closed my business and took a leisurely train trip to California, deciding to use Los Angeles as a starting point. Even though I had been born here many years before, I knew almost no one anymore, except for my mother and sister, who both now lived on the outskirts about an hour away. We had never been a close family, nor an open one, but still I was unpleasantly surprised to learn that my mother had been blind for a few years and no one had bothered to tell me. My sister was too busy ish to see me, so I let her be and began to set up my new life.
[04:48:25]
Louise Hay: My little book, Heal Your Body, opened many doors for me. I began to go to every New Age type of meeting I could find. I would introduce myself and, when appropriate, give out a copy of the Little Blue Book. For the first six months, I went to the beach a lot, knowing that when I became busy, there would be less time for such leisurely pursuits. Slowly, the clients appeared. I was asked to speak here and there, and things began to come together as Los Angeles welcomed me. Within a couple of years, I was able to move into a lovely home. My new lifestyle in Los Angeles was a large jump in consciousness from my early upbringing. Things were going smoothly indeed, how swiftly our lives can change completely. One night I received a phone call from my sister. The first call in two years.
[04:49:195]
Louise Hay: She told me our mother, now 90, blind and almost deaf, had fallen and broken her back in one moment. My mother went from being a strong, independent woman to being a helpless child in pain. She broke her back and also broke open the wall of secrecy around my sister. Finally, we were all beginning to communicate. I discovered that my sister also had a severe back problem that impaired her sitting and walking and which was very painful. She suffered in silence, and though she looked anorexic, her husband did not know she was ill. After spending a month in the hospital, my mother was ready to go home. But in no way could she take care of herself. So she came to live with me.
[04:50:10]
Louise Hay: Though trusting in the process of life, I did not know how I could handle it all. So I said to God, okay, I will take care of her, but you have to give me help and you have to provide the money. It was quite an adjustment for both of us. She arrived on a Saturday and the following Friday I had to go to San Francisco for four days. I could not leave her alone, and I had to go. So I said, God, you handle this. I have to have the right person to help us before I leave. And on the following Thursday, the perfect woman appeared and moved in to organize my home for me and my mother. It was another confirmation of one of my basic beliefs. Whatever I need to know is revealed to me, and whatever I need comes to me in divine right order.
[04:51:02]
Louise Hay: I realized it was lesson time for me once again, here was an opportunity to clean up a lot of that garbage from childhood. My mother had not been able to protect me when I was a child. However, I could and would take care of her now. Between my mother and sister, a whole new adventure began. To give my sister the help she asked for presented another challenge. I learned that when I had rescued my mother so many years ago, my stepfather had then turned his rage and pain against my sister, and it was her turn to be brutalized. I realized that what started out to be a physical problem was then greatly exaggerated by fear and tension, plus the belief that no one could help her.
[04:51:51]
Louise Hay: So here was Louise, not wanting to be a rescuer and yet wanting to give her sister an opportunity to choose wellness at this point in her life. Slowly, the unraveling began. We progressed step by step as I strove to provide an atmosphere of safety while we explored various alternative avenues of healing. My mother responded very well. She exercised as best she could four times a day. Her body got stronger and more flexible. I took her to get a hearing aid, and she became more interested in life. In spite of her Christian Science beliefs. I persuaded her to have a cataract removed from one eye. What a joy for her when she began to see again and for us to see the world through her eyes.
[04:52:40]
Louise Hay: She was so pleased to read again. My mother and I began to find time to sit and talk to each other in ways we had never done before. A new understanding developed between us. We both became freer as we cried and laughed and hugged together. Sometimes she pushed my buttons, which only told me there was something further for me to clear. In 1986, my mother passed away at 91. Quickly and peacefully, we had cleared as much as we could and both felt a release from guilt. My sister went back to her seclusion and is doing it her way. My work continues on an ever expanding level. My staff continues to increase, and my goal is to create a world where it is safe for us to love each other. And this is where my life is now.
[04:53:36]
Louise Hay: In the infinity of life, where I am, all is perfect, whole and complete. Each one of us, myself included, experiences the richness and fullness of life in ways that are meaningful to us. I now look at the past with love and choose to learn from my old experiences. There is no right or wrong, nor good or bad. The past is over and done. There is only the experience of the moment. I love myself for bringing myself through this past into this present moment. I share what and who I am, for I know we are all one in spirit. All is well in my world.