When the student is ready to learn, a teacher shows up. I first heard of Wayne Dyer in school. At that time, I was way too busy to read any of his work, but he showed up again on a PBS program, Wishes Fulfilled. He was such an amazing speaker and most of everything he said resonated with what I’ve been doing in the recent past, so when his book of the same name appeared, I was ready. I suppose if I missed the hint the first time around, I still had two other opportunities to learn from him.
As the title suggests, this book is all about how to attain your wishes: this could be landing that dream job, recovering from a serious illness, or whatever your heart’s desire. Wayne talks about how your potential is really only limited to your imagination – so if you dream big, you will be big. For example, before the airplane was invented, people had to have imagined it in their minds first. And no matter how many naysayers said, “that’s impossible”, it eventually came true.
One of the more important “take away points” I took from this book was that to make positive affirmations work, you have to feel them. I really think this is the factor that differentiates the people who think affirmations are useless and don’t work and the people who give it an honest go and make it work for them.
When I reflect on it, for whatever reason, people have a natural tendency to think negatively and the emotions that come with it are like second nature. We’re brought up to think that “negative” means “realistic” and we behave and act on this thought pattern. So, logically, naysayers try an affirmation, but their knee-jerk reaction is strong. Since the negative feeling they get from it is so much greater than the positive feeling they would get from the affirmation, it doesn’t work. I’ve been using positive affirmations for over a year. At first, it felt a little silly, almost as if I were lying to myself – which was interesting because I started out with Louise Hay’s “I love and approve of myself”. Strange that it would take so much effort to love myself when it should be innate! But I digress. With more repetitions, the feeling eventually manifested and I’m a lot better for it – to the state where I’m minimally affected by what others say/do.
Affirmations aside, to translate that into having your wishes fulfilled, we must speak as if we have already attained the ideal and (obviously) feel it too. Self-development 2.0 goals: work on my “I am” statements and eliminate any and all of the negative thoughts. Sounds like it`s going to be a lot of fun.
FTC Disclosure: I received this book for free from Hay House Publishing for this review. The opinion in this review is unbiased and reflects my honest judgment of the product.
