I’ve been working with the affirmation “I choose to accept myself as I am.” I found that my brain likes to sneak words onto the end of that like “…even though I’m old.” Or “…in spite of needing to lose about fifty pounds.”
As you’re probably aware, Louise Hay, the founder of Hay House, took affirmations to a new level with her book You Can Heal Your Life. She believed that in order to heal the body, we must change our mental patterns. We have to love ourselves a great deal more than we do.
For example, high blood pressure is caused by long-standing unresolved emotional problems. The new thought pattern is I joyously release the past. I am at peace.
It can be hard enough to repeat something like that. Louise recommended taking it further—saying it into the mirror. Or even better, singing it to yourself.
Yikes. I don’t know about you, but I feel like an idiot looking myself in eyes and singing.
And yet I gladly did it with my children and grandchildren.
Do you remember being sung to as a child? Did it matter if your mother, father, grandmother, aunt, whoever it was had a beautiful singing voice? Of course not. So don’t even start with “But I can’t sing.”
It turns out there’s a big difference between singing by yourself in the car and singing to yourself in the mirror. Or maybe I should speak for myself.
One of the songs I used to sing to my children and grandchildren was from summer camp. It was covered by a number of groups in the 1960s; John Denver even covered it in the mid 70s.
“Today while the blossoms still cling to the vine,
I’ll taste your strawberries, I’ll drink your sweet wine.
A million tomorrows shall all pass away, ‘ere I forget all the joy that is mine, today.”
So, I have no problem singing that to a child. As an experiment, as the prelude to singing an affirmation to myself, I tried singing it in the mirror. Just those three lines. Awkward, but not painful.
I’ll probably never reach Louise Hay status with affirmations. But I find that working with affirmations has brought change to my life. Last year I used “My life is an adventure, taking me new places inside and out” and found myself in Las Vegas, Orlando, and Kohler, Wisconsin, within two months.
As to “I choose to accept myself as I am”, I add something positive and true to the end before my brain sneaks in a negative thought. I choose to accept myself as I am–I am intelligent. I choose to accept myself as I am—I have a great sense of humor. I choose to accept myself as I am—I am a powerful manifester.