“Good-bye Old” – “Hello New”

 

I used to fear the New Year.  I always anticipated the worst rather than looking for positive outcomes that a New Year could bring.  I am not sure how you feel about facing the unknown.  Are you optimistic or rather pessimistic about your future?  I can assure you that looking at our world with a bleak perspective is not joyful living. Unknowingly, you will gravitate towards a negative outcome unless you change this grim outlook on life. Trust me.  I’ve been there.

You may be facing tough financial times. You certainly can lament about this. Once you’ve vented, then it’s time to do “something”.  The “something” might change the way you see your situation.   You may have heard “change your thoughts; change your life.”  Once you resolve to take on the challenge to change your negative thoughts into positive ones, you will be grateful you did. The positive effects of self-talk are life changing.  If you are not in the habit of consciously listening to yourself, I recommend you do.  You need to listen to your self-talk so you can eradicate any negativism.

A number of years ago I attend a course, “Imagine 21 ~ Fast Track to Change”, offered through the Pacific Institute. This four-day course dramatically changed my outlook on every aspect of life.   The reality is that life is made up of different facets: professional, spiritual, family, health, social, community, financial and education. You may choose to redefine the titles to include career and relationship or include new ones such as recreation and business.  Whatever is important to you makes up your Life Balance Wheel as shown in the diagram below.  The process starts with conducting a self-assessment to identify how satisfied you are with each area of your life.  In this assessment, “1” reflects the lowest degree of satisfaction while “10” reflects the highest.

 

 

The point of this exercise is to provide a visual tool so you can examine your life as a whole. If you desire balance in your life, you will want to identify areas which require improvement. 

 

Lou Tice, founder of the Pacific Institute, teaches that “You decide on areas where you might want to grow, where you have potential.  It could be with your family, your income, or some form of your behavior that you are not pleased with.  I want you to select many areas of your life, not just one.  You are a whole person, not compartmentalized, and it won’t do you any good just to grow in one area.  I want you to grow as a full person: spiritually, emotionally, as a leader, or whatever is important to you as a whole person, the kind of person you choose to be. Select many areas where you want to grow, and do them all at the same time.  You are very capable of doing so.

Most important of these are the inside changes in you, to develop your inner strength, your self-efficacy.  It doesn’t do any good to start goal-setting for outside stuff, like your income, if you don’t grow on the inside.  You are already about as good as you are, and your life is about as good as your self-image.  You must change the inside in order to create a better world for yourself outside.”

One way to implement change is by creating a vision of your new reality with the use of affirmations.   Affirmations are effective words strung together to create a mental image of the positive scenario you want to instill in your mind. As Lou Tice shared you have to change from the inside. Until you do, you will not see real change on the outside.  By repeatedly reminding yourself of your new vision with the use of affirmations, you will gravitate towards your goal. I did and I know you will too.

 

 

When I took the course, I wrote my affirmations on index cards.  Recently, I discovered Pacific Institute has created an app which allows you to create goals and corresponding affirmations.  The Pacific Institute Affirmation Assistant may be the perfect fit unless you prefer to use index cards as I did.  Whichever method you incorporate, you will discover the positive effects from reciting affirmations daily.    

Tips on writing effective affirmations can be found here.  The DNA of every affirmation will have the following make-up:

q  An affirmation is personal.

q  An affirmation is positive.

q  An affirmation is written in the present tense.

q  An affirmation denotes achievement.

q  An affirmation makes no comparison.

q  An affirmation contains action words.

q  An affirmation contains emotion words.

q  An affirmation is accurate.

q  An affirmation has balance.

q  An affirmation is realistic.

q  An affirmation is ideally confidential.

When writing affirmations about money, I borrowed bits and pieces from others to create this.  “Money comes easily and frequently.  I can afford anything and everything I want.  I am a money magnet.  I love money and money loves me.  I am receiving money every day.”  Be sure to write the action and the emotion with clarity.

As you say “Good-bye” to 2015, say “Good-bye” to your old way of thinking.  You are given a fresh new start in a new year which begins with saying “Hello” to new ways of creating amazing things in your life. Your positive self-talk with the use of powerful affirmations creates the change you desire. Your new improved outlook on life starts in 2016. Believe it!        

Happy New Year!