Change your self-concept
more mind and spirit
Dr Wayne Dyer shows you how you can change your concept of yourself and create a life in which what you imagine for yourself becomes a present fact.
Do you really think? No one has ever been able to say from whence a thought comes, or what that thought is made up of. It’s generally accepted that we think up things and we make up all of our own thoughts. To be honest, for a large portion of my life, I held these same views on thoughts originating with each individual. But now I tend to see the entire process as more of an act of observation, contemplation, and choice. I enjoy noticing that I have a continuous stream of thoughts that come from … who knows where? They have no boundaries or forms to examine, and apparently are unlimited in number and permutation! I think of the stock market ticker that runs along the bottom of a screen, with each stock price representing a simple thought.
You are capable of thinking many opposing thoughts in just a few moments, jumping helter-skelter from one idea to another – exhilaration, frustration, fear, ecstasy, worry, and so forth. Unguided and unguarded, you serve up an endless array of thoughts continuously from waking to falling asleep. Even while asleep, your mind continues observing, grabbing, and contemplating these omnipresent thoughts. There’s very little respite from this mental thought-producing process throughout your entire lifetime. If you really believe that you are the creator of all your thoughts and control the whole process, then simply stop. That’s right, just try to stop thinking. You may be able to slow the stream of thoughts down considerably, but to stop thinking and stay in a thoughtless state is quite impossible.
I’m suggesting you open your thought processes to a new idea that will help you begin to change your concept of yourself. You can think of yourself as a Divine limitless being rather than a person who doesn’t have a choice when it comes to your thoughts. Think of yourself as an observer, contemplating and selecting thoughts that you choose from that never-ending stream of thoughts on your inner screen, 24/7/365. Watch thoughts stream by from wherever they originate, and observe them rapidly transitioning and combining, appearing and disappearing. Snatch a thought from the running ribbon of thoughts and contemplate it. As you toss it around, notice how you feel – sad, depressed, happy, frightened? Every thought going by has an imprint on your concept of yourself. First be the observer, and then the contemplator. Now become the choice maker who can consciously decide to put that thought back into the running stream and pick a different one that perhaps allows you to feel better.
I am OK, I look fine, I will lose a few kilos, I am loved, I am Divine … these and millions more like them are thoughts that you can opt for rather than the ones you’ve become accustomed to choosing in the past. This is how you begin a new process to change your concept of yourself. Accept as irrevocable that it is not you setting the stream of thoughts in motion, and that stopping thinking isn’t possible. You can, however, observe, contemplate, and then choose, all in a fraction of a nanosecond. The thoughts will keep appearing on your mental TV screen just like the stock quotations - but now you’ll be choosing the ones you want to focus on, gather, retain, or let go.
3 key steps
* Redefine your self-concept by challenging everything that you’ve held to be true about yourself until now. Be open to examining everything you’ve previously thought limited you in any way. Affirm: I place no limits and no restrictions on all that I intend to accomplish and become from here on in.
* Allow yourself to become aware of the non-physical reality that you are a part of. Reach out to the angels or occupants of this higher invisible plane. Know that you can access guidance from those who’ve lived here before. Spend time in meditation accessing the feelings of a plane of higher consciousness.
* Whenever you’re experiencing discomfort or sadness, rather than trying to change the thought behind your emotional state, instead just put it back onto the never-ending conveyor belt of thoughts, and select a different thought. Keep doing this until you’ve selected a thought that allows you to feel good, and you’re no longer condemning yourself for creating unhappy thoughts.
Choosing higher thoughts
I love Uell S. Andersen’s description of choosing thoughts and ideas that support feeling good and powerful in his book Three Magic Words. Contemplate it as you prepare to befriend that indwelling self that is desperately wishing to be fulfilled at the extraordinary level, rather than at the ordinary where you have lived for far too long:
“We have assured the indwelling Self that it can be anything it accepts and has faith in, and we are now about to develop in it the habit of choosing only those thoughts and ideas that will constructively add good unto it. We are teaching ourselves to accept only good. We are deliberately compelling ourselves to accept all love, all kindness, all hope, all joy, all expansion, all abundance, all health, all vigour. We are deliberately compelling ourselves to reject all suffering, all sorrow, all depression, all morbidness, all inferiority, all aches and pains. We are saying nothing is true but the great and the good and the beautiful, only these will we add to ourselves.”
This is your new way of choosing thoughts that will introduce you to your highest self – keeping uppermost in mind that if you want to accomplish something (anything), you must first expect it of yourself.
