Affirmations

I used to think affirmations were New Age Voodoo, well, kinda. I am beginning to open my mind just a little more these days.

The psycology/psychiatry field, and 12Step programs, call the stuff that we learned as children, the stuff that still rattles through our heads "old tapes." I understand the concept. I even thought I knew how divisive the "old tapes" could be. That is until "RELAPSE." Okay, "Recycling" as Melody Beattie calls it.

Those "old tapes," the ones I thought I had almost gotten rid of, came back in full force. I forgot to erase them! They were there, lurking under all the great "new tapes" I had made.

So now I am on a journey to "reprogram." Sounds like I am a computer that got a virus downloaded while surfing the net. Well, our brains are like computers in so many ways, it is almost scary. And yes, they need reprograming sometimes.

I am reprograming by erasing the old tapes, and creating specific new tapes to rattle around up there. It is very precise. It is very deliberate. And it makes a lot of common sense. If all you heard as a kid was that you were "a pain in the ass," or you "disgusted" your mom, or that "everything you did was wrong," and what you didn't do was "your fault too," you'd have a lot of bad old tapes rattling through your head too; lurking below the surface, ready to spring up and play themselves over and over, just to keep the status quo.

You know that"familiar" is more "comfortable" than "better and unknown," don't you? So, off you go old tapes. I am doing Affirmations now! I am giving myself permission to be stuck, but acknowledging that I don't want to be stuck. I am acknowledging my "stuckness." (Is that a word?...I just made it one.) And I am "rewiring" my brain to think the glass is half full rather than half empty. Let me tell you, the old brain doesn't want to cooperate. But I am stronger.

So if you've got some old tapes rattling around in your head, ones that tell you you're a loser, not worth anything, and that no one really loves you, then try reprograming your brain with some affirmations, some good tapes to play in the background (and don't forget an Attitude of Gratitude either).

I'll let you know how its coming along in a few months.