“Every thought we think is creating our future”
~ Louise Hay
So many of us are just suffering quietly inside, and pretending that the world is just fine and peachy. So many of us would never utter a word about our inner tumult to anyone and in fact, I am certain that Louise Hay wrote her book “You Can Heal Your Life” for the silently misguided souls among us much more so than the ones that are openly unhappy and miserable and in dire need of help.
My own family makes a fantastic example of this. On the surface, we are the ideal family – me, my brothers and my parents – we’ve been through hell a few times together and we care deeply about each other. The love part is not up to question at all. And on the surface, everything seems fine and peachy to the average observer, but we hide the inner chaos and commotion and our dynamics when we are together is far from calm and peaceful!
In our gatherings, we are all smiling and talking over each other at the same time – don’t worry, that part is normal, crazy and stressful but relatively normal – but despite all the talking, all the noise, we are not connecting, we are not hearing each other, we are not really listening and we are not honest. There is usually a massive explosion brewing and waiting to happen any minute.
In fact, I wish the explosion would happen now and again so then we can work through some of our issues. As in communicate and talk about the deep core problems rather than the pretentious nonsense in which we engage. As in, talk about the uncomfortable stuff that eats away at us on the inside rather than the food we are eating or the gossip about who did what where when!
Of course, what I am proposing is preposterous! I am out of my mind for conceiving of such a thought! While ten thousand hours of therapy would not be enough to scratch the surface of our problems, it’s a safe bet that we won’t ever even get started because no one in this family wants to talk about the huge giant elephants in the room – (yes there are several of them in our case!) – and so we discuss anything but the blatant obvious!
Deep down, all of us yearn for a normal, happy relationship with our own family but does such a thing even exist? If not, why are we hungry for it? It reminds me of my beloved Tolstoy’s famous quotation from my absolute favorite book in the world, Anna Karenina:
“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” ~ Leo Tolstoy
Families can be so complex, so exhausting, so demanding, so heart-breaking, so guilt-driven, so stressful and so very outside of one’s control that sometimes, the only thing you want to do is walk away and forget about the whole thing. As much as I would love to have deeply meaningful and memorable conversations with my family, and to get closer to them, I have all but given up right now. Some days, I wish I could trade in the love for some understanding and real communication and inner peace!
Alas, wishful thinking is for losers. Instead, I am learning to turn my critical eye inward and heal myself first and foremost. Louise’s entire philosophy about healing your life – and most of us can use a little healing – is about controlling ourselves by controlling our thoughts. We know that we cannot control how others behave, but did you know that you can control every single thought and every single belief that enters your mind? Did you know that you can change patterns that have roots as strong as an oak tree deep within your mind? Did you know that when you change your thoughts, that you can then change your entire life, and that these are not just mere words that you are reading right now but words with absolute and 100% truth and validation and scientific proof behind them?
These healing concepts are completely foreign to most of us and to entire generations and cultures, in fact, I would have laughed at this book in my foolish youth and dismissed it because frankly, it is no fun turning inward to seek change and understanding.
So if you feel heavy, strong skepticism and serious resistance, it’s normal. In fact, it’d be rare not to feel the resistance, but alas, push past it, and don’t question it, because you have nothing to lose and everything to gain here with the wealth of wisdom that Louise Hay shares with us in “Heal Your Life”
Louise takes the most gentle, loving yet firm approach to take us down a path of the most difficult change in our life, that of changing ourselves, our patterns, our thoughts, our behaviors, and our inner demons.
Is it true?
Louise cut right through me by making me ask this one question of my powerful thoughts and my beliefs. The answers make the walls come down if you persist enough and ask loudly and clearly and honestly enough. Is it true, what I believe in this moment? Is it true that my family doesn’t understand me? Is it true that I am all the things that I sometimes believe to be true? Is it true that others are what I believe them to be?
Chapter 15 remains one of the sections of the book that I have yet to fully embrace. It is 60 pages of Louise offering her holistic affirmations to all common diseases known to man, including the worst offenders like cancer and AIDS. She offers her probable causes, all of which she believes are driven by accumulation of thoughts centered around self-hatred and self-sabotage and she then offers new thought patterns for each.
I looked up the thing that plagues me the most: neck pain and to that she says:
Probably cause: Refusing to see the other side of a question. Inflexibility and stubbornness. (Hmmmm! :))
To which she offers this new thought pattern: It is with flexibility and ease that I see all sides of an issue. There are endless ways of doing things and seeing things. I am safe. (Certainly very comforting and I intend to adopt this affirmation whole-heartedly; it can only bring me inner peace and if it relieves my neck pain the process, then brilliant!)
The book and the research behind it is brilliant. You don’t read “Heal your life” just once. You read it first time through. Then you think about it. Then you set it aside and kinda forget about it. Then you run into the stuff of life like I do with my family and crack it open again, desperately looking for the affirmations and the new thought patterns so that you can let go of this heavy weight in your heart every time the old demons return. And then you realize how very hard this really all is, changing our thought patterns is the single most difficult and rewarding thing we can ever do for ourselves.
Easy or hard is irrelevant. It is NECESSARY to understand the power of your thoughts and so with all my heart, my dear reader, I encourage you to embrace healing your life, be it with Louise Haye’s teachings or many others who help you create new thought patterns and let go of the old ones.
I am Farnoosh, the founder of Prolific Living. So glad you are here. My mission is to empower you to unblock your creative genius to live your dream life.