Careful Self Talk

"Sometimes, if I catch my mind in the middle of making up a demoralizing opinion of me, I can hear my mind correct itself: 'THAT'S NOT TRUE!' " ~Boorstein

I had a shrink, Dr. Frank Schultz, who use to tell me: "Be very careful what you say to yourself." It is not good advice, it is essential advice. I'm not sure why this is, but the mind tends to believe what it hears especially if it hears it from the SELF. When I tell myself something, my mind goes, "OK, if you say so."

So if I say, "I'm a loser," my mind goes, you know, I think that's true, and I believe, if I search my memory banks, I can find a long list of examples that prove that this loser label belongs right where it is, tattooed on the forehead.

You can't even joke about yourself in a negative way, because the mind has no sense of humor. If I drop something and say, "I'm just a clumsy klutz. I can't do anything gracefully," this will result in a life of dropping stuff, tripping, and tumbling down stair steps. The mind will select the data it expects to see, and the mind expects to see life as it has been described to it by the SELF.

"Don't overlook small and seemingly insignificant negative actions. The smallest of sparks can burn down a mountain." ~Tibetan saying

"If we want to know how our life will be in the future we should look at how we think and act today. We are the sum total of the decisions we make.. . . Our present condition is not something causeless nor is it something caused by chance. It is something we ourselves hae steadily constructed through our series of past decisions and the actions of body speech, and mind that arose from them." ~the Dalai Lama