Affirm Yourself

As you know, I work for The Group Real Estate.  The company has its warts to be sure, as most if not all do, but there are a lot of positivity principles they really get right.  Years ago, our strongest company pillar, Larry Kendall, began teaching courses that are now offered across this country and in Canada.  Many of the concepts he teaches are not new but then again, neither are the "secrets" to most of life's challenges.  For instance, to loose weight, one must eat nutritiously and exercise.

Larry teaches the echo of what the scientific community has researched and verified many times over.  Some of the most impactful in my world are also quite Biblical:

• positive thinking yields miraculously positive results ("Seek and ye shall find" was Matthew's mindset in the New Testament era... along about chapter 7.)
• people with daily practices, routines and the discipline to employ them are happier, more successful and their pocketbooks usually fatter (No surprise to Solomon... his book of Proverbs testifies to this truth repetitively)
• training your brain to think in terms of specific successes sought, as already won, increases the likelihood of realizing those successes.  (Doesn't the book of James offer the same advice in Chapter 1?)

What I find intriguing, is not so much the concept but the implementation.  And, I delight in new ways to incorporate positivity into my world.

During the three day course Larry offers, he introduces what he terms "affirmations."  These are statements one should write out each day for a month or more until they take root in your subconscious.  Apparently we are wired in such a way that we can actually program ourselves to some degree.  Take a short mental journey down that road and it's undeniable that we all do program ourselves and/or we allow our lives and circumstances to program us.  So, spending some time writing  a little of our own brain "code" is a not a bad idea.

For the sake of further explaining the concept, let's assume we all struggle with dirt between our toes or earwax, and one of our greatest desires is to be free from these.  So, each morning, we commit to write, "I'm so grateful to have wax free ears and squeeky clean toes." Over a period of time, our brains consciously and then subconsciously put into practice the necessary motions that lead us to realize that goal.  And, once reprogrammed, we can now make our barber and beauty salon appointments with confidence knowing that indeed we are wax and grit free and thus, need not be embarrassed.

Naturally, the most common affirmations have more to do with money and weight loss but the notion is this... when we combine the discipline of writing daily with a mindset of positive assumptive affirmation... results out of the ordinary become prevalent in our lives.

Good stuff, huh?  Well, sort of.  In practice, I wrote (as suggested), "I am grateful to have 3 new listings in the next 90 days."  Guess what?  Ninety days passed and my name wasn't in front of anyone's home with a for sale sign in the yard.

Now, Larry's smart, he's successful, and the practice taps into that whole concept of "b e l i e v e" which is one of my favorite words.  But before I digress and share with you my dictionary of favorite letter combinations - let me take you to what I found to be the REAL power in "affirmations."

When I was at the hotel with the children over the holidays, I found myself on New Year's eve with little more to do than sip cider and watch Dick Clark's protege.  So, my mind got busy.  I got the notion to write down words I wanted to describe me.  It was, after all, New Year's... the traditional time of goal setting, resolutions and the like.  As I picked up a pen and hotel stationary, I thought I'd have about a half dozen words.  When the ink began to litter the page, however, I found one word would inspire another and before I was done, 64 words had leaped from my mind onto that page... and none were truly synonyms!  

These words, covering so many facets of personality, demeanor and action, became my "affirmations."  I don't write them every day... but often I do.  I've made them into a word cloud and they are posted on my office bulletin board.  I choose a few to focus on most days.  

I suppose you could be the judge as to whether you feel I'm becoming more of the person I want to be in word, thought, deed and action... but the perspective that's even more important is my Lord's.  "Delight yourself in the Lord (or perhaps what you believe he made you to be) and He will give you the desires of your heart."  Maybe the application of that verse is a stretch for you... but for me, this whole discipline towards my "affirmations" is powerfully positive and allows me to delight (on most days) in the Lord and the desire of my heart is truly to be more of what I believe He desires me to be.

Shalom and Amen.

For such a time as this

Hey all - great hanging out with everyone last Friday night...thanks Watkins!!
Sorry this blog post is so delayed.  It was a combination of forgetting, then trying to figure out what to write about, then most of my entry being deleted (I thought), then being too busy getting ready for our trip to S Dakota...but after getting on here again I found that my entry was not deleted...it just appeared that way. Yea!  So hopefully I'll actually get this finished up now.

I've been reading The Lord of the Rings, and every so often Tolkien inserts some wise truth into the dialogue that jumps out at me, so I thought I'd share one of those.

I'm not sure if any of you are fans of The Lord of the Rings or have seen the movies/read the book, but this part is towards the beginning when Gandalf the Wizard is explaining to Frodo the Hobbit that Sauron - the Dark Lord - has risen to power again and is searching for the One Ring of Power - the very ring that Frodo has in his possession.  As Gandalf is explaining this to him, Frodo says, "I wish it need not have happened in my time."  Gandalf replies, "So do I, and so do all who live to see such times.  But that is not for them to decide.  All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us."

This reminded me of the story of Esther in the Old Testament.  I won't recount the whole story here (but it's a great one, so you should go read it if you haven't in a while), but basically Esther (who is a queen of Persia but also secretly a Jew) has a chance to save her people from destruction if she will reveal who she really is to the king and ask for mercy on the Jews.  She would be risking her life to do this, though.  Her cousin, Mordecai, says to her, "Do not think to yourself that in the king's palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews.  For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father's house will perish.  And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" (Esther 4:12-14)

Both passages are saying that we don't have a choice in when and where we are born and what world events will be happening during our lifetime.  Nobody wishes to live in a time or place when great hardship or evil will greatly affect his/her life.  But that is not for any of us to decide.  Why was I born at this time and place in history?  Why am I currently living a pretty good life here in America while my brothers and sisters in Christ are being tortured and murdered in other parts of the world?  And will I (or my kids) face greater persecution in the near future in our own country?  I do fear for what my kids may have to face.  I don't know what God will ask of me in the future (even tomorrow); it may be something that will be hard to do or that I will fear, like Frodo and Esther both feared the tasks they were asked to do.  But I hope I will trust God enough that He put me in this place and time for His purpose and will equip me to do whatever it is He wants, and that I will do it, even if I am afraid.