Be Happy – Nourish your Today First

It is general practice that many of us wish to wander in our past and tend to design our future. It is true that our past gives us experience and our dreams of future outline our plans of today. But kindly don’t forget, your today is the most valuable. We may thank God for it’s a great day to be alive, it’s another day to learn. Today is a day for us to undertake some exercise, if not undertaking earlier, it is the day we need to have some sporting activities if we did not entertain so far, today, we may look on our hobbies we did not see so far due to shortage of time, resources or our involvement in other matters which we considered more important than our hobbies and other reasons etc. in the past, today, we take this day to grow and to achieve our dreams… after all, we have dreams and we have uncertain span of this precious life to achieve them.

If you go through the above lines once again, you may notice that these statements are of belief, conviction and affirmation. If seriously thought over, these statements can be taken self-instructions because they describe what to do. They instruct us how to feel and how to act. Theycan be the most powerful and the easiest tools to use for changing our emotions and the results we get in our life
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You see, every moment of today is invaluable, the wasted will never come back and becomes a part of history. You can't stop it. Even if you are an experienced person, you would find it hard to turn off the pictures, sounds and feelings – they may continue to come before you, entering into your conscious and sub-conscious mind. And in order to change your life, you must reconsider them… what you believe amongst them, you will accept as true. If you doubt anyone(s) of them, then you say, “That’s not true.”
Again, that is an affirmation, too - a statement of belief and conviction, making some modifications in the facts, assumptions and factors coming before you and after necessary modifications, they enter into your mind. Be careful so that no rubbish material should get in.

In fact, every statement you've ever made or ever will make and every thought you've had or ever will have is some question, an affirmation or an affirmative command. For example,
“Is thatt true?” (that's a question)
“Yes that's true,” (That's an affirmation)
“Sweet!” (affirmation)
“Please leave,” (affirmative command)
“I am not going anywhere!” (affirmation)
“Sit down,” (affirmative command)
“This is interesting,” “I don’t know,” “This is boring,” “I'm hungry,” “I'm tired,” “This is never going to work,” “I feel incredible,” “I can't concentrate,” “This is easy,” “Lifting weights is invigorating,” “I hate sweating.” (affirmative expressions)

All these are just affirmations we express inwardly or outwardly, consciously or unconsciously or sub- consciously. You can not say that such affirmations have any impact on you. No, they are reflecting your thinking and the most of time, you do accordingly unless you change it drastically or forcefully.
Now, ask what's your point? (question)
Since your minute by minute thoughts represent your past, present and – most likely – your future beliefs and attitudes, if you elevate your affirmations toward what is most useful and empowering, you would enjoy greater success, better health and true peace of mind with very little effort. You will be able to solve your problems of your finance, child look-after, your pension plans, your family’s education-requriements, your accommodation, your job, your pension plans, your insurance etc. since you would have a clear perception for future and you are starting to do plans and implementation thereof from today itself. If you wish to pursue your spirituality related issues just now or after some time, you can plan them with specifice details.

Even if you’re already extremely skilled in some area of life, if you wanted to, you could enjoy even greater accomplishments by transforming your thoughts. They would be your personal ones. If you catalog and compare the beliefs, attitudes and actions of the world’s most successful, happiest people to the most unsuccessful, unhappy people, you will find that they are always polar opposites. For example, when the healthiest, oldest living people on the planet feel comfortably full, they typically say to themselves, “I feel just right.” And they stop eating even if a pile of their favorite food is still on their plates... But what do people who suffer the most illnesses, pain and diseases do at the full mark? They often say things like, “One more bite won't hurt,” “It’ so good, I can't stop,” “Oh, it's small,” “I'll just eat light tomorrow,” “I'm still hungry,” “I can't throw this good food away,” “There's just a few bites left – might as well finish it.” And they continue eating.

In every discipline or area of life, we always find hundreds and often over one thousand differences in core belief and attitude patterns between successful people and those who routinely fail. And the sobering truth is that the longer a person owns a belief (affirms it), the harder it is to change. The old saying, “You can't teach old dog new tricks” is an old saying for a good reason. Because our minds don’t like change… it is uncomfortable to change. You see, the pain you feel now might be bad, but at least it’s familiar. You are handling it. But when big habit changes happen quickly, it's doubly agonizing because they are unfamiliar…unknown. And the unknown can be frightening.

That's why when you read a self-help book, go to therapy or to a seminar, chances are excellent that you will do nothing different. Or if you do experience an improvement in your moods or habits, it's usually very short lived. Why? Because your long-held assumptions, beliefs and attitudes (lifelong affirmations) were never changed. You simply had a few more facts… So you unconsciously resist the change... You found reasons why you couldn't continue, why you didn't like it, why it was wrong for you, why you couldn't succeed after all. Because facts and logic alone is never enough with the biggest challenges of life.

If just knowing what to do guaranteed success, everyone would get straight in school and would go on to have successful careers in their chosen field of study. But they don't. Out of every 100 students using the same text book, hearing the same lectures from the same teacher, only a few will score 90+ and even fewer will use their schooling to ensure success in career and life. Because facts and logic alone are never enough.

Why? Because we are talking to ourselves all day long. In fact, the most people's current thoughts (affirmations) are the same ones they had many years before. Most people have the same failure oriented beliefs in 2007 that they had in 1997, 1987 and 1977. If something frightened you 10 years ago, it's likely to still make your knees knock today. If you hate exercising now, you probably won't like it 10 years from now. And no matter how much gear you buy, you’ll probably still affirm (believe) the same things about it that you do now. If you are a disorganized mess maker now, you’ll probably be the same ten and twenty years from now.

Why is this so? These are mental patterns. They are hard-wired into you from years of conditioning, so disempowering…. they suffer from panic attacks. They lose all control of their minds and bodies. But in most cases, when we aggressively work to alter their moment by moment thoughts which alters their core assumptions about themselves and about life, the 'disorder' called panic attack ends. This is true even if therapy has done nothing and the toxic psychoactive drugs they've been taking for decades have damaged their brains.

Without mental conditioning through massive repetition of positive opposing thought, the things you are bad at today you will still be bad at in ten years. In most cases. “Same sh*t, different day” is a cliché because, unfortunately, it's true for most people. Think of your usual thoughts (affirmations) as a paint brush that continues to paint the same colors on the same places on the same canvas… for the rest of your life. The longer you paint, the thicker the paint gets. It gets so deep that there comes a point where it feels impossible to change the picture.
“Quitting smoking is so hard,” “I’ll never figure this out,” “You make me so mad,” “Everyone I am overweight,” “I'm just not good at this,” “I'm not meant to have a lot of money,” “I’m too busy to eat healthier,” “I'll never get caught up,” “I'm so depressed,” “I feel like I'm going to die,” “I knew it wasn't going to work,” “I need some chocolate,” “I'm so disorganized,” “There are no decent men out there.”

These kinds of beliefs (affirmations) fill you with anxiety. They make simple decisions difficult, suck the joy out of your accomplishments, create illness and disease, take away your energy and zest for adventure. In any area of life where you cannot seem to succeed no matter what, I guarantee you that beliefs like those above are controlling you every minute of every day. But they should not be permitted to come closer to you if you wish to nourish your today.

Now, I may ask you to go to your past and pick any area of your life that doesn’t work, where you fail, feel fearful, hopeless or where your luck is never any good. It could be your poor diet, lack of fitness, anxiety/depression, career trouble, problems in the friendships/social arena, bad romances/sex, financial woes, poor organization, sports, study habits/test taking, memory, time management… any area of life where you are having big troubles or where you want to be a top performer. Next, go somewhere else by yourself, far away from places of your routine visits and think about that topic. Review your thoughts and find the result with the new ones in the changed environment.

Whenever you notice a disempowered thought…one that makes you feel like crap, when you see a picture/movie of yourself failing or if you hear yourself say anything that makes you feel less capable, write down the thought or description of the pictures and feelings. For example, if you want to improve your financial situation, you must get by yourself and listen to your inner dialog and notice your mental pictures about these issues. When you hear or see a rotten one, write it down. Then when you’ve done this for a while, take this list of problem beliefs/attitudes and write opposing statements in affirmation form. So if you routinely get up late, don’t start your daily phone calls until 11:00, take long lunches, spend money you shouldn’t and never read investment related books or invest in appreciating assets, turn these beliefs, attitudes and actions around by writing down and do whatever is possible to make your today happier. You can instruct yourself to do so.

Be happy – Nourish Your Today First to beautify your future.