Affirmations are like bridges between where you are now and where you intend to be.
Repeat after me: Only good things lie before me, and my life is full of joy.
How do you feel saying that? Like a fraud – ‘full of joy’ my aching butt! My life sucks! Or as though it’s just meaningless babble – blablabla how’s that going to help me pay the bills / face my boss / get through another awful day? Or really angry – you WHAT? I need real-life help, not some woo-woo nonsense!
Many years ago, I hit a point where nothing seemed to work out for me. Day after day I dragged my sorry self through more of what I didn’t want, didn’t like, could not relate to. It felt as though someone had reached into my life and switched the lights off, leaving me to stumble about in the dark, terrified and increasingly hopeless. Eventually, physical symptoms set in. Insomnia, joints that shrieked with pain, a massive viral infection, debilitating migraines. My GP at the time could only offer Prozac and a bleak future, so I went to look for alternatives. Among others (a brilliant herbalist, a meditation circle, a wise-woman healing class…) I found a local health kinesiologist and booked an energy balancing session, a relaxing and empowering experience I’d found really helpful in the past.
But this time, nothing. I felt irate and impatient, didn’t like to lie still, didn’t like the practitioner, couldn’t relate to what she was doing. I got more and more frustrated as the session progressed and if I hadn’t been so desperate, I’d have left early. When it was finally over – I’d handed her my money (thanks for nothing!) and was almost out of the door – she called after me: “Oh, and say this for a few weeks: I, Gitta, am full of joy.”
She might as well have slapped me across the face. I raced to my car, climbed in and burst into tears. FULL OF JOY!! I couldn’t even remember what joy felt like. My life was one miserable day after another, and I’d just spent a chunk of money I could ill afford to have this person tell me my life was full of JOY? Unbelievable! But even as I was sitting there, sobbing and lamenting my fate, a gentle little voice had already started up in my heart: I, Gitta, am full of joy, it sang softly, like a tiny dot of light in the darkness. I, Gitta, am full of joy. As though a massive heavy gate was being wrenched open just a fraction of an inch. I, Gitta, am full of joy. A wisp of hope, a hint of a memory: remember me – I am joy! I am happiness! I’m still here, I’m here for you, all you need do is claim me! I, Gitta, am full of joy…
Over the days and weeks that followed, this little statement became my lifeline, my constant companion, always there in my heart like a sweet reminder of the brightness that was there for me, the happiness I had almost forgotten about. My point of hope.
And what do you know: one morning I woke up, stretched and thought, I, Gitta, am full of joy – and I was!
That’s the power of affirmation.
Image by Laura Hickman from Pixabay
Gitta Wolf 