Month: July 2008

Belief and Doubt – The Affirmation Spot for Thursday July 31, 2008

I believe! No two words are as powerful an affirmation as “I believe”. No two words hold more promise or potential for positive change. No two words are a clearer declaration of your desire to step away from your current situation and towards your goals and dreams. When said strongly and with intention these two words send ripples out into the world and open the pathways to achievement.

Oddly enough, belief is always born, grows, and must learn to flourish in the garden of doubt. Some people think that when they doubt they are somehow failing. They beat themselves up for feeling doubtful. The truth is that doubt is a welcome sign that you are moving forward.

When people are stuck – not progressing their lives – they experience fear more than doubt. Fear paralyzes and prevents progress. Doubt is a reasonable response to the great uncertainty that is life. It is a sure sign that you are in movement and not static. It means you are engaging life and seeking an outcome.

The key to reaching your goals and dreams is not to rid yourself of doubt. As long as you are human, you will know doubt. The key is to learn to experience it, accept it, and not let it stop you.

When you make peace with your doubt instead of wasting your energy warring with it; you will find new clarity, new determination, and, yes, new belief to achieve the life you desire.

Stay inspired!

Ray

 

www.theaffirmationspot.com offers downloadable mp3 affirmations for nearly every area of life – sports, sales, wealth and prosperity, health and fitness – to name just a few. Our library is growing all the time. Remember your fifth affirmation on each order is always free.

 

 

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Space Dreams – The Affirmation Spot for Monday July 28, 2008

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Some dreams are not individual, but universal. Among the universal dreams of the human race, is the dream to experience outer space. From the earliest stages of our history, humanity has been intrigued with the cosmos. How big is it? What does it mean? Are we alone? Slowly, SpaceShipTwo (see short video) – a project funded by billionaire Sir Richard Branson and designed by American aerospace engineer Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composities LLC – is emerging from the top secret shadows of its development stage. This spacecraft is part of a growing worldwide race to commercialize space travel.

47 years ago Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human being to orbit the Earth. He piloted his Vostok 1 in one orbit of our planet in 108 minutes. Fueled by this event, President Kennedy set a goal of reaching the moon by the end of the 1960s. Kennedy’s vision culminated on July 20, 1969 when the Apollo 11 mission, commanded by Neil Armstrong, successfully landed two American astronauts on the moon. Since those days the promise of space has been squandered by governments who were only interested in advancing their national interests; not the interests of humanity. We have returned to the more mundane drama of our petty squabbles over land, religion, and political systems.

We have been distracted by the latest about Britney Spears, the cost of gasoline, and the latest pennant race. Does the space dream still live within us? Can we muster our resources and our efforts to accomplish the greatest challenge in history – the challenge of space? For now, this form of privatized space travel is open only to the wealthy and elite. About 200 people have put up $250,000 a piece to go weightless for five minutes some time in the next few years. There is no immediate possibility of mass space travel.

Who knows if this latest round of space enthusiasm will lead to the broader human dream of space travel and exploration. It may become just a high-priced thrill ride for jet-setters looking for new adrenaline rushes. Nonetheless, it renews our hope that one day the beautiful night sky we stand awe-inspired in our driveways observing may be accessible to us all.

Stay inspired!

Ray

Ray Davis is the Founder of The Affirmation Spot and focuses on empowering minds to think positively, achieve goals, and live dreams.

anunnaki_cover_full_colorHe is the author of the Anunnaki Awakening series (2015). Book 1 – Revelation – is now available in paperback and on Kindle. This trilogy takes Ancient Aliens out of the past and into the present. An interstellar, interdimensional journey ensues with humanity’s future hanging in the balance.

5 Steps to Understanding Your Your Mind – The Affirmation Spot for Saturday July 25, 2008

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When you go to see a doctor he or she performs a number of routine tests. Typically, the doctor takes your temperature, takes your blood pressure, looks into your eyes, ears, nose, and throat, and listens to your heart and lungs.

While not an extensive exam, these routine measures provide the doctor with a sense of your general health.

What about your mind? Is there anyway to get a general measure of your mind’s health? All the great sages in history have encouraged people to pay attention to their minds and their thoughts. They didn’t live in the 21st century! Many people today are so busy that they fall into the habit of letting the mind go on autopilot.

We take the inputs the world gives us – media, government, religion, others’ opinions – but we often fail to critically evaluate how those ideas and information are impacting our thinking. And, as I have discussed previously, our thoughts are the filters that generate habits, beliefs, and actions.

When they go unexamined for long periods of time we can drift a long way off our intended course. Like a plastic bottle bobbing on the ocean, we may suddenly awake to find ourselves far from shore.

There are some really low-tech ways to get a handle on what your mind is doing. There is no hope for change or adjustment until there is awareness.

Are you negative about what you can or cannot accomplish? Are you judgmental of others? Are you cynical? Do you want to find out?

Try one of the following each day this coming work week.

  • Monday – keep a little tick sheet handy and keep track of the number of times your mind tells you that you cannot do something. For an added degree of analysis, determine the reason you gave yourself for the negative belief. Track it all day long and see how many negative thoughts go through your head in a day.
  • Tuesday – keep a little tick sheet and see how many times you judge others in a day. You might judge them for how they drive, how they look, how they talk, or the things they do. This is not an exercise to judge you for judging, but simply a way to recognize how often you do it.
  • Wednesday – concentrate on the sources of information that are coming into your mind from radio, tv, other people, the Internet. Give some thought to how what you mentally consume each day is impacting your happiness. Keep a negative and positive tick sheet to capture the percentage of negative to positive data entering your mind.
  • Thursday – Write down three goals you’d like achieve in the next year on a piece of paper. Lay your pen down and listen to the thoughts that come to your mind. Don’t respond just listen. Are your immediate reactions to your goals and your ability to achieve them positive or negative. Right down your initial responses next to each goal.
  • Friday – after four days of this, you need some positive. Today tick mark each positive thing, person, or experience you encounter. Don’t forget to count opening your eyes for a new day as one. Go out of your way to “smell the flowers”, if you have to. Become aware of how many good things there are around you every day.

At the end of the week, you will have a much better sense of what is going through your mind all day long every day. You will have “taken your mind’s temperature” and evaluated its general health. You will definitely have awareness, but what will you do with it?

 

Stay inspired!

Ray

Proof of Our Commonality – The Affirmation Spot for Thursday July 24, 2008

 

 
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This video has gone viral on YouTube. I don’t know whether you’ve seen it or not, but it features Matt Harding who traveled to 42 countries in 14 months and recorded himself dancing – often with the locals.

The video runs 4 minutes 29 seconds and is guaranteed to bring a smile to your face. We really are more alike than we sometimes think.

Remember this video the next time one of the world’s power hungry dividers tries to convince you that “they” are evil. Apparently, we all love to dance, smile, and have fun. What would the world be, if we focused on those things instead of our differences?

Tearing Down is Not Building Up – The Affirmation Spot for Wednesday July 23, 2008

I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in blogs and information within the self-development community. In an effort to promote their own paths, some seem more than willing to tear down other self-improvement approaches.

It’s hard for me to imagine how tearing each other down builds anyone up or helps shift people or the world in the best directions.

Someone truly wanting to help people would admit that there are many approaches capable of helping people improve themselves, their life status, and their thinking. Each person should evaluate different options and determine what works best with his or her current situation.

 Recently, I’ve read blogs by practicioners of several self-help methodologies just raking affirmations up one side and down the other. The bloggers called them “delusional”, “wasteful”, and “dangerous”.  

I’ve seen stinging criticisms blaming affirmations for manifesting a state of denial. These strawman characterizations paint every user of affirmations as an 87-year old woman wanting to be an Olympic athlete or a depressed person trying to create a fictitious happiness. Obviously, anyone using affirmations to accomplish these things is being unrealistic an unwise.

Mostly, people who use affirmations are salespeople wanting to build their skills and confidence to make or exceed quota this month. Which salespeople do you suppose make quota? Those whose minds are filled with thoughts of “I can” or those whose minds are filled with “I can’t” or “I’m not sure if I can.”?

Athletes use affirmations to gain that razor thin margin of victory that having the mental edge can bring. Writers who face a blank page every day to earn a living use affirmations to keep them inspired through rejection letters and writers block. Dancers trying be mentally prepared for that big audition or looking to advance their careers use affirmations. 

People use affirmations to stay motivated to exercise, to stay focused on a big reward they are giving themselves for their hard work, or to remain committed to their diets. People use affirmations to counter the volumes of negative information that works its way into their brains every day from mainstream media.

And yes, depressed people, like I once was, use affirmations to pull themselves up out of the hole they find themselves in. It’s easy to criticize from the relative safety of a happy, prosperous life. However, when you’re really down and out all you have is the thought, the hope of a better day.

Are all these people delusional? Have they bought into some destructive ideology of happy thoughts that hold no meaning in reality? Hardly. 

I’ve said often in this blog that affirmations are just one tool in your self-development toolkit. Like any methodology they are extremely effective for some people and less so for others. There is no debate, though, that affirmations are very effective at doing one simple, but critical thing. Over time, they replace limiting, negative, and unproductive thoughts with empowering, positive, and productive thoughts.

I’m not sure why affirmations have become the favorite whipping boy for some supposed leaders in the self-development world. Maybe because so many people use them successfully. Maybe because they have a track record of success many other approaches aspire to. Hey, isn’t that kind of positive thinking delusional? :o)

What I do know for sure is that affirmations will keep motivating people to be their best (whatever that is for them at this moment) and aspire to more.  Those who want to tear affirmations down should really consider whether that serves their inferred goal of helping others. 

Stay inspired!

Ray

 

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