Affirmations Are Like Free Throws

Good morning, fellow affirmers!

Wherever you live in our world in 2022. you probably are familiar with the game of basketball. In North America, it’s been one of the four major sports for well over 100 years. The rest of the world has come around to it in recent decades.

If you’re familiar with the game, you’re familiar with free throws. During regular play, players guard each other, but free throws are shot when a player is fouled. If you’re a soccer/football fan, it’s like a penalty and a free kick.

How is an affirmation like a free throw? Three ways.

  1. They both are a break from “regular play.”
  2. They both require focus.
  3. They both require a lot of practice and repetition.

During a typical day, you’re exposed to a myriad of thoughts and ideas that aren’t your own and may not support your goals and aspirations. The news has opinions. Your boss has opinions. Your friends have opinions. Your family has opinions. Every one is constantly pouring disjointed and distracting information to your vacuum of consciousness and your mind readily absorbs it.

Affirmations are a break from that constant deluge. They are a way to put information, ideas, and thoughts into your mind that support you – your well-being and your aspirations.

They both require focus. Many great basketball are mediocre free throw shooters. They can fall-away 20-footers with a hand in their face, but they can’t make an unguarded shot because they lack focus.

Your mind has been unconsciously absorbing thoughts that don’t serve you day in and Fay out for decades. Consciously focusing, especially at first, makes a huge difference with new affirmations. Whether read, listen, or say them, give them the focus that will help you succeed.

The last comparison, and maybe the most important, is practice and repetition. Even with great focus, great free throw shooters practice incessantly. Through repetition, they develop the muscle memory to make free throws practically automatically.

People often wonder why they are asked to use affirmations over and over. It’s because they are different from hearing a fact. A fact is something you hear once and you know it.

Affirmations have a different goal. You’re not repeating until you know it. You’re repeating until they replace old negative thought patterns that have enjoyed years of unconscious repetition in your mind.

You must practice and repeat affirmations over and over until that mental muscle memory forms that makes them your dominant thoughts no matter what els3 you’re exposed to during the day.

I’ve been using affirmations for 30 years. When you thin’ of them like free throws, they become an effective tool in you achieving the life you seek.

Wherever you are on your journey today, remember this. You’re a one-in-a-trillion miracle.

Put your mind on your side!

Ray

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Ain’t No Use in Worrying

Good morning, fellow affirmer!

The late great Wayne Dyer once did a brief monologue on one of his old cassette series’s that always stuck with me.

He said there are only two types of things you can possibly worry about – things you can control and things you can’t control.

Then he asked two sagely statements.

“There ain’t no use in worrying about things you can control. If you can control them, why worry about them?”

You’re capable. You’re responsible. You’ll handle them. Worry adds nothing useful to the equation.

Then he said, “There ain’t no use in worrying about things you can’t control. If you can’t control them, why worry about them?”

Our little egos must learn to accept that there are certain things beyond our control. We can’t control what other people think of us, whether the sun will come up tomorrow, or how many days our current form will remain here. Yet, we spend time worrying and stressing over such things. They steal our energy and our positive momentum and we can’t change them no matter how much we worry.

Then Dyer concluded by saying, “That’s everything it’s possible to worry about. So, there ain’t no use in worrying “

He makes a powerful point. Whether we can control something or not, both are reasons not to worry.

I would add that that we have a wisdom within us and there’s a wisdom present in the universe that are both working to get you and I where and when we need to be. Trust that wisdom and, as much as possible, cut worry out of your mental diet. It’s mental junk food of the worst kind.

Wherever you are on your journey today, just commit to taking one more step.

Keep your mind on your side, my friends.

Ray

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Oprah Winfrey Motivational Quote

Good morning, friends and fellow affirmers!

To say that Oprah Winfrey has inspired millions, would be to understate the matter. She was America’s daily voice of personal exploration, growth, life’s journey for decades.

Even now, she continues to inspire Hope, purpose, and the search for meaning in life on her multiple platforms.

I love this Oprah quote. It contains so many nuggets for us. It counsels trying new and hard things. It prepares you for the inevitable setbacks in such attempts. It encourages determination and patience, it promises reward for your efforts.

Its power to inspire is enhanced because the words come from someone who created and lived that journey before all our eyes.

In a nutshell, this quote is the very embodiment of our journey to personal growth. We are here to do great things or “small things in great ways.,” as Dr. Martin Luther King said.

We will fave adversity, but if we don’t give up and give in, we will prevail in some meaningful way.

Wherever you are on your journey today, know you can. More than that, know if you don’t give up, you will.

Follow your bliss. Experience your bliss. Become your bliss.

Ray

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Keep Your Eye on the Miracle

Need to buoy your spirits today? This brief video reminds you to see the world with a different pair of eyes.

Wherever you are on your journey today, remember you are awesome!

Ray

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Time to Believe Something New?

Happy Friday evening, my friends. We have just completed our first week on Kauai. For the first time ever we are working our jobs from here. It’s something we wanted to try for years. It’s worked out great!

We get up at 3 a.m. Hawaii time and work until 11. Then we have the whole afternoon to play. Finally, we’re off to bed at dark to do it all over again. We’ll do it again next week.

This place always brings insight. I was thinking this afternoon how committed we are to maintaining our ideas about the world even when it’s clear we’ve outgrown them.

Tradition, social pressure, even the habitual gravity of our own thinking van hold us right where we are long after it makes sense.

Even our politics has a derogatory word for someone who changes their mind – flip-flopper. So committed are we to being committed to old paradigms that we punish leaders who evolve in their thinking.

What about you and me? I’m willing to bet there’s at least one area of your life right now that you’re holding on to ideas you no longer hold because it’s easier and safer.

We are evolutionary beings. Have the courage to choose new beliefs. People might not like it. They may feel betrayed, but it serves no one to keep being who you no longer are.

Wherever you are on your journey today, remember you’re awesome!

Ray