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HowToGrowDreadlocks.com |
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Affirm Your Dreadlocks
Affirmations are saying something repeatedly to yourself to help your mind change a bad habit or create a new one. Great inventors, writers, artists, athletes, businessmen, politicians, and speakers use it to affirm their success. Take, for example, Muhammad Ali's well-known affirmation "I am the greatest." When I started growing my dreadlocks, I told myself daily, "My long thin dreadlocks look and feel wonderful. I have a head full of powerful dreadlocks."
The basic premise of affirmation is to talk to your self consistently in a positive manner. Everything you say about yourself, either out loud or quietly, good or bad, is an affirmation. This information goes straight to the subconscious where it is recorded for future use. It is important to never dwell on self-criticism or what you think are your inadequacies. Instead, only repeat the wonderful things about yourself. Here is a brief example of affirmations you can use in your daily life:
I
am good enough. In the above affirmations, all of the sentences have action words. The mind does not differentiate between imagination and reality, therefore what is spoken aloud and visualized as action, the mind accepts as reality. In order for affirmations to be effective, you must use present-tense action words. "I am growing beautiful dreadlocks," "I write down my goals," or "I make one hundred thousand dollars this year," are statements the mind can work with. When the mind hears these statements, it gives you the thoughts, feelings, and actions to make it happen. Statements such as "I'd like to," "I'm trying," or "I'm hope to," only plays tricks on the mind. It does not understand the word "try" because it is not an action word. Les Brown says in one of his lectures the word "try" really does not exist. You either do or you do not. If I asked you to try to pick up pencil, you either reach down or pick it up or you let it lay. However, you could never "try" to pick it up. To change a negative belief habit can take months of daily affirmation before you condition the mind, particularly the subconscious mind, to accept your affirmations as reality. A strong commitment and dedication are necessary to make lasting changes. Make a list of all the things you may want to change about the way you think. Then start writing affirmations like the ones above individually on three by five inch cards. Then read the stack slowly once or twice a day while looking in a mirror. Another idea is to put the affirmations on cassette. Repeat each affirmation twice and leave about five to ten seconds between different statements. Listen to the cassette once a day when you feel relaxed and receptive. You are most likely to internalize affirmations when you focus your attention on them while in a relaxed state such as meditation. American poet and philosopher Sidney Madwed sums it all up with this wonderful quote, "To be healthy, wealthy, happy and successful in any and all areas of your life you need to be aware that you need to think healthy, wealthy, happy and successful thoughts twenty four hours a day and cancel all negative, destructive, fearful and unhappy thoughts. These two types of thought cannot coexist if you want to share in the abundance that surrounds us all." |
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Psychologists estimate
seventy-two to ninety-five percent of normal adult's self talk is
negative or self-critical. I cannot stress enough the importance of
feeding the subconscious mind with positive words and actions. One
of the most powerful ways to do this is using affirmations.
