Daily Practice

In my current state of all Elizabeth Gilbert, all the time, I tracked down the web version of her initial Oprah visit after the book came out. Besides checking out the picture of her and Felipe on their wedding day–he’s so cute!–I was most struck with what she described as her useful daily practice (and no, it’s not meditation).
1) Every morning, write down what you really, really, really want for the day (she was most insistent on the 3 reallys).
2) Every night write down what made you happy that day, in a special happiness journal.
3)”Refine your mantra.” To paraphrase–we all have a mantra we chant continuously. Occasionally it might be Om Shanti, but for most of us it’s more like “I’m so fat,” “I wish I had more money,” “Why won’t she love me,” etc. Gilbert suggests becoming attuned to the mantra we recite, and, if it’s not working for us, if it’s not what we want in our lives, change it.
These are the basic principles of manifestation, by the way. Visualize it clearly, be grateful and appreciative, take control of your thoughts. The last one is tricky–we might think that ‘I wish I had more money” sends out the manifestation of getting money, but actually it sends out more manifesting of the lack of money. Same with “I wish X loved me” doesn’t attract love to us, it attracts the absence of X, etc. Instead, to reframe these things that feel like lack, you might say “I am prosperous in all I do,” “I have abundance and joy in my life,” “I am loved”, or something similar.
And for those of you who are resistant to the whole idea of affirmations, like I was for so much of my life, my favorite affirmation of all, taken from Frederic Lehrman’s Prosperity Consciousness CD (track it down, it rocks): Affirmations work for me whether I believe they do or not.
Affirmations aren’t the beginning or the end of manifestation and living a happier life, they aren’t a quick fix, they are definitely not magic. But what they are very helpful for is helping us regain mastery over our compulsive thoughts, the ones we think without being aware of what we’re doing. The background noise/soundrack to our day. Changing these debilitating, compulsive thoughts are essential to living a happier life.