We all have read and are familiar with the concept of thinking positive thoughts, the law of attraction, The Secret and countless other books tell us just how to manifest our wildest desires. Napoleon Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich” has been on my bedside table for a decade. I love the quote “what the mind of (wo)man can conceive and believe, the mind of (wo)man can achieve.”
Oftentimes though when we get caught on the hamster wheel of life, we forget to exercise the mental discipline needed to keep these affirmations and visualizations at the forefront of our thoughts and we slip into old habits of negative thinking. I’m guilty as charged. When life gets busy- and the days get long- something’s got to give- and until now- it’s been my affirmations/visualizations. During the Winter Olympics this year- one of the young athletes of the United States (I don’t watch TV usually- I happened to have walked into the family room where my husband was watching) was talking to a reporter after she had just done her run- and she said although she was happy with it- but that if she had to stand a chance of a medal she was going to have to up her game – and that tonight she was going to go visualize the run for tomorrow’s competition. We know that the difference between athletes at the elite level is not physical- it’s mental!
Yes, I’ll get to my title in a moment. I know you’re wondering what the connection is!
A couple years ago I made a conscious commitment to start to wake up earlier than I needed to. I did it in baby steps- setting my alarm clock for 10-15min earlier. I allowed myself slack if I hit snooze too many times- I had a little baby in the house who wasn’t totally sleep trained — it took me a year to sleep train him–(that’s a post on perseverance for another time!). I even wrote my ideal calendar scene in my journal– hour by hour- minute by minute I put down what is like a day in my life to look like. And it started with me wanting to wake at 5:00am.
Now here’s where the title will make sense– I use my iPhone as my alarm clock and so as to not wake my husband who is usually a very poor sleeper and gets into his deepest sleep after 4am- I set the alarm tone to harp and the volume down to the lowest setting. So for the past year or so, the ever so soft sound of that harp is what I have woken to 95% of the time– the other 5% is my little one’s cries!
This week is spring break so I’ve allowed myself some slack and instead of 5:00am– I’ve been waking up at 5:45am. Today however at 3:30, my some woke up crying– so I crawled into his bed (no kid ever allowed in our bed until after sun up!) and fell back to sleep. I was cognizant enough that my alarm would go off so unplugged the phone from my bedside and took it with me to my kids’ bedroom as i stumbled into his bed. I’m not sure what time it was, but before my scheduled time of 5:45am— I started hearing sounds of the harp alarm. I didn’t wake up- and it felt like I was dreaming it- but very clearly- I could hear the very familiar sound of the iPhone harp alarm sound. I finally woke up to my alarm at about 6:15am (yep- I snoozed a bunch) to the sound of CHIMES because my daughter switched my alarm sound when she was playing on my phone last night.
So here’s proof positive that if you listen to something/want something/believe something badly enough– it will become your reality. It will become so ingrained, so hard wired into your brain, it will literally be imprinted; it will shift you on a cellular level!
So I invite you to do this for yourself. Take one thing– anything that you want to change about yourself for the greatest good of yourself and others around you (The Universe will only work for good) and focus on it. See yourself changed, doing the thing that at the moment seems completely undoable. Write a couple sentences describing yourself doing exactly that- (be sure to write in the present tense) and say it daily– whether you believe it or not. Over time, say it enough and it will become your new reality. It may take days/weeks/months or as in my case a couple of years– time isn’t relevant- it will take the time it will take- most likely- I believe that if I didn’t have a baby at the time when I made this commitment- this change would have happened sooner for me. But the Universe knew my impatience and my type A attitude – so the timing was perfect- there were bigger lessons I had to learn- lessons of patience, trust and letting go of the outcome! I am now a recovering type A— most of the time.