This week, to attain, maintain, or regain my wellbeing...
When I find myself wanting or wishing things to be different, I will practice imagining I already have it. This strategy comes from the Buddhist philosophy that "whatever I say to the universe, the universe will respond with only one answer - yes." When we focus on our wanting, our thoughts, moods, and actions will often match that, and we can find ourselves thinking and doing things that perpetuate the wanting rather than doing and thinking things that achieve our goals and bring our yearnings to fruition. According to Buddhism, our thoughts, words and actions are the tools with which we create our realities and when we focus on expressing our state of wanting, that is what we push out into our reality, not what we actually want. So, this week I will experiment with using my self-talk and my imagination to 'push out' the object of my desires into reality, rather than 'pushing out' my wanting.
Step One: When I find myself wanting or wishing things were different, I will change my thought commands and statements to imagine myself in that state now. Instead of saying to myself "I want..." or "I wish..." I will say to myself "I have..." or "I am..." or "I will be...". So for example, instead of "I wish I was in love" I will say to myself "I am going to be in love."
Step Two: I will then imagine what it will feel like to have that which I want. I will let myself feel those feelings, not the feeling of wanting it, but the feeling of actually having it. I will put myself in those feelings in advance. The mind knows no difference between imagination and reality. I am already having the experience that I want to have, I know what it feels like and sounds like and looks like within me. I will stay with those feelings no matter what, I won't let external conditions tell me otherwise.
Life is happening through me. Life is not happening to me.
I will start out with the little moment-to-moment wishes for different interactions and things like that. Once I am comfortable putting my wants into the present I am seeking with everyday things, I will add this to my Personal Coping Kete as a strategy for dealing with distress. When I notice myself feeling distressed, I will tune into what it is I want and use my imagination and self-talk to put myself in that moment now.
