What To Say When You Talk To Your Self

by Shad Helmstetter

Long before I learned what we could not do, I dreamed of doing what I knew we could.

The more you think about anything in a certain way, the more you will believe that that is how it really is. The mind works that way because the brain always tries to tie any new thing you think to something you already believe.

But no matter who patted you on the backside when you came struggling into human life, you took your first breath alone. No matter what help you may have received, you took that first breath by yourself. And the next breath, and the next. You did that. You may have had some help along the way, but the breaths you took were your own. No one breathed them for you.

No one will ever stand in our bodies, experience what happens to us, feel our fears, dream our dreams, or cry our tears. We are born, live, and leave this life entirely on our own. That “self,” and the divine spirit which drives it, are what we have. No one else can ever live a single moment of our lives for us. That we must do for ourselves. That is responsibility.

All of us, and perhaps teenagers especially, seek out others who we unconsciously believe we are most like. If a child has a less than positive picture of himself or herself, he or she will select those friends who are most like that picture—even if those friends are the wrong kind of friends. Give the child a better self-image, a better self-picture, and he will choose more of his friends from the group that fits the same kind of picture. If a teenager is told he’s no good, and believes it, he’ll find others who are just as no good, or worse.

Programming creates beliefs, beliefs create attitudes, attitudes create feelings, feelings determine actions, and actions create results.

These attitudes which you have about yourself create one additional important result: the attitudes you have about yourself determine the attitudes you will have about everything else around you. So if you want to change the way you feel about anything else, you have to start first with the attitudes you have about yourself.

Stasis, in personal growth, happens when you stay in one place, and live between two opposing positions. In this case, the two opposing positions are 1) Where you’ve been up to now, and 2) Your unlimited future and where you’d like your life to go next.