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You Can Heal Your Life
Alternate cover edition for 9781401901394
Louise L. Hay, best selling author, is an internationally known leader, her key message is: "If we are willing to do the mental work, almost anything can be healed." The author has a great deal of experience and first hand information to share about healing, including how she cured herself after having been diagnosed as being terminally ill with cancer.
By listening to this four CD set and doing the exercises and repeating the affirmations and beneficial thought patterns, YOU CAN CREATE THE LIFE YOU'VE ALWAYS WANTED.
Louise L. Hay, best selling author, is an internationally known leader, her key message is: "If we are willing to do the mental work, almost anything can be healed." The author has a great deal of experience and first hand information to share about healing, including how she cured herself after having been diagnosed as being terminally ill with cancer.
By listening to this four CD set and doing the exercises and repeating the affirmations and beneficial thought patterns, YOU CAN CREATE THE LIFE YOU'VE ALWAYS WANTED.
Audio CD
First published January 1, 1984
10037 people are currently reading
92090 people want to read
About the author
Louise L. Hay
628 books2,895 followersLouise Hay was born to a poor mother who married Hay's violent stepfather. When she was about five, she was raped by a neighbor. At fifteen she dropped out of high school without a diploma, became pregnant, and on her sixteenth birthday gave up her newborn baby girl for adoption.
She moved to Chicago, where she worked in menial jobs, before moving in 1950 to New York. At this point she changed her name and began a career as a fashion model. She was successful at this, working for Bill Blass, Oleg Cassini, and Pauline Trigere.
In 1954, she married Andrew Hay, but after fourteen years of marriage Louise was devastated when Andrew left her for another woman.
Hay said that she found the First Church of Religious Science on 48th Street, which taught the transformative power of thought. Hay revealed that here she studied the metaphysical works of authors like Florence Scovel Shinn and the Religious Science founder Ernest Holmes.
In the early 1970's Hay became a Religious Science practitioner. In this role she led people in spoken affirmations meant to cure their illnesses. She also became popular as a workshop leader.
She studied transcendental meditation with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at his university in Fairfield, Iowa.
In 1977 or 1978 she found she had cervical cancer, and she concluded that its cause was her unwillingness to let go of resentment over her childhood abuse and rape. She refused medical treatment, and began a regimen of forgiveness, therapy, reflexology, nutrition, and occasional enemas, and claims she rid herself of the cancer. She declared that there is no doctor left who can confirm this story, but swore that it is true.
In 1976 Hay wrote a small pamphlet, which came to be called "Heal Your Body." This pamphlet was enlarged and extended into her book You Can Heal Your Life, which was published in 1984. As of February 2008, it is still on the New York Times best sellers list.
Around the same time she began leading support groups for people living with H.I.V. or AIDS that she called Hay Rides. These grew from a few people in her living room to hundreds in a large hall in West Hollywood. Her work with AIDS patients drew fame and she was invited to appear on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" and "Donahue" in the same week in March, 1988.
You Can Heal Your Life immediately landed on the New York Times Best Sellers List. More than 35 million copies are now in print around the world in more than 30 languages and has been made into a movie.
Louise Hay established Hay House Publishing. It is the primary publisher of books and audio books by Deepak Chopra and Doreen Virtue, as well as many books by Wayne Dyer.
In addition to running her publishing company, Hay runs a charitable organization called Hay Foundation that was established in 1985.
Information courtesy of Wikipedia.org.
She moved to Chicago, where she worked in menial jobs, before moving in 1950 to New York. At this point she changed her name and began a career as a fashion model. She was successful at this, working for Bill Blass, Oleg Cassini, and Pauline Trigere.
In 1954, she married Andrew Hay, but after fourteen years of marriage Louise was devastated when Andrew left her for another woman.
Hay said that she found the First Church of Religious Science on 48th Street, which taught the transformative power of thought. Hay revealed that here she studied the metaphysical works of authors like Florence Scovel Shinn and the Religious Science founder Ernest Holmes.
In the early 1970's Hay became a Religious Science practitioner. In this role she led people in spoken affirmations meant to cure their illnesses. She also became popular as a workshop leader.
She studied transcendental meditation with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at his university in Fairfield, Iowa.
In 1977 or 1978 she found she had cervical cancer, and she concluded that its cause was her unwillingness to let go of resentment over her childhood abuse and rape. She refused medical treatment, and began a regimen of forgiveness, therapy, reflexology, nutrition, and occasional enemas, and claims she rid herself of the cancer. She declared that there is no doctor left who can confirm this story, but swore that it is true.
In 1976 Hay wrote a small pamphlet, which came to be called "Heal Your Body." This pamphlet was enlarged and extended into her book You Can Heal Your Life, which was published in 1984. As of February 2008, it is still on the New York Times best sellers list.
Around the same time she began leading support groups for people living with H.I.V. or AIDS that she called Hay Rides. These grew from a few people in her living room to hundreds in a large hall in West Hollywood. Her work with AIDS patients drew fame and she was invited to appear on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" and "Donahue" in the same week in March, 1988.
You Can Heal Your Life immediately landed on the New York Times Best Sellers List. More than 35 million copies are now in print around the world in more than 30 languages and has been made into a movie.
Louise Hay established Hay House Publishing. It is the primary publisher of books and audio books by Deepak Chopra and Doreen Virtue, as well as many books by Wayne Dyer.
In addition to running her publishing company, Hay runs a charitable organization called Hay Foundation that was established in 1985.
Information courtesy of Wikipedia.org.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 3,274 reviews
November 10, 2014
This book is actually dangerous. I can't remember ever having said that about a text?
I read thirty pages of it, before having to shut it and run far away.
Every single copy of it should come with a huge trigger warning for ableism, fatphobia, and victim blaming of every variety.
Louise Hay claims two things that are odious:
1. All illnesses - including cancer - are caused by negative thinking, and not loving yourself enough. Thus, all illness can be cured by positive thinking, and self-love. She claims one of her patients fixed her poor eye sight by dealing with a childhood trauma.
2. Everyone chooses their parents, and our "energy" attracts people. So those who have bad energy, and don't love themselves enough, attract abusers, rapists, and financial poverty.
What more can be said about this book, than those two main points?
Actually, a few more things can be said. Louise Hay came to fame during, and because of, the onset of the AIDS crisis in the United States. She takes beautiful, enriching concepts such as self-love, affirmation and forgiveness, and then tells people their illnesses are a result of not doing these things well enough. The word "charlatan" comes to mind. Also, "immoral."
I absolutely believe in the mind body connection, that our mental health affects our bodily health, and that our mental states can lead us to greater or poorer physical well being. But to take such a giant leap, to claim (without any evidence except self-serving anecdotes) that you can cure cancer by loving yourself more? That people who are poor are just attracting bad energy, and don't love themselves enough?
Oh, also, were you aware that fat thighs are caused by anger toward ones father?
She takes excellent, inspiring concepts - self-love, forgiveness, compassion, and adjusting one's negative self talk - and coats it all in a big repulsive swath of victim-blaming and willful ignorance about biology, anatomy and medicine.
My heart hurts for people who read this text and love it. It is full of great concepts that are overshadowed by Hay's belief that if one can control the mind, one can control the body. Even Buddhist monks know that you can't eliminate pain, that you can only be mindful of it, and be mindful through it. Louise Hay seems to think she can eliminate all pain and illness with mindfulness and self-love, which is a fantasy. Life is more complex than that - we can use self-love and affirmation to get through illness, but to think that we can eliminate pain by sheer force of will is setting ourselves up for failure, disappointment, and we're left blaming ourselves for not being able to sufficiently heal our bodies perfectly and completely with self-love. Bodies are incurably fallible, they cannot be perfectly healed - none of us get out of here alive. Self-love is important, but equally so is tenderness and acceptance toward our own mortality, and fallibility. Louise Hay sells the idea that positive thinking and self-love can help us get around this truth. But we can't get around the truth of our own mortality - we can only get through it, with self-love and affirmation.
This book is repulsive. I can't wait to take it back to the library and get it out of my house.
I read thirty pages of it, before having to shut it and run far away.
Every single copy of it should come with a huge trigger warning for ableism, fatphobia, and victim blaming of every variety.
Louise Hay claims two things that are odious:
1. All illnesses - including cancer - are caused by negative thinking, and not loving yourself enough. Thus, all illness can be cured by positive thinking, and self-love. She claims one of her patients fixed her poor eye sight by dealing with a childhood trauma.
2. Everyone chooses their parents, and our "energy" attracts people. So those who have bad energy, and don't love themselves enough, attract abusers, rapists, and financial poverty.
What more can be said about this book, than those two main points?
Actually, a few more things can be said. Louise Hay came to fame during, and because of, the onset of the AIDS crisis in the United States. She takes beautiful, enriching concepts such as self-love, affirmation and forgiveness, and then tells people their illnesses are a result of not doing these things well enough. The word "charlatan" comes to mind. Also, "immoral."
I absolutely believe in the mind body connection, that our mental health affects our bodily health, and that our mental states can lead us to greater or poorer physical well being. But to take such a giant leap, to claim (without any evidence except self-serving anecdotes) that you can cure cancer by loving yourself more? That people who are poor are just attracting bad energy, and don't love themselves enough?
Oh, also, were you aware that fat thighs are caused by anger toward ones father?
She takes excellent, inspiring concepts - self-love, forgiveness, compassion, and adjusting one's negative self talk - and coats it all in a big repulsive swath of victim-blaming and willful ignorance about biology, anatomy and medicine.
My heart hurts for people who read this text and love it. It is full of great concepts that are overshadowed by Hay's belief that if one can control the mind, one can control the body. Even Buddhist monks know that you can't eliminate pain, that you can only be mindful of it, and be mindful through it. Louise Hay seems to think she can eliminate all pain and illness with mindfulness and self-love, which is a fantasy. Life is more complex than that - we can use self-love and affirmation to get through illness, but to think that we can eliminate pain by sheer force of will is setting ourselves up for failure, disappointment, and we're left blaming ourselves for not being able to sufficiently heal our bodies perfectly and completely with self-love. Bodies are incurably fallible, they cannot be perfectly healed - none of us get out of here alive. Self-love is important, but equally so is tenderness and acceptance toward our own mortality, and fallibility. Louise Hay sells the idea that positive thinking and self-love can help us get around this truth. But we can't get around the truth of our own mortality - we can only get through it, with self-love and affirmation.
This book is repulsive. I can't wait to take it back to the library and get it out of my house.
January 20, 2009
Louise Hay told a generation of dying gay men that it was their fault they were dying because they didn't love themselves enough. Her basic premise is that if you just love yourself enough, you'll never get sick. A stupid premise, to be sure. The hiv+ community of the mid-80s, looking for any hope to hang onto, desperately embraced this book and its author, and she returned their devotion with the disrespect any common carnival con artist shows their mark. This book is indefensible and she should be ashamed.
August 11, 2017
This is actually the second time I have read this book. I remember reading it as an undergrad years ago in the early 1990s. I remember then that there was some interesting information in the book, but there were things that just didn't make sense to me then and now, looking at it again 20 years later, it still doesn't.
First, this book is an entertaining read and has some good suggestions about how to overcome trauma and the importance of forgiveness. Also, she makes the connection that physical health is directly linked to psychological and emotional health, which is a logical assessment. However, since she has never worked in the arena of medicine, mental health, or any other related profession, it makes it difficult to put a lot of weight in her arguments.
Specifically, she fails to adequately address how serious birth defects, such as downs syndrome, spina bifida, infant AIDS, cerebral palsy and the like are connected to mental health. While certainly once a person becomes cognizant of their emotions and surroundings, it makes sense to connect physical health with emotions. However, it is just outrageous and wrongheaded to think that any of the infants born with major problems are somehow responsible for their own health. She specifically cites birth defects on pg. 181, where she said that these conditions were due to karma and that the child chose to come that way. "We choose our parents and our children." Is she serious? This is absolutely an odious argument.
First, this book is an entertaining read and has some good suggestions about how to overcome trauma and the importance of forgiveness. Also, she makes the connection that physical health is directly linked to psychological and emotional health, which is a logical assessment. However, since she has never worked in the arena of medicine, mental health, or any other related profession, it makes it difficult to put a lot of weight in her arguments.
Specifically, she fails to adequately address how serious birth defects, such as downs syndrome, spina bifida, infant AIDS, cerebral palsy and the like are connected to mental health. While certainly once a person becomes cognizant of their emotions and surroundings, it makes sense to connect physical health with emotions. However, it is just outrageous and wrongheaded to think that any of the infants born with major problems are somehow responsible for their own health. She specifically cites birth defects on pg. 181, where she said that these conditions were due to karma and that the child chose to come that way. "We choose our parents and our children." Is she serious? This is absolutely an odious argument.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 15, 2025
“Remember, you have been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.”
"The universe is listening to everything you say and think and for many of us, most of the time this is negative. Your thoughts create your life, so what are you thinking?"
Louise Hay wrote these self-help at a time when this genre was not cool. Quality content. Really appreciate it.
You might like to wander through a few artistic journals — they’re full of sparks and surprises.
"The universe is listening to everything you say and think and for many of us, most of the time this is negative. Your thoughts create your life, so what are you thinking?"
Louise Hay wrote these self-help at a time when this genre was not cool. Quality content. Really appreciate it.
You might like to wander through a few artistic journals — they’re full of sparks and surprises.
October 29, 2010
I once held a great respect for Louise Hay, but in her recent publishing years, she has proven herself to be as much of a fraud as the authors she promotes, including the charlatan Sylvia Browne, former Amway star Jerry Hicks (with his wife Esther who speaks for "nonphysical"), plagiarist Neale Donald Walsch, and phony PhDs Doreen Virtue and Caroline Myss. This book, though including some practical advice that she has pulled from Aaron Beck's work in cognitive science, contains an overwhelming amount of woo that makes outrageous claims regarding the power of mind. She disregards science and logic in exchange for dubious science that encourages self-blame and guilt regarding disease. This wouldn't bother me so much had the dawn of her career not been acquired through her claim to AIDs patients that they too could heal themselves if they got rid of their "bad thinking". Nowhere in these books does she speak of any AIDs patient's miraculous cure due to her work. And since this book, she has yet to offer any credible evidence that it can do this. I am appalled by this, not because it offers false hope, but because she is preying on a demographic of desperate people who are looking for answers. She claims to have these answers, but offers no proof beyond anecdotes and testimonials. This is no greater than the testimonials of Christian Science (incidentally their leader Mary Baker Eddy was known for acquiring kidney stones in her old age and relying on morphine to ease the pain even though her text claimed they should rely solely on God for relief). This is one of the most irresponsible feats that has ever been accomplished in publishing, and though I believe it could bring many some emotional relief as they use the processes that have been sampled from cognitive science, I also believe that it will and has brought to many a sense of guilt and self-blame regarding the tragedies of their lives.
This book will claim a science to healing, but there is no institution (including Hay's) that offers hard proof of these facts. And if you will read the disclaimer in the beginning, you will be reminded that this author is not to be held accountable to your failure in using these principles.
Due to this book, Louise Hay has now created one of the largest New Age publishing houses in the world. And she has made it clear through the authors she publishes that she is more concerned about the bottom line of her company than she is people's well being. It is a shame to say that this modern Mary Baker Eddy, known as the affirmations guru, is nothing more than a charismatic charlatan.
If you do decide to venture into this book, do so with critical thinking skills and remember that this author will take on no responsibility for your success or failings in these teachings. Also look at the credibility of her own healing, which can be explained as a lie, misdiagnosis, or divine healing. Her words will likely validate you, send you swooning into good feelings, and overwhelm you with the presence of love as she constructs an imaginary world where you create your reality through your thoughts. Just make sure when you set this book down to leave that world behind as well.
This book will claim a science to healing, but there is no institution (including Hay's) that offers hard proof of these facts. And if you will read the disclaimer in the beginning, you will be reminded that this author is not to be held accountable to your failure in using these principles.
Due to this book, Louise Hay has now created one of the largest New Age publishing houses in the world. And she has made it clear through the authors she publishes that she is more concerned about the bottom line of her company than she is people's well being. It is a shame to say that this modern Mary Baker Eddy, known as the affirmations guru, is nothing more than a charismatic charlatan.
If you do decide to venture into this book, do so with critical thinking skills and remember that this author will take on no responsibility for your success or failings in these teachings. Also look at the credibility of her own healing, which can be explained as a lie, misdiagnosis, or divine healing. Her words will likely validate you, send you swooning into good feelings, and overwhelm you with the presence of love as she constructs an imaginary world where you create your reality through your thoughts. Just make sure when you set this book down to leave that world behind as well.
November 11, 2017
شفای زندگی از آن دسته کتاب هایی به شمار میاید که درست مثل آدمی شجاع و صریح هست که بدون هیچ ترسی و مراعات حالی ، با نهایت شجاعت، واقعیت پشت پرده مشکلات انسانی و درد و مرض های جسمی و روحی را به روی انسان میاورد و شدیدا تکانمان میدهد و ممکن هست خیلی ها مثل من موقع خواندنش بارها کنارش بگذارند یا کسانی حتی عصبانی بشوند و شاکی از حقایقی که لوییز هی نوشته و سعی میکند باعث بیداری مردم این دوره شود . بخش هایی که در مورد بیماری ها بود را با چند مورد از مشکلات جسمی خودم که مقایسه کردم باعث تعجب و شوک من بودند چون حقیقتا من هم ان فرایند های عجیب را در زندگیم گذرانده بودم که نهایتا دچار ان درد و بیماری و مشکلات خاص شده ام و همچنان درگیرشان هستم. ترکیب عبارات تاکیدی این کتاب با روش ای اف تی بسیار شگفت انگیز و شفا دهنده خواهد بود که به همه پیشنهادش میدهم. برای آشنایی با روش ای اف تی هم منابع فارسی در اینترنت موجود هست ...
July 20, 2011
I got this for my mother after a personal tragedy destroyed our family. She was having trouble eating, sleeping, smiling, being awake, being alive... When she had finished, I read it myself and found incredible tools there for taking responsibility for myself, while letting go of my irritation, anger, whatever, toward those whom I perceive as shirking responsibility. This book has given me tools to get things DONE, to control my own thoughts and thought process, to put my powers to use for Good, and to make my passions work for me, instead of letting my thoughts, feelings, and FEAR get in the way of achieving my goals.
Since reading this book I've:
improved the relationship between my adopted child and myself
improved the quality and communication of my marriage
improved my health and diet
moved my family into a bigger house in a better neighborhood
started going to night school to embark on a new career
made peace with my family situation, if not all family members- yet
I still have lots of things left to clear out in my skeleton closet, it's not all butterflies and rainbows in my heart and mind, but I feel better and am finally getting past the fear that has held me back from doing the things I want to. It took a long time, and it really is a lot of work, to identify your own negative patterns and work to correct them, but it is incredibly worth the effort. It took the loss of my closest family member to force me to realize the extent of my own self-defeating habits, but I am once again able to take care of and love my children, to love my husband and myself, and better than ever before.
Since reading this book I've:
improved the relationship between my adopted child and myself
improved the quality and communication of my marriage
improved my health and diet
moved my family into a bigger house in a better neighborhood
started going to night school to embark on a new career
made peace with my family situation, if not all family members- yet
I still have lots of things left to clear out in my skeleton closet, it's not all butterflies and rainbows in my heart and mind, but I feel better and am finally getting past the fear that has held me back from doing the things I want to. It took a long time, and it really is a lot of work, to identify your own negative patterns and work to correct them, but it is incredibly worth the effort. It took the loss of my closest family member to force me to realize the extent of my own self-defeating habits, but I am once again able to take care of and love my children, to love my husband and myself, and better than ever before.
May 10, 2023
The problem is rarely the “real problem.”
I don't review a lot of “self-help” books on here.
It's not that I don't think I need help; I've needed help in the last few years of my life more than any other. . . I think it's more likely true that I find most “self-help” books to be either poorly written or penned by a person I find egotistical or inappropriate for my particular journey.
I have a mentor teacher here, in my “new” hometown, and I have a therapist, too (the first truly effective one that I've ever had in my life), so when I felt a more recent desire to investigate helpful reads, I reached out to both of them this month, to ask for recommendations for books that really take someone on a healing journey to get to those “next levels” of healing.
Both women mentioned a handful of books, but what they had in common: “Louise Hay. YOU CAN HEAL YOUR LIFE.”
I knew who Louise Hay was; most Americans can't walk through a thrift store or a Barnes & Noble without seeing her face on a book cover. She was an incredibly prolific inspirational writer who went on to have her own publishing house, and she made a successful crossover (at least here in the states) to the mainstream, yet I had never picked up one of her books.
Louise Hay's backstory is sad and shocking, and, ultimately, inspiring. A very young Louise was abandoned, early on, by her father. Her mother remarried and little Louise was then physically and sexually abused for years and raped by a neighbor at the age of 5. The sexual abuse continued, and resulted in an unwanted pregnancy and Louise giving up the baby for adoption, as a teen. She then dropped out of high school and ran away from home, permanently.
Louise, as a young adult, fell in love and married, and felt “happy” for 14 years, until her husband announced he had fallen in love with someone else and abandoned her. They were childless.
In midlife, Louise found herself alone, unmoored, and a past victim of multiple, unresolved abuses. This culminated in a reckless diet, an undisciplined life, and then a diagnosis of an “incurable vaginal cancer.”
Ms. Hay, in the late 1970s/early 1980s, decided to heal herself, without medical intervention. She studied just about everything available, at the time, on diet, meditation, prayer, exercise, and therapy.
Oh—and she healed her body, and mind—for the rest of her life. Not only eliminating the cancer from her body, but changing her life for good.
She went from being tormented, to thriving. In about 250 pages, she tells you how she, and how you, might be able to heal your life.
Neither you, nor I, get to be passive here. If you desire the same results as Louise Hay, you need to do what she recommends, and you most likely need to make some changes. There's no magic wand; healing requires work.
I can only tell you that I've been doing her particular protocol for less than a week, and I could feel the difference within 48 hours. Her approach is straight-forward and non-judgmental, and she
does not promote any particular religion nor spiritual practice (other than to recommend that you have one).
I felt (as a reader, and as a student) that she honored the places I have been, and she invited me to seek new places to go.
I don't review a lot of “self-help” books on here.
It's not that I don't think I need help; I've needed help in the last few years of my life more than any other. . . I think it's more likely true that I find most “self-help” books to be either poorly written or penned by a person I find egotistical or inappropriate for my particular journey.
I have a mentor teacher here, in my “new” hometown, and I have a therapist, too (the first truly effective one that I've ever had in my life), so when I felt a more recent desire to investigate helpful reads, I reached out to both of them this month, to ask for recommendations for books that really take someone on a healing journey to get to those “next levels” of healing.
Both women mentioned a handful of books, but what they had in common: “Louise Hay. YOU CAN HEAL YOUR LIFE.”
I knew who Louise Hay was; most Americans can't walk through a thrift store or a Barnes & Noble without seeing her face on a book cover. She was an incredibly prolific inspirational writer who went on to have her own publishing house, and she made a successful crossover (at least here in the states) to the mainstream, yet I had never picked up one of her books.
Louise Hay's backstory is sad and shocking, and, ultimately, inspiring. A very young Louise was abandoned, early on, by her father. Her mother remarried and little Louise was then physically and sexually abused for years and raped by a neighbor at the age of 5. The sexual abuse continued, and resulted in an unwanted pregnancy and Louise giving up the baby for adoption, as a teen. She then dropped out of high school and ran away from home, permanently.
Louise, as a young adult, fell in love and married, and felt “happy” for 14 years, until her husband announced he had fallen in love with someone else and abandoned her. They were childless.
In midlife, Louise found herself alone, unmoored, and a past victim of multiple, unresolved abuses. This culminated in a reckless diet, an undisciplined life, and then a diagnosis of an “incurable vaginal cancer.”
Ms. Hay, in the late 1970s/early 1980s, decided to heal herself, without medical intervention. She studied just about everything available, at the time, on diet, meditation, prayer, exercise, and therapy.
Oh—and she healed her body, and mind—for the rest of her life. Not only eliminating the cancer from her body, but changing her life for good.
She went from being tormented, to thriving. In about 250 pages, she tells you how she, and how you, might be able to heal your life.
Neither you, nor I, get to be passive here. If you desire the same results as Louise Hay, you need to do what she recommends, and you most likely need to make some changes. There's no magic wand; healing requires work.
I can only tell you that I've been doing her particular protocol for less than a week, and I could feel the difference within 48 hours. Her approach is straight-forward and non-judgmental, and she
does not promote any particular religion nor spiritual practice (other than to recommend that you have one).
I felt (as a reader, and as a student) that she honored the places I have been, and she invited me to seek new places to go.
June 14, 2010
This is a tough book for me to admit to. Because its self-help. And its got goofy-sounding psuedo-science around the edges...and its hippy flakey commie witchy woman so on so forth... everything that is the opposite of how I indentify myself.
But damn. The core of it is one revolutionary idea that I can't disassemble, with any amount of cynicism or logic. And that is: I'm choosing my life. All sadness, failure, struggle in my life...I'm creating it, ASKING for it, even. And it can change.
Its a beautiful object, this book. Every page is written on soothing, glossy watercolors. I wanted to own it the first time I picked it up, even tho I didn't much read it for two years.
I can't say my life is healed or changed yet. But this book makes me happy. And hopeful.
But damn. The core of it is one revolutionary idea that I can't disassemble, with any amount of cynicism or logic. And that is: I'm choosing my life. All sadness, failure, struggle in my life...I'm creating it, ASKING for it, even. And it can change.
Its a beautiful object, this book. Every page is written on soothing, glossy watercolors. I wanted to own it the first time I picked it up, even tho I didn't much read it for two years.
I can't say my life is healed or changed yet. But this book makes me happy. And hopeful.
September 21, 2014
Meh. It just goes too far. I believe that our health can be affected by our mental states, sure; I even believe that some physical ailments are, quite possibly, almost entirely connected to our minds and emotions. But I simply cannot accept that every single thing that happens to me is something I have brought on by my own mental attitude. Sometimes bad things just happen.
September 13, 2016
I've read this book before and I know I will read it again. I refer to the 'Heal Your Body' section often if I am sick or I have an ache or pain, to learn the positive affirmation to say to 'release' the physical ailment. I saw the author, Louise Hay, on Oprah maybe 8 years ago and was instantly compelled by her sincerity, knowledge and compassion to buy this book. I have since given this book as a gift to many.
Many of you may scratch your head or think I'm crazy for saying this, but I believe there is much validity to the the mind-body, negative thoughts vs. positive thoughts, connection. I have worked in the medical field for over 20 years and work hands-on daily with patients with all sorts of mental and physical ailments and diseases. I have witnessed first-hand the power of positive thought and positive action at work, even with those who are severely injured or sick. Again, this might sound kooky to some of you in our modern age of technology, medicine and pharmaceuticals. Those have their place, too, but what can it hurt to learn to love ourselves from within, not criticize ourselves or others, or learn to forgive ourselves and others? The answer is simple. It can't hurt anything, only heal our lives from the very simplest to the most complex levels. I recommend this book to everyone.
Many of you may scratch your head or think I'm crazy for saying this, but I believe there is much validity to the the mind-body, negative thoughts vs. positive thoughts, connection. I have worked in the medical field for over 20 years and work hands-on daily with patients with all sorts of mental and physical ailments and diseases. I have witnessed first-hand the power of positive thought and positive action at work, even with those who are severely injured or sick. Again, this might sound kooky to some of you in our modern age of technology, medicine and pharmaceuticals. Those have their place, too, but what can it hurt to learn to love ourselves from within, not criticize ourselves or others, or learn to forgive ourselves and others? The answer is simple. It can't hurt anything, only heal our lives from the very simplest to the most complex levels. I recommend this book to everyone.
October 1, 2023
I have kept this book with me for over 20 years (and several moves) and I finally pulled it from the shelf, opened its pages and it was like I could feel the energy of my old self: diligently highlighting with yellow marker and I even wrote inside the front cover, You are to love one another.--Jesus. This book was a constant companion for a few years, and I did follow it diligently and it was in many ways the start of my path towards healing. Coming back to this book was a perfect circle. I feel now I will keep it a little closer to me--it will sit on my bedside table.
Many thanks to Julie G--for listening to the Inner Voice--and for suggesting this buddy read.
Many thanks to Julie G--for listening to the Inner Voice--and for suggesting this buddy read.
March 9, 2008
Dear Oprah,
I typically appreciate your literary leadership. "The Secret" and I have had some good times together. I even enjoyed A Million Little Pieces despite the lies. However, you have dropped the ball on this one. This chick is crazy! She has some good ideas, sort of, but wow this one was hokey hokey hokey. I forced myself to read it, and I wish I hadn't. Feel free to make it up to me by sending me a new car.
I typically appreciate your literary leadership. "The Secret" and I have had some good times together. I even enjoyed A Million Little Pieces despite the lies. However, you have dropped the ball on this one. This chick is crazy! She has some good ideas, sort of, but wow this one was hokey hokey hokey. I forced myself to read it, and I wish I hadn't. Feel free to make it up to me by sending me a new car.
March 14, 2011
I heart this book! I read it when I was fifteen and it changed the way I structured my thinking. Louise L. Hay sent about a dozen copies to my mom and she handed them out to a bunch of my friends. I have bought copies for so many people over the years because she offers such a great way to think about life. It puts the reader in the realization that we have a life we can learn to love and we can use the tools in her book to change it. It’s pretty much a psychology book with spiritual undertones. Anyone of any religion could read this book and get something out of it. I have to say that this book lightly touches these concepts and so it is a great read for someone who would know nothing about psychology or spirituality.
In the back of the book she has a list of dis-eases of the body and then has a corresponding affirmation to help minimize whatever problem is going on. She basically says that diseases start in ones mind and we draw certain things to our bodies because our minds are thinking certain negative thoughts. What happens to our bodies are a direct manifestation of whatever negative thing is going on in our mind. This puts the power into the person to know they have tools such as their mind to possibly heal themselves or at least improve any situation.
I love this book because it taught me at a young age that possibilities in life are endless if you do not bind yourself to any beliefs that will hold you back. It taught me to listen to myself and the things I say in my head on a regular basis. Then I can train myself to stop the negativity and replace it with love and a corresponding affirmation. What a beautiful book for someone with a semi-open mind and who wants to change their thought processes and create a life they want to live.
In the back of the book she has a list of dis-eases of the body and then has a corresponding affirmation to help minimize whatever problem is going on. She basically says that diseases start in ones mind and we draw certain things to our bodies because our minds are thinking certain negative thoughts. What happens to our bodies are a direct manifestation of whatever negative thing is going on in our mind. This puts the power into the person to know they have tools such as their mind to possibly heal themselves or at least improve any situation.
I love this book because it taught me at a young age that possibilities in life are endless if you do not bind yourself to any beliefs that will hold you back. It taught me to listen to myself and the things I say in my head on a regular basis. Then I can train myself to stop the negativity and replace it with love and a corresponding affirmation. What a beautiful book for someone with a semi-open mind and who wants to change their thought processes and create a life they want to live.
April 5, 2007
I have read many "self help" books...this one is metaphysical
May 6, 2012
I held back on reading this for a while, and, while reading, have (so far) held back on doing some of the exercises it suggests. Still trying to figure out WHY, but I have some inklings.
I think, if you read this book and do the suggested affirmations and exercises when YOU are in the right emotional place to do them, this book could potentially be life-changing. There's so much good here, so much about rejecting negativity and embracing one's one loveability and worthiness, I think everyone should read this book.
That said, my mother died of breast cancer. I know that she loved me, and wanted to stay with me; I know others who have loved, deeply and completely, and wanted to stay in this life. To suggest that if you love/accept yourself enough, you can cure anything, even cancer, feels to me more than a little bit like blaming the victim for not wanting/committing to healing enough. Possibly I am dumping my own baggage where it doesn't belong. Perhaps I don't want to accept the possibility that my mother did choose to die, rather than to stay in this life.
I will say that, IMO, 95%+ of this book is great. But I also believe, rightly or wrongly, that even with the heart and spirit in the right place, even with accepting and loving oneself as much as humanly possible, that even with the perfect balance of diet and exercise and supportive family and friends and energies, some people will still die of illnesses and diseases, as well as accidents. Life itself is a fatal condition; human beings are not meant to live in perfect health, forever (not that we should resign ourselves without a fight to acceptance of illness and dis-ease, as Hay puts it so eloquently, either.)
Maybe it's my pessimistic attitude that ruins the possibilities for me, I don't know. I do recommend this book, and plan to re-read it in the future.
I think, if you read this book and do the suggested affirmations and exercises when YOU are in the right emotional place to do them, this book could potentially be life-changing. There's so much good here, so much about rejecting negativity and embracing one's one loveability and worthiness, I think everyone should read this book.
That said, my mother died of breast cancer. I know that she loved me, and wanted to stay with me; I know others who have loved, deeply and completely, and wanted to stay in this life. To suggest that if you love/accept yourself enough, you can cure anything, even cancer, feels to me more than a little bit like blaming the victim for not wanting/committing to healing enough. Possibly I am dumping my own baggage where it doesn't belong. Perhaps I don't want to accept the possibility that my mother did choose to die, rather than to stay in this life.
I will say that, IMO, 95%+ of this book is great. But I also believe, rightly or wrongly, that even with the heart and spirit in the right place, even with accepting and loving oneself as much as humanly possible, that even with the perfect balance of diet and exercise and supportive family and friends and energies, some people will still die of illnesses and diseases, as well as accidents. Life itself is a fatal condition; human beings are not meant to live in perfect health, forever (not that we should resign ourselves without a fight to acceptance of illness and dis-ease, as Hay puts it so eloquently, either.)
Maybe it's my pessimistic attitude that ruins the possibilities for me, I don't know. I do recommend this book, and plan to re-read it in the future.
September 27, 2015
I was told that I should read this book because it would be helpful to me. The book is very, very focused on the New Age idea of the Law of Attraction, if you put out good then good will come back to you, and to an extent I do agree with that idea, and that is a good lesson from this book. However, that being said, it is the sole good lesson that I was able to see in this book. Hay takes everything and spins it as a result of negativity in one's life. It is extreme. I can go out everyday and I can say, "Today will be good." I do believe that will have a positive impact on my day, but I don't believe that I can say, "Today I stop having asthma." and then throw away my inhaler. That would be irresponsible and might well kill me or I could end up in the hospital.
Are you fat? It's because you want to be fat and cannot let go of some form of negativity in your life.
Do you have cancer? It's because you hold resentment towards someone.
Are you poor? It's because you want to be poor. You could be rich if you believed you could be.
She states several times that if you get upset with her statements or disagree with her it's not because you're right or she's wrong or because there's room for disagreement but simply that it means that you need to change and that she's hit upon that fact. At one she states that if you've been abused it's because you've chosen that path and that challenge and it isn't the fault of your abuser. It was your choice before you were born. This is victim blaming and just about as wrong as it gets. Yes, I am angry about that. Yes, a victim can need to change his or her mind about how they act or respond to something as they go through the healing process, but they didn't chose what happened to them. They did not say to their abuser at any point in time that they wanted to be abused, and to communicate that to people looking for help is disgusting.
Are you fat? It's because you want to be fat and cannot let go of some form of negativity in your life.
Do you have cancer? It's because you hold resentment towards someone.
Are you poor? It's because you want to be poor. You could be rich if you believed you could be.
She states several times that if you get upset with her statements or disagree with her it's not because you're right or she's wrong or because there's room for disagreement but simply that it means that you need to change and that she's hit upon that fact. At one she states that if you've been abused it's because you've chosen that path and that challenge and it isn't the fault of your abuser. It was your choice before you were born. This is victim blaming and just about as wrong as it gets. Yes, I am angry about that. Yes, a victim can need to change his or her mind about how they act or respond to something as they go through the healing process, but they didn't chose what happened to them. They did not say to their abuser at any point in time that they wanted to be abused, and to communicate that to people looking for help is disgusting.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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May 25, 2022E pa, moram da se ogradim, čitanje ove knjige NIJE bilo moja ideja ali sam obećala i čvrsto rešila da pokažem dobru volju i izguram do kraja.
Dobre strane: ovde zaista ima nekoliko solidnih zamisli o tome da treba biti nežan prema sebi, gajiti pozitivan odnos takođe prema sebi, preporučuju se neke jednostavne tehnike meditacije i opuštanja i mentalne vežbice. Sve je to okej i može biti od velike koristi nekome ko na to natrapa u pravom trenutku.
Ali. Ali.
Osnovne ideje koje žena gura svode se (u različitim izvođenjima od zdravorazumskih do sumanutih) na to da smo sami odgovorni za sve u životu počev od izbora roditelja jer, da, mi smo sami izabrali kojim roditeljima ćemo se roditi. I ako dobijemo polnu bolest to neće biti nesrećnim sticajem okolnosti pa čak ni nepažnjom nego jer smo podsvesno mi tako želeli i odlučili. I ako smo siromašni i neškolovani. I ako nemamo kola. SVE.
Mnogo je jezivo. I pričice o tome kako se rak leči promenom stava a može i dioptrija da nestane. Može sve samo ako dovoljno volite sebe.
Najteže mi je jer se iza brda budalaština lepo nazire zrnce istine: jeste, ako je neko srećan i spokojan onda će biti i zdraviji dušom i telom, manje će se stresirati, manje biti nesmotren i donositi bolje odluke u životu. Ali ali ali... postoje i spoljne okolnosti! Postoji društvo u kome živimo!! Postoji pijani šofer koji srećnu i uravnoteženu sebevoleću osobu pokupi kolima na pešačkom prelazu dok je zeleno svetlo za pešake!!! Kako je to njena odluka?
I tako. Ako baš osećate potrebu za nekom samopomoći, možda ipak da probate s nečim drugim. Lojoline Duhovne vežbe, tako to.
(Moja dobra sebevoleća odluka jeste da se koncentrišem na ideju i dobru nameru i pokupim ono što ovde valja, a stalo bi na deset strana, i sve ovo ostalo komotno pustim niz vodu i na Gudrids.)
Dobre strane: ovde zaista ima nekoliko solidnih zamisli o tome da treba biti nežan prema sebi, gajiti pozitivan odnos takođe prema sebi, preporučuju se neke jednostavne tehnike meditacije i opuštanja i mentalne vežbice. Sve je to okej i može biti od velike koristi nekome ko na to natrapa u pravom trenutku.
Ali. Ali.
Osnovne ideje koje žena gura svode se (u različitim izvođenjima od zdravorazumskih do sumanutih) na to da smo sami odgovorni za sve u životu počev od izbora roditelja jer, da, mi smo sami izabrali kojim roditeljima ćemo se roditi. I ako dobijemo polnu bolest to neće biti nesrećnim sticajem okolnosti pa čak ni nepažnjom nego jer smo podsvesno mi tako želeli i odlučili. I ako smo siromašni i neškolovani. I ako nemamo kola. SVE.
Mnogo je jezivo. I pričice o tome kako se rak leči promenom stava a može i dioptrija da nestane. Može sve samo ako dovoljno volite sebe.
Najteže mi je jer se iza brda budalaština lepo nazire zrnce istine: jeste, ako je neko srećan i spokojan onda će biti i zdraviji dušom i telom, manje će se stresirati, manje biti nesmotren i donositi bolje odluke u životu. Ali ali ali... postoje i spoljne okolnosti! Postoji društvo u kome živimo!! Postoji pijani šofer koji srećnu i uravnoteženu sebevoleću osobu pokupi kolima na pešačkom prelazu dok je zeleno svetlo za pešake!!! Kako je to njena odluka?
I tako. Ako baš osećate potrebu za nekom samopomoći, možda ipak da probate s nečim drugim. Lojoline Duhovne vežbe, tako to.
(Moja dobra sebevoleća odluka jeste da se koncentrišem na ideju i dobru nameru i pokupim ono što ovde valja, a stalo bi na deset strana, i sve ovo ostalo komotno pustim niz vodu i na Gudrids.)
April 4, 2011
I hate this book. Her assertation that cancer is caused by wrong thinking is pure medieval superstition. She has obviously never had a beautiful, strong, healthy-living loved one's bright spark snuffed out by cancer's insidious growth.
May 28, 2012
If v're willing to do the mental work, almost anything can be healed...
April 13, 2020
جدول آخر کتاب مسخره ترین چیزیه که توی عمرم خوندم.😑
درسته که بعضی از درد ها یا مشکلات جسمی میتونند حالت روان تنی (psychosomatic) داشته باشند اما اینکه سعی کنیم برای بیماری هایی مثل آبله مرغان،ایدز ،سل، هاری و... علت ذهنی پیدا کنیم واقعا عجیبه!!!
پ.ن: چند نمونه از الگوهای ذهنی بیماری زا که در کتاب معرفی شده :
آبله مرغان
علت احتمالی :این دست و آن دست کردن ،ترس و فشار،حساسیت مفرط
عفونت مجاری ادرار
علت احتمالی :سرزنش دیگران
شب ادراری:ادرار کردن به روی جنس مخالف
انگل
علت:قدرت را به دیگران سپردن و اختیار از دست دادن
(کرم کدو :اعتقاد راسخ به قربانی بودن خود را ناپاک دانستن،در برابر گرایشهای دیگران خود را درمانده یافتن)
هاری(گزیدگی سگ هار)
علت:خشم،این اعتقاد که خشم پاسخ مسئله است
درسته که بعضی از درد ها یا مشکلات جسمی میتونند حالت روان تنی (psychosomatic) داشته باشند اما اینکه سعی کنیم برای بیماری هایی مثل آبله مرغان،ایدز ،سل، هاری و... علت ذهنی پیدا کنیم واقعا عجیبه!!!
پ.ن: چند نمونه از الگوهای ذهنی بیماری زا که در کتاب معرفی شده :
آبله مرغان
علت احتمالی :این دست و آن دست کردن ،ترس و فشار،حساسیت مفرط
عفونت مجاری ادرار
علت احتمالی :سرزنش دیگران
شب ادراری:ادرار کردن به روی جنس مخالف
انگل
علت:قدرت را به دیگران سپردن و اختیار از دست دادن
(کرم کدو :اعتقاد راسخ به قربانی بودن خود را ناپاک دانستن،در برابر گرایشهای دیگران خود را درمانده یافتن)
هاری(گزیدگی سگ هار)
علت:خشم،این اعتقاد که خشم پاسخ مسئله است
March 1, 2013
This book made me want to find the author and be sick in her eye. It consists entirely of unsupported conjecture, anti-scientific psychobabble and actively harmful implications that people who are not able bodied are in some way responsible for their conditions. Louise Hay's book is a dangerous, simple-minded fraud and should be openly ridiculed by all.
April 10, 2019
4.5/Debo decir que cogí este libro con cierta reticencia, pero al final él ganó la partida. Un buen libro si lo que buscas es cambiar la estructura mental que tienes anclada desde la niñez.
November 13, 2012
I listened to this book as an audiobook of CDs. I only made it through the first disc before deciding it was not for me. At first it seemed to make some sense, that we poison ourselves with toxic thoughts, but then the author (who was also the narrator, I believe) started going off with platitudes, too many of which I took issue with. For example, she implied that studying history was irrelevant and that we should instead teach our children about how our minds work, psychologically speaking. Not a bad idea to examine what we teach our children, but at the exclusion of history? It just wasn't for me, as I said.....
December 30, 2019
S Louise se jako dobro slažem. Volim čitati njezina "pametovanja", jer do mene na taj njezin laički način dopiru. Iako, svaku njezinu knjigu treba pročitati više puta kako bi ono što nudi bilo dobro shvaćeno i primijenjeno!
"Zapamtite: Vi ste jedina osoba koja razmišlja u vašoj glavi!"
"Navršivši treću godinu, mi smo već prihvatili gotovo sve svoje programiranje, kako negativno, tako i pozitivno. Naša se iskustva otada temelje na onome što smo u to doba prihvatili i povjeroavali o sebi i o životu. Način na koji su se drugi odnosili preman nama dok smo bili posve maleni najčešće je način na koji se mi danas odnosimo prema sebi."
"Zapamtite: Vi ste jedina osoba koja razmišlja u vašoj glavi!"
"Navršivši treću godinu, mi smo već prihvatili gotovo sve svoje programiranje, kako negativno, tako i pozitivno. Naša se iskustva otada temelje na onome što smo u to doba prihvatili i povjeroavali o sebi i o životu. Način na koji su se drugi odnosili preman nama dok smo bili posve maleni najčešće je način na koji se mi danas odnosimo prema sebi."
April 19, 2014
Why isn't there a rating lower than one star??
This book is ridiculous. I had to give up on it because the more I read, the more fruity it got. Of particular concern is her belief that any aliment is caused by negative self thought and therefore can be cured as long as you love yourself enough. This ranges all the way from bad breath, to herpes to cancer. She even provides a list of diseases along with the negative thoughts that causes them and what you should be thinking in order to heal it. Therefore it is my belief that this book is not only incredibly silly but also dangerous to people who are suffering from serious medical issues who may not seek out medical help when it is needed. The fact that there is a disclaimer at the front of the book saying that the author is not responsible if you just couldn't think enough positive thoughts to cure your disease should really highlight just how stupid and dangerous this book is.
I guess if I was to think positively about my experience with this book then at least it will make good kindling for the fire.
This book is ridiculous. I had to give up on it because the more I read, the more fruity it got. Of particular concern is her belief that any aliment is caused by negative self thought and therefore can be cured as long as you love yourself enough. This ranges all the way from bad breath, to herpes to cancer. She even provides a list of diseases along with the negative thoughts that causes them and what you should be thinking in order to heal it. Therefore it is my belief that this book is not only incredibly silly but also dangerous to people who are suffering from serious medical issues who may not seek out medical help when it is needed. The fact that there is a disclaimer at the front of the book saying that the author is not responsible if you just couldn't think enough positive thoughts to cure your disease should really highlight just how stupid and dangerous this book is.
I guess if I was to think positively about my experience with this book then at least it will make good kindling for the fire.
August 18, 2016
I think all you need to know for this review is that Louise Hay thinks that all diseases are created by negative thinking. I think this is not entirely untrue with some important amendments that I will allude to. If you’re considering reading this book, I would, because I think there are benefits to it, but I would of course exercise critical thinking just as I would advise with any book. I mean, you’re not an idiot!
One interesting maxim I discovered this year is ‘Hold onto what works for you and let the rest go.’ We all implicitly do this when reading, but I found this rule of particular importance while reading this book. Taking the following literally, for example, is to be heavily discouraged: ‘Forgiving and releasing resentment will dissolve even cancer. While this may sound simplistic, I have seen and experienced it working.’ But given that our negative thoughts work so much on a lack of evidence, and everything to do with emotions, what’s the harm in me believing, all my life, that I have the power to walk through walls, and utilising the motivation that this thought generates, even if I never walk through a wall? Imagine I was claustrophobic and I said to myself, ‘I never need to get worried about being trapped in a confined space because if that happens I’ll just walk free.’ I trump an irrational fear with an irrational solution. I get that this idea is weird, but books and reviewers have too easy a time trashing the optimistic.
Some anecdotes, then. I was eighteen and walking down the street holding hands with my then-boyf. Apparently someone shouted something homophonic at us (I was too besotted with him and vodka to notice— and I now realise the hand-holding was likely not an expression of affection but an invite for such a verbal attack [not to suggest, of course, that every time a gay couple are holding hands, they shouldn’t/ are deliberately inviting verbal abuse/ deserve it]— are these Hay’s rules in action before I’ve even made my point, even although this parenthesis is besides the point?) My boyfriend shouted something back at them, was in a mood all the way back to my flat, CRIED, then said he was proud of himself because it was the first time he’d resolved a fight without punching someone (? Tell me I didn’t invite this guy towards myself through my own 18 y/o’s minuscule self-worth!) ANYWAYS MY ACTUAL POINT: I was like, ‘Dude whatever. H8ers gonna h8.’ He was like, ‘But imagine what they say to the next gay couple who are maybe 17 and they’re not as confident?’
Do you believe this is why he wanted to deck a cunt or two? I don’t. But also, I don’t know what the next impressionable person thinks when reading this book. I know that I’m an adult male with the capacity to think for himself and dismiss ideas that don’t work for him, and I would say the same of most of my Goodreads friends, and so I review this book as myself and for them.
Here’s another story. I was telling a friend recently about a time I was snubbed. I’d said to someone I work with that my dad is now writing fiction too, to which this coworker replied, ‘Yeah well he’ll be much better at it than you because he has so much more life experience than you do.’
‘What’s the problem?’ my friend said. ‘You’re being too sensitive. What he said was true.’
‘Imagine,’ I said, ‘that we were out at this restaurant celebrating a promotion you got at work. I say to you, “Cheers. But remember, your successes ultimately mean the most only to yourself. There’s always someone better, and we’ll be dead before you know it anyway— then it will all have meant nothing.” It’s all true. But just because it’s true, doesn’t mean there’s any use in saying it.’
We are adorers of fiction, most of us here. Must we confine fiction to the page, though? Isn’t to live to delude yourself? How do we define delusion? Surely, for example, we get up in the morning because we have some positive expectation regarding the day’s outcome, but what that outcome is is entirely beyond our powers to predict. Yes, we can guess educatedly, but it’s just a guess in the end. Won’t the day’s outcome be the best if we deliberately enhance our belief in ourselves and our expectations beyond what we have thought possible of previous days, or is this a dangerous task setting us up for failure? Honestly I don’t know. But I have tried to spiritually sustain myself entirely on negfic and I guarantee you, there is not enough nutrition in that package. So I remain open to what else is out there and reject what is comfy.
Psychosomatic issues are real. Perhaps Hay overestimates their importance, but there is a worthy lesson here. Is it insanely damaging to suggest that if someone has contracted AIDS, it’s because they loathed themselves? If I take that seriously, yes. But I recently watched this documentary called Chemsex, created by Vice, I believe, which tells you everything you need to know about whether or not you should watch it too. The documentary is about the sometimes deadly combination of recreational drugs, Grindr and hookups that is taking London by storm. It’s something my husband refused to watch, but he also won’t stop telling me he was so glad not to have watched with me and brings it up sometimes just to ask why I watched it— not his fault. I think the faculties to dismiss certain suffering groups is an ingrained reflex because we don���t genuinely have the time, and maybe not even the space in our hearts, for the problems of everyone. But I think we are too good at this, dismiss things out of hand too easily. Maybe because technology convinces us there’s always something going on when there isn’t: makes us feel like we’re too pressed to spare some compassion. I also believe— and I hope you reflect on this too, because I’d be interested to know if your experience of life is similar— that there were certain times in my life when I felt so low that I would have done anything not to feel as bad as I did. I know that similar people have been in the exact same situation I was and had their lives next-to-ruined because the wrong person happened by or such-and-such a substance was available to them when it wasn’t available to me. It’s pure chance, and I really believe this, that many of my family members are still alive today, so I don’t think that I or they have the right to gleefully skip about as if our completely safe current lives were always guaranteed, because they weren’t. So I do empathise with people who have gone down the wrong tracks, and it’s hard to watch that documentary without feeling that the real epidemic is not STDs but self-loathing. Hay believes that self-loathing is a necessary and sufficient condition for AIDS. That to me suggests that the HIV virus is the physical manifestation of gay self-hatred, which is bullshit, but I think it’s undeniable that self-hatred facilitates the spread of STDs. (Sometimes “a damn good time had by all” is the culprit though!) This is an entirely different statement, but I can choose to interpret Hay’s words as such and then I’m back on track, right? People have the right to say what they want, but it’s up to me to examine it critically. I could say, Oh, I don’t want that person saying that thing because someone else might take it seriously (and that’s why I want to bait some homophobes, then punch them. Leo, will you marry me?) How do I know what someone else might do? I speak only for myself.
It can’t be that we read the Schopenhauer quote, ‘We shall do best to think of life as a desengano, as a process of disillusionment: since this is, clearly enough, what everything that happens to us is calculated to produce’ and think, ‘Oh, the man was so very clever, because he was sad.' We can’t listen to a Tony Robbins speech, hear him say ‘We can change our lives. We can do, have, and be exactly what we wish’ and think, ‘Pah! That’s hardly the be-all and end-all of it, so you know what? I’ll reject the thing in its entirety.’ Though of course it behooves us to consider exactly why a source is telling us something. It might seem that Schopenhauer was incentivised to tell us the truth simply because he had to, and was poor most of his life, which means his work was noble, justified, dignified. It might seem that Tony Robbins is only out to get our money and has discovered that the easiest way to do this is to tell us what we want to hear. UNLESS both men’s thought processes really were self-fulfilling prophecies, that positivity begets positivity and vice versa. If you see life as a process of disillusionment, what’s going to happen to you? Are you any less deluded than the man who sees his future as an opportunity for limitless new surprises? Neither man knows his future, meaning both men can choose what to expect. That being true, optimism— even if it isn’t THE TRUTHFUL ATTITUDE (of course no such attitude exists)— is the logical choice. David Foster Wallace sneered with his friends at The Bridges of Madison County, then he watched it on a plane and bawled his eyes out. I think all I’m getting at is that no one can resist the effects of positivity and negativity and neither school of thought holds all the answers, and when either seeks to overwhelm, this truth is important to bear in mind to ensure that everything remains in flux.
I am always skeptical of people who sell me what I want to hear, and I still believe that people who do this are more incentivised by telling me what I want to hear than by telling me what they believe. This doesn't mean they don't have any good ideas. I've spent the last few years believing that there was some underlying horror to life that we could only deal with by ignoring and I looked to art to reveal it to me: the horror is there, but the reason we can deal with it is not by ignoring it— my favourite writers dove right into it!— but because we have unexplainable wells of resilience. I used to see life as a sea collected upon a jagged black bedrock and we float along all the while knowing that no matter how high the level of the water, we can't escape the shape of its bed. Now I think life and death are more like dark and light amoeba cells with finger-like structures poking into one another. Yes, I will die, and yet the part of me that is me, in my body, is immortal. It has no reason to die: it is simply housed in a mortal body. If computers could download brains, there would be no reason for what I consider me to be to die. So my body has a time limit, but for the duration of my life, I live immortally. (Interestingly, it is the immortal part of me that writes [by typing with mortal fingers: who designed this thing?!]) Therefore the bedrock analogy fails, and the amoeba succeeds: life and death are symbiotically related. That means that the horror is not the only truth of life and just because I can't explain something, that can't mean it isn't there if I have evidence that something is there (which isn't the same as believing in something without any evidence that anything is there), and I think I would currently explain that something as a spiritual harmoniousness with life that we can tap into, but I still think how I would explain what that harmoniousness is, and how to tap into it, would be different from the most popular explanations if only out of innate stubbornness. I mean, if Camus agrees, who am I to say otherwise?? ‘In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.’ Other friends of mine report the same, sometimes not finding reasons to live and yet somehow living anyway. I think Houellebecq says it in wonderfully Houellebecquian mode that could have had me looking like a bigger indignant dickhead at 15 had I stumbled across it then: ‘The absence of the will to live is, alas, not sufficient to make one want to die.’ Why “alas”, right? Hilarious. I think something spiritually harmonious keeps people alive; I suspect self-help has some insights into this that are overlooked because its non-fiction category is so very sneered upon; I will use my semi-respected voice to speak to my posse of semi-serious literature readers to encourage them to give self-help a chance and realise in general that they don’t have to buy into every idea of someone to enjoy some of what they have to say.
In this book apparently some clients had problems with their dissertations. I never did, but that didn’t mean I managed to successfully like myself while writing them; I just got good at working through the self-hatred. There’s something to be said for that skill, but the real danger that I’ve encountered sometimes is the inability to separate hard work from self-hatred. You get so used to it in the background that you forget to enjoy the process of whatever you’re doing, and enjoyment of the process produces better work, so it’s to no one’s benefit if you work while treating everything as an endurance test. That’s not news to anyone who does that, of course; it’s just that enjoying work is uncomfortable because it is so unfamiliar. The Book of Life is of the opinion that these associations are ingrained during our school years:
http://www.thebookoflife.org/a-guide-...
I’m realising as I type it’s something I probably learned from my mum. (Prepare for me to ramble about my mum.) She had her dream job, an English teacher, and she lived on like two English teacher’s salary’s… worth of jewels. But most days there was a grin-and-bear-it attitude anyways because of the way she was brought up. A few years before she passed away, she went to see a doctor because she “suspected” she might be anaemic. When the doctor called back, she couldn’t believe my mum was out of bed and an ambulance had to collect her from school: she’d been operating on a third of the average woman’s haemoglobin and thought she was just “getting older.” Apparently she had some thyroid thing that required half of it to be removed also, but nope, she was kicking about with the whole gland her whole life. When we knew she was terminally ill with cancer, she said she knew then she was never going to get over how her father treated her— she’d had recurring nightmares of the man bursting out his grave and grabbing her. It seemed that, having prematurely reached the end of her life in her mid-50s, she thought it evidence of what would definitely have been the case of her mentality at a more natural end-of-life, rather than realising that she’d simply failed to take therapy seriously. My point is, minimising illness does prolong and worsen its effects, and I’ve seen psychosomatic disorders produce allergies and back pain from nowhere. What do you think of moments in life as endurance tests? Is there really to be none of that? I’m so comfy in the endurance-and-burnout cycle: do I have to stop? Is there no benefit, no case to be made for it? If not, then I’ll stop and this book helped me do so. But I’m not about to blame my mum for her own death-by-harboured-resentments.
Okay so I didn’t successfully link most of those points, but only because I can’t be bothered. I just want to part with two final thoughts:
- One of these comedians they have now, have you seen them, these comedians they have now— either Nick DiPaolo or Doug Stanhope— cited some study in which optimistic and pessimistic cancer patients demonstrated the same mortality rates. Fine: but who had the nicer time dying?
- While I was reading this, and reading the affirmations, I could feel my “I drank too much at the weekend” facial skin glowing again, rushed with blush, and I woke up the next day and it was much clearer. Louise Hay is almost 90 and has great skin: THERE’S NOT NOTHING TO THIS.
BOOM! #Contributed. I’m going to bed.
One interesting maxim I discovered this year is ‘Hold onto what works for you and let the rest go.’ We all implicitly do this when reading, but I found this rule of particular importance while reading this book. Taking the following literally, for example, is to be heavily discouraged: ‘Forgiving and releasing resentment will dissolve even cancer. While this may sound simplistic, I have seen and experienced it working.’ But given that our negative thoughts work so much on a lack of evidence, and everything to do with emotions, what’s the harm in me believing, all my life, that I have the power to walk through walls, and utilising the motivation that this thought generates, even if I never walk through a wall? Imagine I was claustrophobic and I said to myself, ‘I never need to get worried about being trapped in a confined space because if that happens I’ll just walk free.’ I trump an irrational fear with an irrational solution. I get that this idea is weird, but books and reviewers have too easy a time trashing the optimistic.
Some anecdotes, then. I was eighteen and walking down the street holding hands with my then-boyf. Apparently someone shouted something homophonic at us (I was too besotted with him and vodka to notice— and I now realise the hand-holding was likely not an expression of affection but an invite for such a verbal attack [not to suggest, of course, that every time a gay couple are holding hands, they shouldn’t/ are deliberately inviting verbal abuse/ deserve it]— are these Hay’s rules in action before I’ve even made my point, even although this parenthesis is besides the point?) My boyfriend shouted something back at them, was in a mood all the way back to my flat, CRIED, then said he was proud of himself because it was the first time he’d resolved a fight without punching someone (? Tell me I didn’t invite this guy towards myself through my own 18 y/o’s minuscule self-worth!) ANYWAYS MY ACTUAL POINT: I was like, ‘Dude whatever. H8ers gonna h8.’ He was like, ‘But imagine what they say to the next gay couple who are maybe 17 and they’re not as confident?’
Do you believe this is why he wanted to deck a cunt or two? I don’t. But also, I don’t know what the next impressionable person thinks when reading this book. I know that I’m an adult male with the capacity to think for himself and dismiss ideas that don’t work for him, and I would say the same of most of my Goodreads friends, and so I review this book as myself and for them.
Here’s another story. I was telling a friend recently about a time I was snubbed. I’d said to someone I work with that my dad is now writing fiction too, to which this coworker replied, ‘Yeah well he’ll be much better at it than you because he has so much more life experience than you do.’
‘What’s the problem?’ my friend said. ‘You’re being too sensitive. What he said was true.’
‘Imagine,’ I said, ‘that we were out at this restaurant celebrating a promotion you got at work. I say to you, “Cheers. But remember, your successes ultimately mean the most only to yourself. There’s always someone better, and we’ll be dead before you know it anyway— then it will all have meant nothing.” It’s all true. But just because it’s true, doesn’t mean there’s any use in saying it.’
We are adorers of fiction, most of us here. Must we confine fiction to the page, though? Isn’t to live to delude yourself? How do we define delusion? Surely, for example, we get up in the morning because we have some positive expectation regarding the day’s outcome, but what that outcome is is entirely beyond our powers to predict. Yes, we can guess educatedly, but it’s just a guess in the end. Won’t the day’s outcome be the best if we deliberately enhance our belief in ourselves and our expectations beyond what we have thought possible of previous days, or is this a dangerous task setting us up for failure? Honestly I don’t know. But I have tried to spiritually sustain myself entirely on negfic and I guarantee you, there is not enough nutrition in that package. So I remain open to what else is out there and reject what is comfy.
Psychosomatic issues are real. Perhaps Hay overestimates their importance, but there is a worthy lesson here. Is it insanely damaging to suggest that if someone has contracted AIDS, it’s because they loathed themselves? If I take that seriously, yes. But I recently watched this documentary called Chemsex, created by Vice, I believe, which tells you everything you need to know about whether or not you should watch it too. The documentary is about the sometimes deadly combination of recreational drugs, Grindr and hookups that is taking London by storm. It’s something my husband refused to watch, but he also won’t stop telling me he was so glad not to have watched with me and brings it up sometimes just to ask why I watched it— not his fault. I think the faculties to dismiss certain suffering groups is an ingrained reflex because we don���t genuinely have the time, and maybe not even the space in our hearts, for the problems of everyone. But I think we are too good at this, dismiss things out of hand too easily. Maybe because technology convinces us there’s always something going on when there isn’t: makes us feel like we’re too pressed to spare some compassion. I also believe— and I hope you reflect on this too, because I’d be interested to know if your experience of life is similar— that there were certain times in my life when I felt so low that I would have done anything not to feel as bad as I did. I know that similar people have been in the exact same situation I was and had their lives next-to-ruined because the wrong person happened by or such-and-such a substance was available to them when it wasn’t available to me. It’s pure chance, and I really believe this, that many of my family members are still alive today, so I don’t think that I or they have the right to gleefully skip about as if our completely safe current lives were always guaranteed, because they weren’t. So I do empathise with people who have gone down the wrong tracks, and it’s hard to watch that documentary without feeling that the real epidemic is not STDs but self-loathing. Hay believes that self-loathing is a necessary and sufficient condition for AIDS. That to me suggests that the HIV virus is the physical manifestation of gay self-hatred, which is bullshit, but I think it’s undeniable that self-hatred facilitates the spread of STDs. (Sometimes “a damn good time had by all” is the culprit though!) This is an entirely different statement, but I can choose to interpret Hay’s words as such and then I’m back on track, right? People have the right to say what they want, but it’s up to me to examine it critically. I could say, Oh, I don’t want that person saying that thing because someone else might take it seriously (and that’s why I want to bait some homophobes, then punch them. Leo, will you marry me?) How do I know what someone else might do? I speak only for myself.
It can’t be that we read the Schopenhauer quote, ‘We shall do best to think of life as a desengano, as a process of disillusionment: since this is, clearly enough, what everything that happens to us is calculated to produce’ and think, ‘Oh, the man was so very clever, because he was sad.' We can’t listen to a Tony Robbins speech, hear him say ‘We can change our lives. We can do, have, and be exactly what we wish’ and think, ‘Pah! That’s hardly the be-all and end-all of it, so you know what? I’ll reject the thing in its entirety.’ Though of course it behooves us to consider exactly why a source is telling us something. It might seem that Schopenhauer was incentivised to tell us the truth simply because he had to, and was poor most of his life, which means his work was noble, justified, dignified. It might seem that Tony Robbins is only out to get our money and has discovered that the easiest way to do this is to tell us what we want to hear. UNLESS both men’s thought processes really were self-fulfilling prophecies, that positivity begets positivity and vice versa. If you see life as a process of disillusionment, what’s going to happen to you? Are you any less deluded than the man who sees his future as an opportunity for limitless new surprises? Neither man knows his future, meaning both men can choose what to expect. That being true, optimism— even if it isn’t THE TRUTHFUL ATTITUDE (of course no such attitude exists)— is the logical choice. David Foster Wallace sneered with his friends at The Bridges of Madison County, then he watched it on a plane and bawled his eyes out. I think all I’m getting at is that no one can resist the effects of positivity and negativity and neither school of thought holds all the answers, and when either seeks to overwhelm, this truth is important to bear in mind to ensure that everything remains in flux.
I am always skeptical of people who sell me what I want to hear, and I still believe that people who do this are more incentivised by telling me what I want to hear than by telling me what they believe. This doesn't mean they don't have any good ideas. I've spent the last few years believing that there was some underlying horror to life that we could only deal with by ignoring and I looked to art to reveal it to me: the horror is there, but the reason we can deal with it is not by ignoring it— my favourite writers dove right into it!— but because we have unexplainable wells of resilience. I used to see life as a sea collected upon a jagged black bedrock and we float along all the while knowing that no matter how high the level of the water, we can't escape the shape of its bed. Now I think life and death are more like dark and light amoeba cells with finger-like structures poking into one another. Yes, I will die, and yet the part of me that is me, in my body, is immortal. It has no reason to die: it is simply housed in a mortal body. If computers could download brains, there would be no reason for what I consider me to be to die. So my body has a time limit, but for the duration of my life, I live immortally. (Interestingly, it is the immortal part of me that writes [by typing with mortal fingers: who designed this thing?!]) Therefore the bedrock analogy fails, and the amoeba succeeds: life and death are symbiotically related. That means that the horror is not the only truth of life and just because I can't explain something, that can't mean it isn't there if I have evidence that something is there (which isn't the same as believing in something without any evidence that anything is there), and I think I would currently explain that something as a spiritual harmoniousness with life that we can tap into, but I still think how I would explain what that harmoniousness is, and how to tap into it, would be different from the most popular explanations if only out of innate stubbornness. I mean, if Camus agrees, who am I to say otherwise?? ‘In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.’ Other friends of mine report the same, sometimes not finding reasons to live and yet somehow living anyway. I think Houellebecq says it in wonderfully Houellebecquian mode that could have had me looking like a bigger indignant dickhead at 15 had I stumbled across it then: ‘The absence of the will to live is, alas, not sufficient to make one want to die.’ Why “alas”, right? Hilarious. I think something spiritually harmonious keeps people alive; I suspect self-help has some insights into this that are overlooked because its non-fiction category is so very sneered upon; I will use my semi-respected voice to speak to my posse of semi-serious literature readers to encourage them to give self-help a chance and realise in general that they don’t have to buy into every idea of someone to enjoy some of what they have to say.
In this book apparently some clients had problems with their dissertations. I never did, but that didn’t mean I managed to successfully like myself while writing them; I just got good at working through the self-hatred. There’s something to be said for that skill, but the real danger that I’ve encountered sometimes is the inability to separate hard work from self-hatred. You get so used to it in the background that you forget to enjoy the process of whatever you’re doing, and enjoyment of the process produces better work, so it’s to no one’s benefit if you work while treating everything as an endurance test. That’s not news to anyone who does that, of course; it’s just that enjoying work is uncomfortable because it is so unfamiliar. The Book of Life is of the opinion that these associations are ingrained during our school years:
http://www.thebookoflife.org/a-guide-...
I’m realising as I type it’s something I probably learned from my mum. (Prepare for me to ramble about my mum.) She had her dream job, an English teacher, and she lived on like two English teacher’s salary’s… worth of jewels. But most days there was a grin-and-bear-it attitude anyways because of the way she was brought up. A few years before she passed away, she went to see a doctor because she “suspected” she might be anaemic. When the doctor called back, she couldn’t believe my mum was out of bed and an ambulance had to collect her from school: she’d been operating on a third of the average woman’s haemoglobin and thought she was just “getting older.” Apparently she had some thyroid thing that required half of it to be removed also, but nope, she was kicking about with the whole gland her whole life. When we knew she was terminally ill with cancer, she said she knew then she was never going to get over how her father treated her— she’d had recurring nightmares of the man bursting out his grave and grabbing her. It seemed that, having prematurely reached the end of her life in her mid-50s, she thought it evidence of what would definitely have been the case of her mentality at a more natural end-of-life, rather than realising that she’d simply failed to take therapy seriously. My point is, minimising illness does prolong and worsen its effects, and I’ve seen psychosomatic disorders produce allergies and back pain from nowhere. What do you think of moments in life as endurance tests? Is there really to be none of that? I’m so comfy in the endurance-and-burnout cycle: do I have to stop? Is there no benefit, no case to be made for it? If not, then I’ll stop and this book helped me do so. But I’m not about to blame my mum for her own death-by-harboured-resentments.
Okay so I didn’t successfully link most of those points, but only because I can’t be bothered. I just want to part with two final thoughts:
- One of these comedians they have now, have you seen them, these comedians they have now— either Nick DiPaolo or Doug Stanhope— cited some study in which optimistic and pessimistic cancer patients demonstrated the same mortality rates. Fine: but who had the nicer time dying?
- While I was reading this, and reading the affirmations, I could feel my “I drank too much at the weekend” facial skin glowing again, rushed with blush, and I woke up the next day and it was much clearer. Louise Hay is almost 90 and has great skin: THERE’S NOT NOTHING TO THIS.
BOOM! #Contributed. I’m going to bed.
December 29, 2021
Tooooo simplistic, dismissive, and an utterly ridiculous take on mental health.
Here’s an example: someone had cancer and the almighty Louise Hay cured his cancer by teaching him to love himself.
Another guy had 3 months to live, the problem was his hysterical mother, and once he changed his perspective on life with her, he lived on and grew up to be a Broadway star.
Want more? Someone woke up with perfect eyesight but her subconscious wouldn’t take it so her sight went bad again..
The book also has weird pop-life coaching bull such as: we are born perfectly happy healthy babies… has she heard of genetics? Epigenetics? Neurobiology? Prenatal care? Anything at all?!
No wonder this is a bestselling writer, she feeds on the stereotypes that mental health can be “attracted” with new age-ish positive energy, and she goes as far as saying that we choose evth even before being born and thus we shouldn’t struggle but be eternally at peace with whatever tragedy comes by. How scientific, really!
A reviewer here mentionned that this book is dangerous, and in many ways, it could be, as it messes things up instead of raising awareness/understanding about mental health.
Here’s an example: someone had cancer and the almighty Louise Hay cured his cancer by teaching him to love himself.
Another guy had 3 months to live, the problem was his hysterical mother, and once he changed his perspective on life with her, he lived on and grew up to be a Broadway star.
Want more? Someone woke up with perfect eyesight but her subconscious wouldn’t take it so her sight went bad again..
The book also has weird pop-life coaching bull such as: we are born perfectly happy healthy babies… has she heard of genetics? Epigenetics? Neurobiology? Prenatal care? Anything at all?!
No wonder this is a bestselling writer, she feeds on the stereotypes that mental health can be “attracted” with new age-ish positive energy, and she goes as far as saying that we choose evth even before being born and thus we shouldn’t struggle but be eternally at peace with whatever tragedy comes by. How scientific, really!
A reviewer here mentionned that this book is dangerous, and in many ways, it could be, as it messes things up instead of raising awareness/understanding about mental health.
February 26, 2022
“We come to this planet to learn particular lessons that are necessary for our spiritual evolution. We choose our sex, our color, our country; and then we look around for the perfect set of parents who will "mirror" our patterns.”
It all started with these particular lines, and Louise Hay began to mess with my thought process, all in a good way. Mere a thought that it's you who choose your parents changes the dynamics of the game of life you are playing. Several past regrets and accusations begin with parents and one day suddenly you read this and think- Oh! Now that it's me who chose the parents then how and who I can blame for all the misfortunate episodes that happened to me. And to top it, I need to convince myself that all those incidents were also chosen to Be me for my learnings.
Well, that's the conundrum I am at. And only this book could get me out of all these conundrums. There were so many lessons which will be surely applied in my life and so many wisdom that will stay with me, few of them I want to share with you all-
“If a thought or belief does not serve you, let it go! There is no written law that says that because you once believed something, you have to continue to believe it forever.” - such a simple thing yet many people weren't able to grasp it, including me.
Another very simple yet least understood fact- “Our breath is the most precious substance in our lives, and yet we totally take for granted when we exhale that our next breath will be there. If we did not take another breath, we would not last three minutes. Now if the Power that created us has given us enough breath to last for as long as we shall live, can we not trust that everything else we need will also be supplied?”
This particular thought if told daily to our conscious can make our lives anxiety-free. Still, we choose to believe otherwise.
This novel cleared so many life’s fundas for me and meanwhile made me feel so stupid that things were always this easy, the only aspect that needed to be changed is the outlook towards life and its fundas. I will highly recommend this novel to everyone I know or reach to. Do read this, please!
It all started with these particular lines, and Louise Hay began to mess with my thought process, all in a good way. Mere a thought that it's you who choose your parents changes the dynamics of the game of life you are playing. Several past regrets and accusations begin with parents and one day suddenly you read this and think- Oh! Now that it's me who chose the parents then how and who I can blame for all the misfortunate episodes that happened to me. And to top it, I need to convince myself that all those incidents were also chosen to Be me for my learnings.
Well, that's the conundrum I am at. And only this book could get me out of all these conundrums. There were so many lessons which will be surely applied in my life and so many wisdom that will stay with me, few of them I want to share with you all-
“If a thought or belief does not serve you, let it go! There is no written law that says that because you once believed something, you have to continue to believe it forever.” - such a simple thing yet many people weren't able to grasp it, including me.
Another very simple yet least understood fact- “Our breath is the most precious substance in our lives, and yet we totally take for granted when we exhale that our next breath will be there. If we did not take another breath, we would not last three minutes. Now if the Power that created us has given us enough breath to last for as long as we shall live, can we not trust that everything else we need will also be supplied?”
This particular thought if told daily to our conscious can make our lives anxiety-free. Still, we choose to believe otherwise.
This novel cleared so many life’s fundas for me and meanwhile made me feel so stupid that things were always this easy, the only aspect that needed to be changed is the outlook towards life and its fundas. I will highly recommend this novel to everyone I know or reach to. Do read this, please!
November 3, 2022
i respect Louise hay. She had a lot of wisdom and has helped thousands of people, including me. I do agree that a persons individual experiences have a lot to do with our own thoughts, how we see ourselves, and what we are putting out into the world. The law of attraction, or something of the sort, is real. HOWEVER, as soon as she started talking about how diseases like cancer are caused by resentment or bottled up anger, I just couldn’t get by that. I know the universe is a very strange and sometimes whimsical place but a lot of what she claims ignores science completely and only takes into consideration this metaphysical space in our minds.
What do I know though?
I do love a lot of what she says about loving oneself and accepting ourselves for who we are otherwise no good will really come of our lives. There are points she made about money, work, relationships that just made sense to me.
I will be implementing a few of her lessons into my daily life such as as soon as I wake up name 5 things I’m grateful for in my life right now.
What do I know though?
I do love a lot of what she says about loving oneself and accepting ourselves for who we are otherwise no good will really come of our lives. There are points she made about money, work, relationships that just made sense to me.
I will be implementing a few of her lessons into my daily life such as as soon as I wake up name 5 things I’m grateful for in my life right now.
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