Achieving balance through affirmations

"Your beliefs are merely habitual thinking patterns that you learned as a child. Many of them work very well for you. Other beliefs may be limiting your ability to create the very things you say you want. What you want and what you believe you deserve may be very different. You need to pay attention to your thoughts so that you can begin to eliminate the ones creating experiences you do not want in your life."
— Louise Hay in You Can Heal Your Life Affirmations Kit

With my family out of the house, I took some time last night to indulge one of my favorite guilty pleasures: I watched reruns (via netflix) of Project Runway.

It was a great way to unwind after having been on the road all day, driving my kids to Portland and getting back in time to give my dog his nightly insulin shot -- and I'd stopped for a coke along the way home to keep myself awake, which meant there was no way I'd be falling asleep before midnight.

The last episode I watched before falling asleep involved what would probably be a dream assignment for my younger daughter (who is majoring in photography and costume design): They sent the designers out with digital cameras to shoot New York City at night and in the rain. The object was to come up with an image which would serve as an inspiration for a gown they would design to wear for a night on the town.

So then this morning, it's not surprising that this is the photo that sang to me. Wouldn't this be a fabulous design for a really sexy bustier?

Okay. That's not exactly a set of spiritual paragraphs, or a particularly meditative thought, or a particularly inspirational photograph. But here's the deal: I could flagellate myself for having watched TV last night, or for not blogging about something really spiritual this morning. But that would be not accepting who I am, or how I deal with exhaustion. And it would not be rewarding the creative streak that responds to shows and images like these.

When I read the quote posted above in this morning's message from Catalysts for Change, I decided it's time to stop criticizing myself so much; to start listening for all the ways I put myself down for merely being human. And affirmations, as Louise Hay so kindly reminds us here, are a great way to redirect that negative thinking and bring me back to that balance I spoke of yesterday.

So I hereby declare that it was appropriate for me to be both tired and wired when I finally got home last night. And I hereby declare that I like the fact that in that state I chose to watch other people being really creative. I also like the fact that the last thing I saw last night influenced my thinking in a fun way this morning. God made me the way I am -- and though there may be weak points, they serve as whetstones to further refine my gifts. Hmm: I think that this may be the root of that affirmation:

It's all good!