Exercising LOA (or... exercising "and" LOA)

I’m lazy. Extra lazy.
I start this post saying this because I really hate to exercise. Thanks God I was born as a slow-eater, otherwise I’d be jumbo sized right now.

That being said, I’m getting married in December (about a month from now) and I was a little worried that, with the Winter coming and all, I would gain some weight and wouldn’t fit in the dress. Ouch. So I decided to start an exercise plan for those weeks, just in case.

If you read this blog you know I’m not in a particularly happy time of my life. Lots of things going on, with the economy down times I can’t find a job in NY, my fiancé and I will live apart for the foreseeable future, etc. My love life is great, but my professional life sucks, and I’m the kind of person who has to be ok in both. My current job is not very satisfying, I’m kind of unhappy here, wanna leave, can’t leave while I don’t find a job in NY, etc. You got the picture.

So I decided to exercise. Day one, wake up an hour earlier, I went to the gym, run for 5 minutes in the tread mill and walked 25 (you can see how great my fitness is :-). Did some pushups and abdominals. Went to work.

Against all odds, I had a fantastic day. People seemed so nice, and things simply happened the right way for a change. I actually enjoyed my work that day.

Day two, I went to bed late and was too sleepy to exercise in the morning. Didn’t go to the gym. Was feeling slightly guilty because of that. Had an average day, as usual.

Day three, woke up an hour early, went to the gym, felt good, went to work, great day again.

Are you seeing a pattern?

***

I figured that every time I exercise in the morning, my day goes better. I can think of two reasons for that. First, when I don’t go, I feel guilty, and guilt feels bad, and by the Law of Attraction, if you feel bad, you’ll attract bad things. Second, endorphins work. The morning boost of endorphins was making me feel happier and more motivated, which felt good, and good attracts good.

***
I’m keeping up with my morning exercise, every day. And I feel fantastic! Didn’t have a single bad day since I started. I believe the minute I injected some endorphins in my system in the morning, I switched my bad feelings to good mood, and attracted good things.

Can exercising be a good complement for the Law of Attraction? I believe so! The whole goal of LOA is to feel good and attract good things. The LOA say you should be happy NOW to attract even more things that make you happy. I wasn’t happy before. Some hormone boost made me feel good. And that helped me with LOA.

Kisses to all!

It may take some time for people to understand you changed

Recently I saw a post on my favorite Forum, Powerful Intentions, a post about a person who was very negative, and was working very hard to be positive. But his friends and family still saw him as that negative person, and treated him accordingly. Would it be possible that people weren’t seeing he changed?

Every behavioral change is a change in the relationship’s balance. This is actually studied by psychologists. I’m sure we have psychologists around, they will know more about this than I :) Please comment to this post with your 2 cents. But I like the subject and I study a little on my own.

It is rather common, for instance, that a overweight daughter starts a diet and the mother (unconsciously) start sabotaging the diet by making cakes and other fatty dishes that the daughter likes. This is not because the mother doesn’t love the daughter. But the overweight relationship is known by the mother. The mother is comfortable like it is. The moment the daughter decides to change, the relationship will need to find a new balance. The mother will have to deal with the change on the daughter self esteem, clothes, image, even friends, dates, etc.

This is a lame example, but the same happens when you decide to change your train of thoughts. Your friends are used to see you negative. Maybe they’re used to the fact that, compared to you, they’re positive. Maybe they even like that, to have someone to take care of. Maybe the balance of your relationship with them is that you’re the complainer and they’re the solution provider. Once you don’t need their solutions anymore, you and your friends will need to find a new balance for your relationship. Some friendships that are too focused on the old balance might not survive. You’ll straighten some other friendships, and you’ll make new friends.

I know this because I actually lost my husband when I became a positive person. Today I see he was an awful choice for me, a choice of a negative person. But back then I needed him to help me and he liked to be the solution provider. Once I didn’t need him anymore, our relationship couldn’t find a new balance. He consistently tried to put me down so I needed him again. He did awful things just to make me feel depressed, so he could again be the positive person on the relationship and I the one who needed help. He wanted to be the strong one, and as I gre stronger, the only way he found to be the strong one again was to make me feel like s**t, pardon the word. But I didn’t need his help anymore. If he couldn’t be my friend and husband instead of being the one who supported everything, then we couldn’t be together. We spent a terrible year together until he did something so awful I had to leave. The best decision I ever made :)

Today I have a wonderful fiancé, who loves me and wants to walk besides me. He understands that I don’t need help, I need a friend, company and love. I need someone to be there if I need it, but I have no intention to need help. We’ll get married soon, with church, party, the whole package. I’m so much happier now, you can’t even imagine. I never thought I could love someone so much, and he thinks the same way. He’s the best person I know, and I’m so lucky to have him.

So don’t give up if for an instant it seems like nobody gets you. Being positive will bring you happiness, even if some short term events might make you feel disoriented. But believe me, you’re on the right track! And the people who stay besides you now will be much closer. You’ll meet new people, who are more like you are now. Your live will improve 200%.

Love to y’all!

Tell me the 5 best things that happened today!

I was really down today, and as usual when I’m down I went to the powerful intentions forum.

I saw a post called “Tell me the 5 best things that happened today!”. I never respond to those posts, but today I had what I thought was a terrible day. I thought I would get to 5.

I got 9 :o) And I can only think of two bad things that happened today. And I didn’t even realize that! I was crying when writing my list. What is more important than you have a terrible day, and your love says he admires you? That’s what really matters. All the rest we can find a way through.

My love and I live 5 hours by plane apart. I applied for a job to be near him. I wanted to bad that the job worked out, that the job was going to be mine. Didn’t happen. I was crushed. He said he admires me. Isn’t he a doll?

So, here’s my list for today:

1. My love said he loves me
2. My love said he admires me
3. Got an important business contact
4. Got a business proposal
5. My mom called and said she’s doing well, and had a great weekend
6. My father said weekend was like “old times”
7. A former manager complimented me
8. It was a sunny and beautiful day (this time of the year… miracle!!)
9. Got a new and free content for my work newsletter

I’ll do that every day now. Go to bed and list all the great things that happened to me. I think when something bad happens, I tend to see that as my entire day. My love loves me. My mom and dad love me and they had a wonderful weekend, something that didn’t happen for a while. I love my life. Who’s luckier than I am?

Lone track

Getting rid of him was the best thing I could ever do. Or he got rid of me, whatever way you want to see it. And I was so spectacularly, amazingly devastated. I could not live in that apartment again. I didn’t want to sleep in the same bed, use the same glasses. I was disgusted by the idea that that creature ever touched me. That idea alone made me so sick that I literally vomited. I vomited a lot for the first days, every time I thought of my shame. I was feeling raped, in my body and my moral. I was ashamed, and I could not believe that anger could be so solid. I had a constant feeling of dirt, dirt on my hair, my arms, my legs. I had to make a pact with myself, only take one bath a day. And just after I bathe, I felt dirty. I threw away the clothing that he touched, my clothing. I bought new ones. And I felt angry. Oh, the anger. Anger is a hot feeling, sadness is a cold feeling, that’s how I always describe them. I was burning. I could feel my mandibles hurting because of the heat. I felt like that nonstop for a couple of months, I think. After that, the feeling kept coming back intermittently for a long time. Maybe half a year, and then it lowered to what I call “normal levels”.

But please understand, I was angry at myself too. I thought a lot about the time I wasted being unhappy and seeking the wrong people. I thought about the opportunities I lost, specially the opportunities he made me lost. He became somehow a symbol of my unhappy past, representing everything I hated about myself.

My parents invited me to move back in with them. I accepted, even if our relationship was crap, and I accepted only because I didn’t want to be alone. I sold every single piece of furniture I had, including glasses and napkins. I had no idea how I was going to buy all that stuff again, but I just wanted to see it gone. I removed from my life any object that he ever touched or that could remind me of him, of my shame and my anger. I sold them for a symbolic price, glad that someone simply came and took them away.

Now, I’m glad to say I’ll stop telling the story of my past. I’m going to stop talking about anger, shame and bad stuff. The sad part of my life ends here, and I’m glad I can stop talking about it. I actually had a nightmare last night, after I typed part of this story. I know it sounds bad when you read it, but believe me, it’s worse. I’m just not strong enough to read everything again and polish the text to reproduce how bad it was. And I see no point, because now it’s over.

But the reason why I added this information here is because I think it’s important for you to understand how it started. I was hoping that somehow this could justify why I believe so much in affirmations.

So now… drum rolls… beginning the happy part of the blog!

Scott Adams and The Secret

If you read this blog, you know I’m a Scott Adams super fan :-)
I was very amused by his entry on The Secret.

When I first read The Secret, I think I agreed with 85% of the content. But the weight part was huge problem for me. One of the things that I thought ridiculous was when she said you’re not supposed to observe fat people if you want to be thin. You need to focus your thought on people who have the weight you’d like to have:

“If you see people who are overweight, do not observe them, but immediately switch your mind to the picture of you in your perfect body and feel it. (...)Make it your intention to look for, admire, and inwardly praise people with your idea of perfect-weight bodies. Seek them out and as you admire them and feel the feelings of that-you are summoning it to you.”

I think we are all entitled to some narrow minded hypocrisy. And like everyone else, I read this part and felt somewhat disgusted, like if the author was being prejudice against people who are overweight. Again, Scott Adams opened my eyes. Look at what he wrote in the Dilbert blog about reviews on The Secret:

“One skeptical reviewer picked the most outrageous sounding example in the book to point out how ridiculous it is. Apparently the book claims, without science to support it, that if you want to be thin, you should avoid overweight people, even to the extent of avoiding looking at them.

Clearly, that’s mumbo jumbo.

Today I read in the news that researchers have discovered weight to be “socially contagious.” Your chances of becoming obese are 57% higher if you have ONE friend who is obese.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/07/25/health/webmd/main3097001.shtml?source=RSSattr=HOME_3097001 “

I then thought to myself… after coming to work on my new company, I’ve been dressing down a lot. The reason is… everyone here dresses down. Women don’t really look like women most of the time. I think some of them don’t really brush their hair in the morning. And to blend in, I’ve been unconsciously trying to copy the way they dress. My new circle of friends in the US is also much heavier than my previous circle of friends. Since I got here, I gained 6 pounds that I cannot find a way to lose. Coincidence? Or maybe it’s me, trying to fit into the ugliness of the place?

Well, maybe I should stop being a hypocrite, because I think it’s ok to avoid unhappy people because they make me feel sad. Maybe the same applies to weight and appearance. Maybe I should invest in better looking friends that have the same health values that I do.

***

According to the research, if one friend becomes obese, your chance of getting obese too increase by 57%. If two friends become obese, your chance of gaining weight jumps to 171%. And the most amazing thing is that the chance increases even if your friends live far away from you.

The researchers said they are “stunned” with the results. I’m not.

Life Path

So what should I direct the affirmations to now? I didn’t know. I had money, I was thin. I was still a troubled person, though. When I was younger, I always thought I was going to do something special. I always pictured myself working in the United States, doing something important. Being someone important. I was so smart, almost a genius at high school, when my hope faded, that got lost somehow. That feeling that I had to use my intelligence to build something in this world turned into search for survival, and any elevated plans I had for myself vanished.

I knew I wanted to make something of my life, but I didn’t know what. I started to have this feeling that I had a path, but I couldn’t figure out what the heck that path was. What exactly did I want to do? No idea.

So because of my complete lack of purpose, I asked to find my life path again. I wrote that down 15 times a day, every day. I read somewhere affirmations are supposed to be specific, but I didn’t have anything specific to ask, and I just knew I was in the wrong path.

You can see something changed there. I believed in a path, a purpose. That for me was unconceivable a few months back. I was really changing. And I realized most people would ridicule my beliefs, and my ideas and the new person I was becoming. But I was happier. And more hopeful and less worried, and more fun. Isn’t that what everybody wants? What was so wrong with that, after all? And plus, as long as I kept quiet, nobody would know about the affirmations and life path beliefs, so I would be safe from being ridiculed.

I even bought a special book to write down my affirmations. I started keeping track of what I wrote, just to have fun watching when I would get them. I put some effort to write in a nice handwriting. I kept writing, 15 times a day, “I, Affirmagal, will find my life path”, for a few weeks.

***

And that is when my husband asked for divorce. Only four months after our wedding. He was my boyfriend for six years, and soon I discovered he was having a flame with a work colleague.

I didn’t know what to do. I was beyond angry. I can’t even remember how insanely mad I was at that time. I really don’t like to remember.

After one week crying, felling too weak to do anything about it, I remembered my affirmations. I saw two choices in front of me at that time. I could ask for my marriage back. I knew I would get it. I was starting to believe. I could have my marriage back. Or I could let it go.

So was that the right path I was asking for? A lone path? Maybe my path and his should never have crossed. Thinking about it, if during college my life started to lose meaning, then all the time that I knew my husband I was a sad person. He loved a sad, needy, looser person. Now I was happy. That’s not the person he married. That’s definitely not the person he lived with for six years. And I - I wanted success now! I wanted the people who surrounded me to want success. I wanted an entrepreneur, well educated, generous, successful person. That’s not what he wanted to work for, and I was trying to force him to be a person he didn’t want to be. That’s definitely not fair.

I was happy and feeling powerful, I was making more money than he was, three times more, I was thin and pretty. Before all the cheating drama, I told him about the affirmations, which he tried for two days and gave up. He said they didn’t work.

Think back, think back. He screwed up every single big chance he ever had, like I did, by the way. He was a looser, like I was. But there was a big difference between us – he was happy with that life, I wasn’t. I was struggling to find myself a better life. I’ve always been struggling. That’s why I tried affirmations in the first place. Because I was desperate to find a solution to my crappy life. Maybe I got to a point that if someone I trusted told me magnetic bracelets could help, I would believe. I don’t know. I was unhappy, and uncomfortable, and that discomfort was the same thing that made me experiment something I was completely and totally against.

I thought about this. I also thought about, how recently, I had had so little patience with him. He didn’t read much, we couldn’t discuss books, literature or science, my favorite topics. He watched a lot of TV and local news, things I wasn’t very interested in. He saw cinema as an art, and he liked really deep European movies which spoke great truths and made a point on showing a lot of human misery. I was getting into a phase where I was questioning my truths, and I really didn’t want to cultivate misery. I wanted to watch comedies. I wanted to laugh. He started playing volleyball with some friends, and he didn’t want me to go. They were his friends, he said. He needed space, whatever. He got himself a freelance job that he didn’t have the competence to finish. I had to finish it for him, and you can imagine how emasculating that must be for a guy who was used to take care of me. Sorry, I didn’t need anyone to take care of me anymore, I didn’t need his help. I could do things myself. We could either walk together, or walk alone, but I didn’t need him to carry me around anymore.

Isn’t that the point of help after all? Helping people to be able to do things on their own? I thought maybe he was trying to keep me needy and weak. Cheating on me definitely made me feel like this again. I’m truly happy and hopeful for the first time in my life, and his first act is to make me fall apart again. Maybe he was trying to keep me weak so he could feel like the stronger in comparison. Maybe he was one of the bad turns I took that put me in the wrong path.

He didn’t throw me out of the house, and I was too weak and devastated to leave. We kept living together a while more.

It was obvious that we were drifting apart. If people love each other, that’s something we can overcome. But he didn’t love me. He said that to my face. I couldn’t understand. You love and respect someone else for six years. This person naturally becomes part of your family. You love your family. I could understand he wasn’t in love with me anymore, but what I could not get was how he could not love me anymore. I sure loved him, despite everything. The “in love” thing… not so sure anymore. I was trying to think what I have done, when did he started feeling nauseated by my presence like that. Can it happen only in four months? Or did it start before? If it started before, why the heck did he ask me to marry him?

He started to humiliate me in every occasion possible. In front of his friends, in front of my parents, in front of his work colleagues. He verbally insulted me in front of other people, something I consider unforgivable. Once, we were walking on the street and he found a girl friend he met somewhere. The girl was with her mother. He and the girl hugged so hard and sexually that her mother and I didn’t know where to look. It was the weirdest and most embarrassing situation.

I thought about my life path… what were becoming my life expectations, and what were his. Maybe, to move forward, I should let him go. He sure was making that very easy to me. I wanted to work hard to get my career back on track. He worked six hours a day in a public department, came back home by 3 pm and complained I was out until eight. I was never there, I was not fun, I was bitter, etc.

But I believe in the sanctity of the marriage, not in a religious way, but in a moral way. I believe in families and I always wanted to have one. I couldn’t simply let my marriage slide like that.

But one day, he simply crossed the line and I left. It was the funniest thing. After all that I suffered, I had no doubt now that my path was not with him. I was devastated, but not a single moment I regretted or doubted myself. I knew. I just knew! It’s a weird feeling, when you are suffering like hell, but you are completely and absolutely sure that you’ll be better off like that. Believe me, it doesn’t make it easier to bare. But you curiously spy on the next curve of your future, thinking ”what’s in there for me?” because you know, something is awaiting you. Something really, really good. And I was dying to find out what it was.

Weight problem

Let me explain my problem with weight. I’ve always been thin and pretty. At some point, for no apparent reason, I started gaining weight like crazy. I put on 29 pounds in a year. I started eating less, because I thought I was getting older, maybe my metabolism wasn’t the same anymore. And I kept gaining weight. And I ate less. And gained weight. I went to several doctors, and followed their instructions religiously, and still gained weight. Eventually, I got to a point where I ate so little, that I stopped gaining weight. My calorie consumption was 1200 a day, divided into 6 small portions. I heard you can’t be too long without eating because it lowers your metabolism. So I made sure to have 3 “meals”, or whatever you call a portion of 300 calories. I ate maybe 10 grams of fat a day. Before you ask, I did exercise. I wasled the equivaled of 10 miles a week, plus gym. I didn’t have any soda, specially diet, because I heard that aspartame can give you a boost of insulin and prevent you from losing weight.

There was a time I tried to eat 800, and actually lost some weight. I had to stop that, because I was starting to feel dizzy during my gym classes. Weird thing is that I didn’t feel hungry. I ate 1200 calories a day just to keep my weight as it was and just enough so I wouldn’t faint on the street and get hit by a car.

I went to three different doctors during this period. I always think you have to stay with the same doctor for a few months, because otherwise you don’t have time to see any treatment results. All three of them gave me diets that I followed religiously. I drink the exact number of glasses of water they recommended, and measured the food in a little kitchen scale I bought. But I kept gaining weight.

One of the doctors said that it was impossible that I was gaining weight while following his diet. I should be eating without noticing. He said maybe I was putting too much oil in the rice, too much butter in the meat, eating the wrong bread, etc. But I don’t cook rice with oil, and I cook meat in the oven only, with no butter. I actually didn’t have any oil or butter in my house. My bread was light. It should be something else I was “eating without noticing”.

I keep religious track of what I ate for a while more. Still gaining weight. Something was wrong. What was I eating without noticing? I cried almost every day.

So I decided to get drastic. I woke up in the morning, and put everything I could eat on top of the kitchen table. I counted the quantities and calories and wrote them down. And that’s all I ate during the day. Not a crumble more. And I kept gaining weight.

I thought… if I’m not eating without noticing when I’m awake… I can be eating without noticing while sleeping! Maybe I was sleep walking, and eating by night. Now that would explain everything, and you can see how desperate I was at the time. Can you believe a sane person can actually make herself believe that she is sleep walking to the kitchen and emptying the cookie jar? Today I look back and I don’t recognize that person.

But that seemed like the only explanation possible. So before I went to bed, I took a picture of my fridge and pans, and in the morning I checked to see if I touched anything during the night. “Without noticing”, you know. My husband liked to eat cookies, so we always had a little supply. I opened the cookie jars and counted how many cookies were there before I sleep, then counted again in the morning. They were all there. And I kept gaining weight.

So I decided to give affirmations a try on this one. There was clearly something wrong with my metabolism. The doctors didn’t believe me. They did not believe it was impossible for me to be eating something “without noticing”, because I was borderline crazy of so much watching and noting and picture and counting. Even so, one of them actually made exams to check if my thyroid and hormones were ok, and everything was fine. So it wasn’t a hormone problem, it wasn’t a food quantity problem. What was it? Why, why, why was I gaining weight like a pig? Now that’s a challenge to affirmations.

I started writing every day, 15 times a day, “I, Affirmagal, will weigh 120 pounds.” I wrote that for about 3 months. Nothing really happened, other than one or two fat free recipes with almost zero calories reaching my hands. They were quite yummy, but didn't solve the problem. I was disappointed.

One day, a little bell ringed. “Change your birth control pills”.

About 1 and a half years before, I changed birth control pills because my face was full of spots and supposedly this new pill would make my skin better. I didn’t have the skin like a peach, but it actually made me look less like a 15 years old teenager. I told about the pill change to the doctors and they were all unanimous that “no way” my birth control pills could make me gain weight like that. There was nothing in that brand that could remotely make me gain weight. No way, it’s my diet.

But the bell kept ringing: “Change your birth control pills”. And I did. And in 3 months, I was 29 pounds lighter, reaching 120. It took a couple of weeks after I stopped the pill to actually start losing weight, but after that it was so fast I had to actually start eating more! Of course, I was eating so little for so long. After I stopped that shitty pill, I became a normal person. A normal person actually loses a lot of weight when eating 1200 calories a day!

So I had to increase my calorie count to 1500, and as I was still losing more than 4 pounds a week, I had to raise it to 1800. I always made a lot of physical exercise, so I guess 1800 was ok – losing 2 pounds a week and counting. When I reached 120, my weight naturally stabilized, and I could maintain a diet with about 2200 calories a day.

You have to imagine the joy of eating again! Imagine yourself in a time wasting diet that lasts for 1 year! Imagine you, believing that that’s all you’ll be able to eat for the rest of your life, or else you might become an elephant. Worse, you already are an elephant. Now imagine that, suddenly, you can eat an ice cream again, every once in a while! You can eat some meat, or a piece of birthday cake, like a normal person. Imagine how it tastes like! Imagine my joy! I was beautiful, and normal. I couldn’t eat everything I wanted, of course – you eat too much, you gain weight. But I was normal. I could eat like a normal person!

I remember the joy of ordering a dessert and knowing that, even if I gained a little weight, I’ll be able to compensate the other day with a little more exercise, or a little less food. And that was ok! I wasn’t cursed anymore. I was pretty, I was feeling pretty. Can you imagine how it is like? It’s beautiful. That was the best feeling of my life. Food is great, food is delicious, and I love to eat. I started playing with flavors, and experimenting a lot of stuff I never tried before. How delicious that time of re-discovery of food was for me.

After that miraculous recovery, I started warning about that birth control pill to every woman I knew. Let’s call the pill Femala, because I don’t want to disclose the real pill name and get sued. And while talking to a lot of women about Femala, it’s surprising how many of them said to me: “You took Femala? Are you crazy? That pill makes you put on a lot of weight!!”. My beloved sister in law told me that when she was a teenager, Femala made her gain 12 pounds, and that she lost them as soon as she stopped. A friend of my mom’s said “Put one pill of Femala in a flower vase and see how well it will grow”. Right, that’s why I gained weight. I was prescribed fertilizer.

So, apparently the female community knew about Femala pills. Apparently just the male doctors I went didn’t know about it. If I had close friends or family back then, I might have been able to talk to them about the pill and figuring that out myself. But I was friendless, and I trusted doctors and their medicine degrees. Apparently, there was no known hormones on that pill that would make me get fat. Well, maybe doctors should start considering things they didn’t know. Maybe I should start thinking about things I didn’t know.

But you see, at the end… was it really the affirmations that helped me? Wasn’t it something I saw on TV that gave the hint? Or maybe I unconsciously realized that the pill was the only thing I didn’t try before.

I classified the experiment as inconclusive. I was starting to believe in affirmations, of course. Plus, I felt better when I did them, so no harm on that. And two hits in a row. But both of them had a reasonable explanation. First, my fixation on the number 4000 made me have the guts to ask for 4000 dollars when the opportunity came. Second, my fixation in losing weight might have helped me remember (unconsciously) that I have never tried to change the pill.

I didn’t know if there was anything magic there… but seemed like affirmations were helping me do the right choice. I was even a little afraid of asking for something and regretting later, and get too focus on the wrong thing. I started to think better before asking for stuff.

My first affirmation

My top number one concern was my financial situation. I made too little money to be able to do anything at all. The depression was more or less under control, since I was already under medication that cost me almost 100 bucks, plus the doctor, I was spending most of my salary to keep my mental sanity. There is a point when you are so poor, that money actually brings happiness.

The book I read said affirmations should be something you think it’s very unlikely to get, but that you still think possible. So I asked for $4000 dollars. I thought becoming a millionaire was impossible. I honestly though $4000 was just too much, but the book also said to try something unlikely. I thought, the way things are developing for me right now, I’ll never make $4000 a month. But this is what I think I deserve, after working and studying so hard. So that’s what I was going to ask for.

My first affirmation was “I, Affirmagal, will make 4000 dollars a month.”

I wrote 15 times a day, like the book said. The book also said to do visualizations, which I didn’t. But somehow, just writing the affirmations made me feel a little better. Maybe that’s the concept of prayers. You don’t need to get what you want, but thinking about it already makes you feel happier. So I kept on going. I thought to myself, even if I don’t get $4000 a month, I’m starting to believe I can. I’m starting to have hope.

About 3 months later, I saw a job ad in a random website on the net. They were looking for web programmers, with great experience in some areas that I was actually an expert at. The ad said it was supposed to be remote work, and that I should say how much I expected to make. I applied, and said I wanted to make $4000 a month.

I thought “ha-ha”, he probably wants to hire someone from a third world country for 25 bucks. But we closed the deal. Three months after I started the affirmations, I was making the 4000 dollars I asked for.

***

I was a very rational person. I though… I asked to make 4000 a month for 3 months… I thought of it every day. Of course, when the opportunity appeared, I asked for 4000 dollars. It’s nothing to do with affirmations! I just wouldn’t have the guts to even ask for 4000 dollars if I wasn’t writing that down every day. So there wasn’t any coincidence there. Of course, there was the ad, but that’s hardly a coincidence. People post job ads every day.

I thought to myself that affirmations aren’t anything supernatural, they just give you hope. And when you have hope, when you believe things can actually go right for a change, they sometimes do. I took a chance, I got lucky. Maybe I had to learn to take risks, and maybe affirmations were simply a way to help me do that.

How it all started

It all started with a very unhappy childhood and teenage years. I don’t want to talk about it, not only because I don’t like to remember it, but because it’s not important to the story I want to tell. But when I look back, I saw that until I enter college, I was unhappy, but still hopeful. I always thought things were going to improve after… something happened. After the Summer was over. After we move to a new home. After school was out. After I enter college.

I know it sounds silly, but even though I was never happy, I still had hope that someday I would be. And that’s what kept me going. Having unrealistic hope is better than no hope at all.

I remember exactly when everything started to change for the worst. I’ve been all my life putting happiness a couple of years ahead, saying the reason I wasn’t happy was because I didn’t have that. After I had that, I’d be happy. And the last that for me was my first job.

We always had huge money problems in my home, and everything (I thought) I always wanted was to have my own money and be independent. I got my first job, just after I enter college, and it was a complete disaster. My boss morally abused me, and the company was almost bankrupt. The Director started a self destructive path to blame all employees for his administrative failure.

I quit after a few months. I actually should have quit earlier. But whatever happened, the experience made me realize there was no something coming. There was no that. That was it. That was life. I was waiting for things to improve since I was five years old. Nothing changed, things were still a mess, I was still unhappy, and honestly, I couldn’t believe anymore that after that was over they’d be better. The hope that kept me alive had completely faded, and only the unhappiness remained.

I kept on dragging myself through life. A few years later, I started a depression treatment. The treatment helped me to feel happier, but didn’t take care of the hope part. I was a moderately happy person who still didn’t have any hope. I learned how to cope with my life disgraces without thinking of them all the time. I learned to see them for their real size and allow myself to enjoy some of the little pleasures life brings us every day. But I saw no room for improvement. I was maybe the most negative person ever. I was a true member of my family, wanting to live, but with no perspective whatsoever.

I made barely 800 bucks a month. In Brazil, the country I was born, that’s the salary of a poor person, not a miserable person. My relationship with my family was destroyed. My marriage was in bad shape. I was gaining weight for apparently no reason. I had a crappy job, no friends, and believed the world was a hazardous place. I saw no way out for my financial catastrophe.

One day, I bought the book “Dilbert the Future” by Scott Adams. I hardly had money to buy anything, but I don’t know why, I decided to give myself that treat. I was still doing my depression treatment, paying half my salary for the psychiatrist, and that’s only because she was doing me a favor. I think I was her charity case.
I really loved Dilbert because I had a disgraceful professional life, so I really related to the character. But I was actually a little disappointed. I didn’t really enjoy the book. It wasn’t funny, at least for my Brazilian humor standards. Nothing personal, I still think Scott Adams is a total genius. But I think I just read it through the end because I paid 20 bucks for the book, and I was really too broke to admit that I threw away money on something I didn’t like.
Then I read the last chapter.

If you are not familiar with the last chapter of Dilbert the Future, Scott Adams shuts down the funny mode and explains his personal experience with affirmations. He talks about how our perceptions of reality can be wrong, if we look at things in a different manner. He throws in a couple of information on physics there that are just wrong, but the overall “perception exercise” was the most mind blowing thing I’ve ever read.

He said affirmations helped him to get a degree, achieve several personal goals and even become a cartoonist. He said affirmations don’t only help you just focus on your objectives, they also make coincidences happen. I remember I though… yeah, right!

The man have guts, I can tell you that. I could almost see fans leaving him ashamed, and critics insanely crying for justice. I think my mental image for his courage was a mountain of books on fire. And I could not believe a famous writer like him would take such a huge risk. '

At first, I didn’t know what to think. The content shook me off. Was he lying? Did it actually happen? Or was he telling the truth?

If Scott Addams was lying, the only explanation I could find was that he was trying to con gullible people to make more money. For some reason, he believed he could turn himself from a cartoonist to a Self Improvement God.

But on the other hand, he already has a lot of money. His comic strips were turned into a TV cartoon, for Christ’s sake. They’re published in more than 100 languages. I believe only one or two Self Improvement gods make as much money as he does. Does it compensate, to risk an extremely successful career to make a couple more bucks?
I thought he was smarter than that. Which made me conclude he wasn’t lying. He was telling the truth, at least from his point of view. He believed that the affirmation crap actually helped him. And he was exposing himself because… he wanted to help? Or maybe create buzz around his name? I couldn’t figure out which one.

One thing that called my attention was that, at the end of the book, he explains how to write affirmations, adding that “they work even if you don’t believe. ” That’s actually cool, because I didn’t believe. He said I could distrust affirmations as much as I wanted. They would work anyway.

I didn’t believe in God back then. I didn’t believe in affirmations, motivations, brain power or whatever crap those so called Self Improvement experts try to sell to gullible people – and usually for a substantial amount of money. I do see them as vampires who try to feed on people’s desperation, and then blamed their own disgrace on the fact that they “were not thinking positive”, or they “didn’t believe hard enough”. I never could and never will stand those blood suckers, and I had no patience for whoever tried to say otherwise. I believed in cause and effect, I believed only what science could prove. I always hated the guts of those mediums who said they could not materialize a spirit when “people who don’t believe are around”. Believe first, the reward will come later, they said. For me, that means pay first, and hope we can deliver your order.

So you see, I did not believe a word he said. I did believe he believed in that. But he wasn’t asking me to believe. It was actually the first person who was offering to show me something amazing without asking me to believe. And I wouldn’t until I could see it for myself.

Even thinking Scott Adams was wrong, I was really impressed by his courage - whatever his motivation was. So I decided to try. My life was miserable, and from my point of view I didn’t have anything better to do. At first I was ashamed I was trying one of those hideous techniques the Self Improvement gods talked about. But the book cost me 20 bucks. When you have nothing to lose, your sense of ridiculousness changes.

I wrote my goals 15 times a day, like he said, and it worked. And it worked again. And again. There was always a reasonable explanation for how that success could have been a coincidence, how that could have been my own talent, but the point is that I was experiencing failure since I was five. When you start having success so many times in a row, and precisely after you start doing affirmations against your own beliefs, you start wondering.

Today I can tell you, Scott Adams was the person who helped me put my life to a start. Amazing how just a little courage can save someone else like that. That’s what motivated me to write this book. I know bookstores will put this under the “Self Improvement” section, along with those people I despise. And the fact that it will be under a Self Improvement session will be execrated by skeptics. It’s ok. All I can say is, if this was a book saying nice things about Christianism or some other religion, no skeptics would comment. Since it’s a book saying nice things about a belief outside religion, it’s automatically highly “execratable”.

As Scott Adams said in his book (and I also didn’t believe him then), I’ll say I’m a skeptic myself. I’m a fan of the scientific method, for more surprising that it may sound. I know you get sick, you go to the doctor. I know praying or affirmations can't save you from any disease. But many of the same skeptics that will flood me with bad comments about this sentence may also believe in God, or practice a religion. They do that because belief is completely apart from science or reason. Human beings can practice science and believe in something unproven. If nature and physics can handle this paradox in a way that tour brains won’t explode, I’m fine with that.

This is a blog about affirmations and how they helped to change my life. Substitute “affirmations” for “prayers”, change “motivation” for your own religion’s names – you’ll still understand, and won’t offend anyone’s beliefs. Or disbeliefs.

First post - Welcome!

Sorry, but I won’t say who I am.

The reason is, I can write much more freely if I remain anonymous. If you ever tried to talk about affirmations to other people, you know how they give you that “you’re crazy” or “you’re stupid” look. Or even worse, the “you’re weak” look. But at the same time, I’m so grateful for the happiness that affirmations brought me, that I find it a little selfish not to share it with the world. I’m hoping that my writings can help other people. Maybe in the future, when people are not so fast in judging other people’s beliefs, I might be able to post my name here.

I personally don’t see much difference between praying and affirmations. When you pray, you thank and you ask for stuff. When you do affirmations, you thank and you ask for stuff. The only thing is that in one case you pray for God, and in the other case you pray for… the universe? I don’t know, I still think of God when I do affirmations. But I guess it doesn’t matter. It works for me, either way. I used not to believe in God.

Well, the point is. This is alike a religion. I believe it works for me. Maybe it works for you too. Who knows? Give it a try. You don’t have anything to loose, and I’m not asking for your money. I’m really not even asking for your time. Feel free to close the browser window right now. The information is here, I hope you enjoy it, and I’m really looking forward hearing from other people’s experience with affirmations. Good or bad :)

Enjoy the site, and please contact me for anything. I’d love to hear from you.