I AM… and I become or maintain exactly what follows. Words are powerful.

By Guest Writer Diana Bailey

The words that come after I AM are powerful messages that you give yourself.  Those words can determine your attitude, your ideas about self worth, your opportunities and, over time, bring either great joy and success or much sorrow and pain.

You are cordially invited to spend a day with a random inquiry into this singular habit. Just noticing how often you say the words I AM…..then what you say the moment after that. This simple “meditation”, done anytime and anywhere for the moments it takes to see, hear, and acknowledge the verbal reinforcement we give ourselves, reveals some interesting results.

I actually got so curious about this, I kept a pocket notebook with me for a day. I wrote down every single thing I said to myself that started with I AM.

At first it was a bit clumsy to do it. But it turned out that within a couple of hours, I caught my mind frantically attempting (over and over) to avoid this whole idea by telling me NO with thoughts such as:

• You’ll remember. So, no need to write that one down. Keep walking.
• Stop it! You don’t need to know this stuff. It’s all fine. Why are you doing this?
• This is ridiculous, no one “meditates” like this.
• You look stupid standing in a grocery line writing in a notebook.
• You have to pay attention to the road. NO, No, NOOO don’t pull over and write that one down, you’re wasting so much time doing that!
Obviously things got pretty creative in the control department! The turnaround came the moment my mind said to me “I AM NOT HAPPY about this”, and some place inside responded with “I know, that’s why we’re doing it.”

The internal resistance to a simple, perfectly harmless exercise told me I was really on to something that could produce some powerful results.

It has. It does. Thank you for that.