I listened to the latest Abraham-Hicks cd on my drive to Ocala Monday.  As usual, there was a lot of helpful information and reminders.  One favorite line was “The only way unhappy people can stay in your life is if you focus on their unhappiness.” I thought how true that was.  We all have friends that go through rough times now and again and then there are those that have one string of problems after another.  Despite being adults, they just can’t seem to get their sh*t together, and they want to tell you all about it on a regular basis.  You know, of course, that listening to them tell their story over and over again is not doing either of you any good. But they don’t know that.  All they know is they think they feel better when they drag someone else into their chain of pain to commiserate with.  “But I’m just letting you know,” they will say, or “I’m just telling you the facts.” They really don’t get it that whether their story is true or not, telling it over and over is not helping them.

Is your story that you are out of a job and the economy is bad and everyone is worried about money?  Or is your story that you are between jobs, eager for a new one and that miracles happen every day?

Is your story that your husband of 40 years ran off with some bimbette, divorced you, emptied the bank account and left you to fend for yourself?  Or is your story that you’re starting over, testing untried waters, and excited about the possibilities?

The story you tell yourself – your internal dialogue, your self talk –  is what determines your future outcome. If there is no one around you cheering you on, encouraging you toward a goal, you have to be your own cheerleader and do it via your own self talk.  Your self talk is that voice you hear rattling around every day. You are the one in charge of this voice and you are the one that can program it to talk in ways that encourage you and inspire you.When you are encouraged and inspired, you become more than you were before.  You can become more than you’ve ever been, when someone sees the potential in you.  You have to become someone who sees the potential in you, if there is no one else around to do it.

I am a professional astrologer and the part of astrology I most enjoy are doing the future prediction reports called the transits.  As the planets in the sky move through time and space, they impact or aspect your natal or birth planets in particular ways.  What is going on in the sky is invariably mirroring what is playing out on some level in your life and in your astrology chart.

When my friend Domino is having a run of what she calls “bad luck” and feels there is no end in sight, I like to check her planets and see what is happening in her chart.  Typically it is obvious what is happening by the configuration of her planets.  The good news is that I can know the approximate date it began and, since it is all cyclical, I can surmise the approximate date it will end.  Knowing there is an end in sight, helps keep Domino focused on that end and allows her to plan beyond it.  As soon as she can see beyond it, and plan beyond it, she more quickly moves beyond it.  It’s as simple as that.

Domino used to think that if someone had bad luck once, then they were cursed forever and would always have bad luck.  She thought that if she lost her job, she’d never have another one.  She worried that if her husband ditched her, she’d be alone the rest of her life.  And likely starve.  Well, her luck has apparently changed, since she finds a series of jobs that keeps her pantry stocked, and she’s always juggling a couple of boyfriends.

And all that changed, really, was that she stopped telling herself that old story.  The story about the sad person who could never catch a break and was going to die alone and tragic.  She began telling herself the story of what she would do as soon as she was on firmer ground, she began setting goals and moving toward them.  She began reading stories of encouragement from other people and she began asking her friends to encourage her in her goals.  She had specific goals and so I created a special self-hypnosis cd for her to play as she fell asleep, to help reprogram her consciousness.  She knew that as soon as she experienced even the slightest shift in consciousness, the momentum would be there to move her forward, closer to her dreams.

You can program yourself in the same way, by being mindful of your self talk.  Script out a new set of phrases to repeat in your mind, anytime old thoughts come to mind.  Keep the script in front of you.  Soon enough you’ll have memorized it and it will run like a ticker tape in the back of your mind throughout your day.  And when that happens, your shift in perception is just around the corner, so expect it and anticipate it.

I wrote in Making a difference in how someone sees the world that a friend told me that Listening to your Sleepytime Recharge cd repeatedly helped me a lot and made a big difference in how I see life.  “That’s a breakthrough for me.” I love that a simple thing like listening to a self hypnosis cd can be used to change someone’s attitude and expectation so much that they begin living a different kind of life.  That listening to simple phrases over and over, even if we’ve just got the cd or mp3 playing as we fall asleep, can help it click within us that we have access to more life and more good than we ever thought possible.  And once we realize that  – really realize that – a new world opens up to us.

We’ve learned that the health and wellbeing of our physical body is a direct result of the thoughts we habitually think and our inner response to the words we hear others speak.  The cells of our body process information and control our behavior by way of genes being turned on and off by influences outside us, such as our perceptions and beliefs.  Our beliefs, true or false, positive or negative, affect our genetic activity and alter our genetic code.

We can retrain our consciousness to create healthy beliefs, and thus create a profoundly positive effect on our bodies and in our lives.  We can identify where our glitches are and not only regulate our own brain chemistry to overcome ailments and bad habits, we can reprogram ourselves and reformat our lives for more joy.

Our body is a community of 50 trillion living cells, all cooperating as a collective amoebic consciousness, and we speak to it and direct it every time we have a thought or reaction.  The body is a biochemical machine and the driver is the mind.   So dis-ease is merely a result of how we’re driving our physiology.

Some of the suggestions on Sleepytime Recharge include: “I no longer worry over events of the past.  Every day begins my life anew and every day is a new beginning. I feel optimistic about my future possibilities.   I find greater satisfaction in my everyday life.  I find fun and interesting ways to spend my time and I have an increasing sense of mission and purpose.”

Simple words, huh?  Easy to say them, but profound to believe them.

And when you believe them, really believe them, your world will change.

It’s exciting to know you can program your own upgrade.