The 9 Positives- Actualize Your Full Potential

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In his book Voices from the Heart, His Holiness the Dalai Lama succinctly explains mankind's fundamental raison d'être: "The purpose of life is to be happy." However, those of us who have lived long enough to see life in all its colors realize that happiness does not come without effort. To achieve that blissful state of mind, we have to learn how to direct our mind instead of allowing our mind to direct us. One of the most effective resources to guide the mind in the direction we want is through the use of confident, truthful, and firm statements, also known as positive affirmations. Just as we keep emphasizing the points we would like our young children to learn, or repeat commands to teach our puppies how to behave, through affirmations, we vocalize the words we would like our mind to imbibe and internalize.

Does this mean, then, that affirmations are simply a tool to train our mind? Or can they impact our lives personally and collectively as well? My mentor, Justice M. L. Dudhat (who taught the Brahma Vidya course in Mumbai, India), would emphasize time and again: "Every thought has a form and the potential to actualize itself."

This means that the Universe is continuously responding to the signals we send out and determining our future accordingly. If this seems a bit unbelievable, try to think of a time when you noticed how miserable people seemed to attract more misery or those who were successful kept attracting more success. Did it seem unfair? Or is it fair that the Universe gives each of us exactly what we focus most of our attention on?

A lot has been said and written about positive thinking and positive affirmations in the past few years. So much so that it has started to sound like just a feel-good mantra or another way for people to boost their ego. Yet, somehow, despite all the skepticism surrounding these concepts, they refuse to fade away. The only explanation for this could be that they hold an inalienable truth at their very core.

The fundamental truth that holds the key to transforming our life is that the thoughts we think daily (about ourselves and the world around us) are shaping our life on a minute-to-minute basis. A case in point is an experiment that was conducted to determine the nature of light:

There were two groups of scientists: one believed that light was made up of particles, and the other believed that light behaved as waves. They had gathered together in a lab to settle this matter once and for all. The first group conducted their experiment and proved that light comprises particles. Astonishingly, the second group also managed to prove their point that light behaves as waves. Everyone was shocked into silence. How could light be both?

Later, as quantum physics (the branch of science studying the smallest particles in the universe) developed, they went back to study the light experiment and discovered that light was reacting differently based on the expectations of the two groups studying its behavior. Because such a large group of scientists believed so strongly that light comprises particles, it behaved accordingly for them. And when an equally large, strongly opinionated group believed that light behaves as waves, it showed wave-like properties. Light adjusted itself in direct response to the thought waves (energy waves) being directed toward it.