The Power of Our Beliefs and Perceptions

In my search for health in my life I came across a book back in 2000 called You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay. Within this book was an index of almost every possible ailment one could think of (or have) listed with the way one was possibly thinking and feeling to get that ailment, plus a new thought pattern (affirmation) to help correct it. For example, Asthma's probable cause is listed as 'Smother love. Inability to breath for one's self. Feeling stifled. Suppressed crying.' The new thought pattern/affirmation is, "It is safe now for me to take charge of my own life. I choose to be free."
Flipping through the pages I was able to see some connections to the ailments of my friends and family and the way they think, but it was harder to see those connections in myself. But because I was seeing the connections for other people, I realized that it was possibly true for myself.
The basis of Hay’s book is that we have to retrain ourselves to love and accept ourselves completely, as we did when we were babies before we were taught otherwise. As well as feeling and expressing gratitude for whatever you can. For that whatever you think and feel about yourself and your life will be experienced that way.
Since I picked up that book I have been testing her philosophy and have witnessed remarkable changes within myself. But at the same time I have been wondering whether there is any scientific backing to the process to fall back on in a conversation with someone who may balk at a flowery looking self-help book.

Richard Wiseman, a professor at University of Hertfordshire in the UK, did a 10 year study of the beliefs and experiences of self proclaimed lucky and unlucky people. He then turned his findings into a book called The Luck Factor. Wiseman delineates 4 key traits that “lucky” people have over “unlucky” people.
Lucky people…
1. Create, notice and act upon chance opportunities
2. Use intuition to make successful decisions
3. Expect the best for the future
4. Transform bad luck into good fortune
In his book and on the website, Wiseman gives practical tips and exercises to make yourself into one of the lucky ones.
His approach is a little more pragmatic than Hay’s, and could probably reach a wider audience, but it feels like they are running a parallel course with different vocabulary.
Both have affirmations, suggest meditation, and are teaching us how to rewire our nueroplastic brains for more positive experiences in our life.

Dr. Bruce Lipton has been driving home the biological science behind all of this with his book The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter and Miracles. Lipton, a stem cell researcher discovered the "brain" of a cell is actually its membrane and not the nucleus (which contains our DNA) as previously thought. The membrane reacts according to its perception of its environment.


Here is a montage of Dr. Bruce Lipton sharing his discoveries with Dr. Wayne Dryer



Author Joseph Jaworski eloquently states from his book Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadreship,
"I had always thought we used language to describe the world, now I was seeing that was not the case, to the contrary, it is through language that we create the world, because its nothing until we describe it. And when we describe it, we create distinctions that govern our actions. To put it another way, we do not describe the world we see, we see the world we describe."
And I might add, that we feel it too.


---------Supplemental Links-----------
A rudimentary version of Louise Hay's health index for reference.

Louise Hay also has a collaborative movie that helps put a lot of her teachings into perspective through the eyes of other teachers. You can watch the trailer at http://www.youcanhealyourlifemovie.com

Richard Wiseman is conducting an experiment on happiness. The Science of Happiness experiment is going on from August 3rd-7th 2009. It is too late to join the experiment, but you can still try it on yourself after you watch the video explaining it. If you want to keep up with what is happening with the experiment, you can follow his blog.

*update*
In going to YouTube to find the instruction video, I found four! So he is trying four different experiments for happiness. The video below is the instructions for the one I am participating in.


And here are the links to the other three: Gratitude, Kindness, Smiling