Read an Excerpt

You Can Heal Your Life
By Louise L. Hay
HAY HOUSE, INC. Copyright © 2004 Louise L. Hay
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-937611-01-2



Chapter One WHAT I BELIEVE

"The gateways to wisdom and knowledge are always open."

Life Is Really Very Simple. What We Give Out, We Get Back

What we think about ourselves becomes the truth for us. I believe that everyone, myself included, is responsible for everything in our lives, the best and the worst. Every thought we think is creating our future. Each one of us creates our experiences by our thoughts and our feelings. The thoughts we think and the words we speak create our experiences.

We create the situations, and then we give our power away by blaming the other person for our frustration. No person, no place, and no thing has any power over us, for "we" are the only thinkers in our mind. When we create peace and harmony and balance in our minds, we will find it in our lives.

Which of these statements sounds like you?

"People are out to get me."

"Everyone is always helpful."

Each one of these beliefs will create quite different experiences. What we believe about ourselves and about life becomes true for us.

The Universe Totally Supports Us in Every Thought We Choose to Think and Believe

Put another way, our subconscious mind accepts whatever we choose to believe. They both mean that what I believe about myself and about life becomes true for me. What you choose to think about yourself and about life becomes true for you. And we have unlimited choices about what we can think.

When we know this, then it makes sense to choose "Everyone is always helpful," rather than "People are out to get me."

The Universal Power Never Judges or Criticizes Us

It only accepts us at our own value. Then it reflects our beliefs in our lives. If I want to believe that life is lonely and that nobody loves me, then that is what I will find in my world.

However, if I am willing to release that belief and to affirm for myself that "Love is everywhere, and I am loving and lovable," and to hold on to that new affirmation and to repeat it often, then it will become true for me. Now, loving people will come into my life, the people already in my life will become more loving to me, and I will find myself easily expressing love to others.

Most of Us Have Foolish Ideas about Who We Are and Many, Many Rigid Rules about How Life Ought to Be Lived

This is not to condemn us, for each of us is doing the very best we can at this very moment. If we knew better, if we had more understanding and awareness, then we would do it differently. Please don't put yourself down for being where you are. The very fact that you have found this book and have discovered me means that you are ready to make a new, positive change in your life. Acknowledge yourself for this. "Men don't cry!" "Women can't handle money!" What limiting ideas to live with.

When We Are Very Little, We Learn How to Feel about Ourselves and about Life by the Reactions of the Adults Around Us

It is the way we learn what to think about ourselves and about our world. Now, if you lived with people who were very unhappy, frightened, guilty, or angry, then you learned a lot of negative things about yourself and about your world.

"I never do anything right." "It's my fault." "If I get angry, I'm a bad person."

Beliefs like this create a frustrating life.

When We Grow Up, We Have a Tendency to Re-create the Emotional Environment of Our Early Home Life

This is not good or bad, right or wrong; it is just what we know inside as "home." We also tend to recreate in our personal relationships the relationships we had with our mothers or with our fathers, or what they had between them. Think how often you have had a lover or a boss who was "just like" your mother or father.

We also treat ourselves the way our parents treated us. We scold and punish ourselves in the same way. You can almost hear the words when you listen. We also love and encourage ourselves in the same way, if we were loved and encouraged as children.

"You never do anything right." "It's all your fault." How often have you said this to yourself?

"You are wonderful." "I love you." How often do you tell yourself this?

However, I Would Not Blame Our Parents for This

We are all victims of victims, and they could not possibly have taught us anything they did not know. If your mother did not know how to love herself, or your father did not know how to love himself, then it would be impossible for them to teach you to love yourself. They were doing the best they could with what they had been taught as children. If you want to understand your parents more, get them to talk about their own childhood; and if you listen with compassion, you will learn where their fears and rigid patterns come from. Those people who "did all that stuff to you" were just as frightened and scared as you are.

I Believe That We Choose Our Parents

Each one of us decides to incarnate upon this planet at a particular point in time and space. We have chosen to come here to learn a particular lesson that will advance us upon our spiritual, evolutionary pathway. We choose our sex, our color, our country, and then we look around for the particular set of parents who will mirror the pattern we are bringing in to work on in this lifetime. Then, when we grow up, we usually point our lingers accusingly at our parents and whimper, "You did it to me." But really, we chose them because they were perfect for what we wanted to work on overcoming.

We learn our belief systems as very little children, and then we move through life creating experiences to match our beliefs. Look back in your own life and notice how often you have gone through the same experience. Well, I believe you created those experiences over and over because they mirrored something you believed about yourself, it doesn't really matter how long we have had a problem, or how big it is, or how life-threatening it is.

The Point of Power Is Always in the Present Moment

All the events you have experienced in your lifetime up to this moment have been created by your thoughts and beliefs you have held in the past. They were created by the thoughts and words you used yesterday, last week, last month, last year, 10, 20, 30, 40, or more years ago, depending on how old you are.

However, that is your past. It is over and done with. What is important in this moment is what you are choosing to think and believe and say right now. For these thoughts and words will create your future. Your point of power is in the present moment and is forming the experience of tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, and so on.

You might notice what thought you are thinking at this moment. Is it negative or positive? Do you want this thought to be creating your future? Just notice and be aware.

The Only Thing We Are Ever Dealing With Is a Thought, and a Thought Can Be Changed

No matter what the problem is, our experiences are just outer effects of inner thoughts. Even self-hatred is only hating a thought you have about yourself. You have a thought that says, "I'm a bad person." This thought produces a feeling, and you buy into the feeling. However, if you don't have the thought, you won't have the feeling. And thoughts can be changed. Change the thought, and the feeling must go.

This is only to show us where we get many of our beliefs. But let's not use this information as an excuse to stay stuck in our pain. The past has no power over us. It doesn't matter how long we have had a negative pattern. The point of power is in the present moment. What a wonderful thing to realize! We can begin to be free in this moment!

Believe It or Not, We Do Choose Our Thoughts

We may habitually think the same thought over and over so that it does not seem we are choosing the thought. But we did make the original choice. We can refuse to think certain thoughts. Look how often you have refused to think a positive thought about yourself. Well, you can also refuse to think a negative thought about yourself.

It seems to me that everyone on this planet whom I know or have worked with is suffering from self-hatred and guilt to one degree or another. The more self-hatred and guilt we have, the less our lives work. The less self-hatred and guilt we have, the better our lives work, on all levels.

The Innermost Belief for Everyone I Have Worked with Is Always, "I'm Not Good Enough!"

We often add to that, "And I don't do enough," or "I don't deserve." Does this sound like you? Often saying or implying or feeling that you "are not good enough"? But for whom? And according to whose standards?

If this belief is very strong in you, then how can you possibly have created a loving, joyous, prosperous, healthy life? Somehow your main subconscious belief would always be contradicting it. Somehow you would never quite get it together, for something would always be going wrong somewhere.

I Find That Resentment, Criticism, Guilt, and Fear Cause More Problems Than Anything Else

These four things cause the major problems in our bodies and in our lives. These feelings come from blaming others and not taking responsibility for our own experiences. You see, if we are all responsible for everything in our lives, then there is no one to blame. Whatever is happening "out there" is only a mirror of our own inner thinking. I am not condoning other people's poor behavior, but it is OUR beliefs that attract people who will treat us that way.

If you find yourself saying, "Everyone always does such and such to me, criticizes me, is never there for me, uses me like a doormat, abuses me," then this is YOUR PATTERN. There is some thought in you that attracts people who exhibit this behavior. When you no longer think that way, they will go elsewhere and do that to somebody else. You will no longer attract them.

Following are some results of patterns that manifest on the physical level: Resentment that is long held can eat away at the body and become the dis-ease we call cancer. Criticism as a permanent habit can often lead to arthritis in the body. Guilt always looks for punishment, and punishment creates pain. (When a client comes to me with a lot of pain, I know they are holding a lot of guilt.) Fear, and the tension it produces, can create things like baldness, ulcers, and even sore feet.

I have found that forgiving and releasing resentment will dissolve even cancer. While this may sound simplistic, I have seen and experienced it working.

We Can Change Our Attitude Toward the Past

The past is over and done. We cannot change that now. Yet we can change our thoughts about the past. How foolish for us to PUNISH OURSELVES in the present moment because someone hurt us in the long ago past.

I often say to people who have deep resentment patterns, "Please begin to dissolve the resentment now, when it is relatively easy. Don't wait until you are under the threat of a surgeon's knife or on your death bed, when you may have to deal with panic, too."

When we are in a state of panic, it is very difficult to focus our minds on the healing work. We have to take time out to dissolve the fears first.

If we choose to believe we are helpless victims and that it's all hopeless, then the Universe will support us in that belief, and we will just go down the drain. It is vital that we release these foolish, outmoded, negative ideas and beliefs that do not support us and nourish us. Even our concept of God needs to be one that is for us, not against us.

To Release the Past, We Must Be Willing to Forgive

We need to choose to release the past and forgive everyone, ourselves included. We may not know how to forgive, and we may not want to forgive, but the very fact that we say we are willing to forgive begins the healing process. It is imperative for our own healing that "we" release the past and forgive everyone.

"I forgive you for not being the way I wanted you to be. I forgive you and I set you free."

This affirmation sets us free.

All Dis-ease Comes from a State of Unforgiveness

Whenever we are ill, we need to search our hearts to see who it is we need to forgive.

The Course in Miracles says that "all dis-ease comes from a state of unforgiveness," and that "whenever we are ill, we need to look around to see who it is that we need to forgive."

I would add to that concept that the very person you find it hardest to forgive is the one YOU NEED TO LET GO OF THE MOST. Forgiveness means giving up, letting go. It has nothing to do with condoning behavior. It's just letting the whole thing go. We do not have to know HOW to forgive. All we need to do is to be WILLING to forgive. The Universe will take care of the hows.

We understand our own pain so well. How hard it is for most of us to understand that THEY, whoever they are we need most to forgive, were also in pain. We need to understand that they were doing the best they could with the understanding, awareness, and knowledge they had at that time.

When people come to me with a problem, I don't care what it is - poor health, lack of money, unfulfilling relationships, or stifled creativity - there is only one thing I ever work on, and that is LOVING THE SELF.

I find that when we really love and accept and APPROVE OF OURSELVES EXACTLY AS WE ARE, then everything in life works. It's as if little miracles are everywhere. Our health improves, we attract more money, our relationships become much more fulfilling, and we begin to express ourselves in creatively fulfilling ways. All this seems to happen without our even trying.

Loving and approving of yourself, creating a space of safety, trusting and deserving and accepting, will create organization in your mind, create more loving relationships in your life, attract a new job and a new and better place to live, and even enable your body weight to normalize. People who love themselves and their bodies neither abuse themselves nor others.

Self-approval and self-acceptance in the now are the main keys to positive changes in every area of our lives.

Loving the self, to me, begins with never ever criticizing ourselves for anything. Criticism locks us into the very pattern we are trying to change. Understanding and being gentle with ourselves helps us to move out of it. Remember, you have been criticizing yourself for years, and it hasn't worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.

In the infinity of life where I am, all is perfect, whole, and complete. I believe in a power far greater than I am that flows through me every moment of every day. I open myself to the wisdom within, knowing that there is only One Intelligence in this Universe. Out of this One Intelligence comes all the answers, all the solutions, all the hearings, all the new creations. I trust this Power all Intelligence, knowing that whatever I need to know is revealed to me, all that whatever I need comes to me in the right time, space, and sequence. All is well in my world.

Chapter Two WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?

"It is safe to look within."

My Body Doesn't Work

It hurts, bleeds, aches, oozes, twists, blows up, limps, burns, ages, can't see, can't hear, is rotting away, and so on. Plus whatever else you may have created. I think I have heard them all.

My Relationships Don't Work

They are smothering, absent, demanding, don't support me, always criticizing me, unloving, never leave me alone, pick on me all the time, don't want to be bothered with me, walk all over me, never listen to me, and so on. Plus whatever else you may have created. Yes, I have heard them all, too.

My Finances Don't Work

They are nonexistent, seldom there, never enough, just out of reach, go out faster than they come in, won't cover the bills, slip through my fingers, and so on. Plus whatever else you may have created. Of course, I have heard them all.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from You Can Heal Your Life by Louise L. Hay Copyright © 2004 by Louise L. Hay. Excerpted by permission.
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