Most of my internet-time is spent in blog-land; writing my blogposts and visiting as many other people’s blogs as I can to keep myself and other writers motivated. I also spend a little bit of time on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter-X and LinkedIn to post links back to my blog. Sometimes the links make people curious enough to visit the blog, but mostly the social media platforms create discrete ‘realms’ of self-contained readers that just interact with the summaries and don’t even realize they’re in the wider universe of The Mindful Migraine (he he).
Recently, on LinkedIn, I came across another Sydney-sider, a Happiness Coach called Eleen Yaw (here). She was running a webinar called “Healing is Happening Now” and I was excited to finally have an opportunity to attend something that suits Australian-time, so decided to attend.
The event went for an hour, so it’s too long to cover here, and it would be rude to take all her great material, but I do want to summarize one of her activities (she gave me her blessing to share).
Eleen asked us to write some of our most negative opinions of ourselves onto small pieces of paper. I can’t tell you what others wrote, nor am I brave enough to tell you everything I wrote, but there were statements that went something like, “I am a burden to others”, “I am weak” and “I can’t heal”.
Then she asked us to tape the messages onto our body, from where the message came from. For me, the messages mostly came from my head, but there were some that came from my heart.
Next, she asked us to place a band-aid on the part of our body that we most wanted to heal. (FYI – we were asked to bring the band-aid to the meeting (I’m not organized enough that I could grab one at a moment’s notice… in fact, the event revealed we had a serious band-aid-shortage at our house… whatever metaphorical meaning that might imply!))
Lastly, she suggested we take a photo of ourselves on the screen, covered in our negative messages. If I was more computer-savvy I could have done a screen shot, but instead I used my phone’s camera.
As I was taking the photo of me smiling awkwardly, covered in negative messages, I had a strong visceral reaction: “I look like a pile of rubbish.”
Here’s the photo of me covered in my paperwork and a band-aid… and whilst I look hilariously like a wanna-be from the Brady Bunch opening sequence, I’m sure you can see what I mean about looking like I’m covered in rubbish.
Straight after I had the realization that my negative thoughts were making me look like rubbish, I also realized they were making me feel like rubbish.
BUT – before I had a chance to get too down in the dumps, as it were, and ready to join Sesame Street’s Oscar the Grouch on his rubbish-bin-couch, Eleen asked us to pull a message off our body. “Read it”, she said, “and then ask yourself is it really true… then turn it over and write a new statement on the reverse side of the paper that challenges the old message.”
Flip the negative narrative, for example, of ‘I am weak’ and write down instead, “I handle my chronic pain in a way which makes me so much stronger than I ever imagined”.
I am NOT a burden to others, instead “I HELP others – I am a GIFT that keeps on giving”… (OK, that last bit might be a bit too much – but you know what I mean!)
The statement ‘I can’t heal’ is not even true… I prove it in my baby-steps every day, so; “healing IS possible – I AM healing” and so on.
The trick, she noted (pun intended), was not to pull all the paperwork off in one go – you can’t address EVERYTHING at once. I gave you three examples, but really one or two should be enough to get you started.
These new statements act like affirmations, new stories you tell yourself to attract positive energy and positive results into your life.
Tell yourself “I can’t heal” often enough, and guess what… it’s going to be pretty darn hard to feel better.
Tell yourself “I AM healing” and you have a much greater chance of moving towards the goal of less pain and more joy.
You can make these new affirmative statements the beginning of you rewriting not just your here and now, but also potentially your new future.
It took a LinkedIn webinar and a pile of post-it-notes to make me realize my negative thoughts are nothing but a load of rubbish, and that it’s way past time to throw that trash-talk away.
Thanks Eleen.
And thanks to all of you for reading!
Take care everyone, Linda x
PS – because I love experimenting with new things… I’ve given you my opinion about how a negative mindset was holding me back, but I was wondering to what extent YOU think your mindset influences healing. I’ve got no idea if this is going to work, but – let’s try a quick poll…
The Mindful Migraine 
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