The Mindful Migraine

I usually do the ironing on a Sunday afternoon to get the family ready for the week ahead.  It’s not one of my favorite chores, so I often listen to podcasts while I do it (it’s my way of remixing my life like a DJ!).  In one of the podcasts, they were talking about the power of manifesting.  I’ve spoken about it briefly once before at the beginning of my healing journey (here) and I remain uncertain about its true power… I suspect my negative self-talk keeps getting in the way.

The way I see it, if everyone is hoping-wishing-praying for a sports-car, and manifesting works, why aren’t there more sports-cars on the street? 

On the other hand, in the same way that thinking “don’t hit the pole” tends to drive us straight towards the pole, I’m a big believer in the power of positivity.  Besides, if you don’t spend time dreaming about a sports-car (if that’s your dream-come-true ambition), it’s highly unlikely a sports-car will ever show up in your driveway.

I’ve lost the link to the podcast (sorry) but it did raise a couple of interesting points.  The first was that if you are going to try manifesting, you have to focus on using positive language.  Instead of saying “I want to be debt-free”, which is putting the negative (pole) of debt front and center, say “I want to have a surplus of money”.  By extension, instead of waking up every morning thinking “please oh please let me be pain-free today” think instead, “let me be happy and healthy.”  It’s a small but powerful shift in the narrative, that throws out the trash-talk and reaffirms the positive that you are aiming for.

The second thing was a reminder that it is not enough to have a vague dream, you really need to have a passionate commitment to that dream for the ‘power of attraction’ to work.  “I want to own a sports-car” sounds like a goal, until someone asks, “what sort?”  If the answer is a shrug and a “I dunno” then you don’t REALLY want a sports-car.  When you DO, you’ll know what brand, what model, what color… chances are you’ll have the brochure, or have sat in one for a test drive… when you really want it, you know everything there is to know about it… you’re taking the wishing-and-hoping to a new level through deep interest and enquiry and effort – you’re moving towards your goal. (If your goal is wellness, then what does your version of wellness look like? Really focus in on the details of your vision.)

The third idea that I found fascinating was the idea that you MUST write your manifestation dreams down on paper – not type them into a computer.  When you type, your fingers are going up and down like little pistons in a machine: up-down… a little to the left… up-down… etc etc.  The podcaster gave some numerical value of all the possible configurations your fingers could make while typing and then said it was “nothing” in comparison to what your body is doing when you have to write something down on paper.  Now your whole hand is moving back and forth, up and down, around and around… your WHOLE BODY is invested in the dream.

Equally fascinating – the podcaster said you must use BLUE ink when you manifest.  All colors have different wavelengths, they resonate in different ways, and blue apparently holds the best vibrational potential for manifesting your desired future.

Not long ago I wrote about healing with color, and summarized some of the potential powers that different colors have.  Blue was said to hold a sense of the sky and heaven, aligning it with higher-thinking and spirituality.  Hence, I guess, the value of blue ink.

If it sounds silly to swap your ink color to suit your goal – I’m here to tell you that from High School onwards, I have always been a pen-swapper.  I routinely use different colored pens and highlighters as a tool to aid my memory.  I also know that when I’m taking notes for myself for university, I love a green pen, it makes me feel ‘good’ while I’m writing, and relaxed when I read it back later.  Green is the middle of the spectrum and tends to indicate balance, harmony, and natural growth – all helpful in learning!

Out of curiosity, I did an experiment.  I went to the kids’ craft cupboard (they’re 15 and nearly 17 years old and I just can’t bring myself to admit that this stage of our life is over, and the cupboard needs to be emptied out!?@#). In the cupboard I found some old crayons and pencils and highlighters.  On a piece of white paper, I wrote some affirmations in different colors, experimenting with font, not stressing too much about format – just trying to ‘feel’ the energies of the colors to motivate the word choice.

If I concentrated, I really did feel differently when I used different colors.  I enjoyed my green and appreciated the blue.  The yellow (which is my least favorite color for some reason) made me want to ‘hurry up’ the process, whilst I felt more mellow when I was in the indigo (one of my favorite colors) stage of writing. Mostly, however, I surprised myself by enjoying writing in the cotton-candy-pink… I’m not sure if it was the color, the words or the smoothness of the highlighter that I liked.

I suspected it was the smoothness of the highlighter that was in fact what was soothing. To test it out, I tried writing with a blue highlighter. I chose as my quote something that my new blogger-friend Silk Cords wrote on my recent post about color-healing: “energy flows where attention goes”. This felt good. So good, I didn’t want to stop, so I started putting swirls all around it, just to keep the feeling going…

The jury is still out, for me, on the power of manifesting my way to good health and happiness – but I do think that you’ll improve your chances of getting what you want if you can participate in it, visualize it better, engage with it more.  Holding an idea in your head is one thing, but seeing it in the form of a mood board, or colored text, seems infinitely more powerful.

Take care, colorfully, Linda x