DTBWRITES: Speak Over Yourself

I remember in elementary school, my dad handed me a stapled, typewritten set of papers entitled “Positive Affirmations.”  That packet (That it was!) included scores of sentences that included words like the following:

• I am smart.

• I can do anything I put my mind to.

• I can learn.

• I am happy.

He would make me read some of these sentences aloud, even when I didn’t want to read it.  At that age, I thought it was frivolous.  Read this mess for what? is I would say in my mind.  I had enough sense not to say that aloud. LOL!

There were times after that when I would say I couldn’t do something, and he would correct me and say “Speak positively!” or “Change that sentence.”  Even my mom would chime in and say “Can’t never could.”  She even told me the story of how her kindergarten teacher made everyone in the entire class bury the word “can’t” on the playground.  You know my smart mind.  I would want to say, Well, she made you bury it.  Not me!  Again, I still had sense not to utter what I thought.

Every once in a while, I make myself restate a sentence if I said something that I truly don’t want to happen.  Scripture tells us that “Death and life are in the power of the tongue…” (Proverbs 18:21)  Do we really pay attention to what we have said?

Think about the times you’ve said things like the following:  “I’m broke.” “I can’t do that.”  “That’s too much for me. Who do I look like?  Donald Trump?”  “I’ll never be that good.”  “I’ll never get in shape like that.”

Have you ever thought that what you have said is the reason you’re in the situation you’re in now?  Look at this process that happens once you say something:

When you start saying it, you start hearing it.  When you start hearing it, you start to believe it.

Have you begun believing the negativity that you have spoken on yourself?  Did you really mean what you said?  How many times have you heard someone say something and it actually came true and you thought, He/ she said that was going to happen! 

How many people have you cursed by saying this or that will happen to them, and it actually happened?

You know, it’s by grace that not everything that we’ve said has actually come true.

Just imagine, though, if you started speaking life, speaking positively over your situations.  What if you spoke what you want to see in your life?  What if you simply took out those antithetical sentences and phrases that are contrary to the things you desire?

It’s hard to say “I’m rich” when you are in debt.  It won’t be easy.  It takes practice, and it takes action.  It takes practice to start speaking the change you want to see, and it takes action to move toward the change you want to see.  You will likely have to drop a habit to get to where you need to be.  You have to want it.

I’m wishing you the best on this journey.  It’s not easy, but with a transformed mind, it is possible.

Speak over yourself.  Encourage yourself.

-dtb-

Originally Written December 22, 2014