Do you know how powerful you really are?

Here's a reposting of an article I wrote in the Fall of 2007. It is so relevant to how you choose to participate in world events right now:

Yesterday's post quoting Caroline Myss explored how emotions are stored in the body, and today I'm going to talk about the power you have to change your body and your life using your mind.

Thoughts and emotions are information represented by chemical signals in the body and brain. What inspires, directs and shapes them? We don't know that scientifically, but there is a theory that consciousness (or spirit depending on your worldview) exists on an energetic level beyond the firing of neurons in the brain or signals traveling down nerves. From this perspective, the driving force behind all the activity in your body comes from the energetic (mind or spirit) level. Do you realize just how powerful you are in shaping your life, your health and your body?

Through your attention and intention, you have the power to organize events and circumstances in your life. What you pay attention to manifests in your body and around you. By choosing positive thoughts and emotions, and by focusing your attention on peace, vitality, wellness, calm, balance, health or other desireable states of being, you can cultivate them in your life. You can grow them like flowers in a garden.

Or conversely, if you focus on what you do not want, unfortunately, you may accidentally manifest exactly that because the subconscious mind is too primal to understand the concept of "not". Rather, it experiences the world through images, associations and symbols. What you pay attention to is what it seeks out to create and find. It is not enough to decide you no longer want to be this way or that way - to change your life you must decide how you want to be and focus on that instead. Therefore, the key to making mental and emotional changes is by using carefully constructed positive visualizations and images.

For example, if your desire is to no longer be anxious, you must focus on how you would like to be peaceful and calm with a visual of yourself looking content and collected. In addition to the visual, the intention becomes more powerful when you use verbal affirmations to replace the negative associations in your mind. In this case, repeating the affirmation "I am at peace and calm in all situations" along with your visualization has a deep impact. Images engage the subconscious, and words engage the conscious mind - so it's a powerful combination when used routinely.

So let me pull this all together here. You can live your life at the mercy of your emotions, letting past traumas, current concerns, and anxiety about the future suck the energy and joy from your life. Or you can use the power of your mind to create a positive, fulfilling life by focusing your attention and intention on how you would like to feel physically, emotionally and mentally.