Afirmations!

Think positive! You can do it! No one can take your place! The best is yet to come! All will be well! Hang in there! You are awesome!

These words, and many others like them, are frequently used by those we know, whether is our parents, our teachers, our good friends, or our mentors, to stir, exhort, comfort, urge, or press us forward. All, without a doubt, are used with some eagerness to help us.

Why then many of us still struggle under our challenges?

Affirmations make great pictures for Etsy catalogs to brighten our walls, but for them to really do anything to help us, they mostly need to come from ourselves. We are after all what we think. Descartes took it one step further when he taught, "I think, therefore I exist!

What kind of existence do we want to have? Do we want to second guess ourselves every step of the way? Are we goading ourselves on the right direction, or are we goading ourselves to failure because of the thoughts we allow to enter our brains constantly?

I believe we were all born to succeed. I believe we were all created for greatness. I believe each and everyone of us was sent to this earth endowed with certain gifts that belong only to us, and are just what we need to accomplish that which we have been ordained to do.

It is up to us to discover what those gifts are, and then develop them, and put them to use.

The discovery will come with introspection, with pondering, with contemplating, with meditating. It needs silence. It needs solitude. It needs withdrawal from the noises and distractions the world surrounds us with.

Let's start by not being fooled into believing that we need to be surrounded by people, by things, by

activity, in order to be happy or content. Let us be not afraid of what we may discover about ourselves by being still and quiet for awhile. I can assure you that we will see power and marvel unfold...If we ponder long enough.

This is just my opinion...

As a woman, a Mormon, and a western/Chinese doctor.