Changing Your Concept of Yourself
by Wayne W. Dyer, Ph.D

“Health, wealth, beauty, and genius are not created; they are only manifested by the arrangement of your mind—that is, by your concept of yourself, and your concept of yourself is all that you accept and consent to as true.”
Neville

There’s a level of awareness available to you that you are probably unfamiliar with. It extends upward and transcends the ordinary level of consciousness that you’re most accustomed to. At this higher plane of existence, which you and every human being who has ever lived can access at will, the fulfillment of wishes is not only probable – it is guaranteed.

This … is simply a preparation for entering into that realm wherein you have much more say over what comes into your life than you might have envisioned.

Do You Really Think?

No one has ever been able to say from whence a thought comes, or what that thought is made up of. It’s generally accepted that we think up things and we make up all of our own thoughts. To be perfectly honest, for a large portion of my life, I held these same views on thoughts originating with each individual. But at this juncture I tend to see the entire process as more of an act of observation, contemplation, and choice. I enjoy noticing that I have a continuous stream of thoughts that come from – who knows where? They have no boundaries or forms to examine, and apparently are unlimited in number and permutation! I think of the stock market ticker that runs along the bottom of a screen, with each stock price representing a simple thought.

You are capable of thinking many opposing thoughts in just a few moments, jumping helter-skelter from one idea to another – exhilaration, frustration, fear, ecstasy, worry, and so forth. Unguided and unguarded, you serve up an endless array of thoughts continuously from waking to falling asleep. Even while sound asleep, your mind continues observing, grabbing, and contemplating these omnipresent thoughts. There’s very little respite from this mental thought-producing process throughout your entire lifetime. If you really believe that you are the creator of all of your thoughts and control the entire process, then simply stop. That’s right, just try to stop thinking. You may be able to slow the stream of thoughts down considerably, but to simply stop thinking all day and stay in a thoughtless state is quite impossible.

I’m suggesting you open your thought processes to a new idea that will help you as you begin changing your concept of yourself. You can think of yourself as a Divine limitless being rather than a person who doesn’t have choice when it comes to your thoughts. Think of yourself as an observer, contemplating and selecting thoughts that you choose from that never-ending stream of thoughts on your inner screen, 24/7/365. Watch thoughts stream by from wherever they originate, and observe them rapidly transitioning and combining and appearing and disappearing. Snatch a thought from the running ribbon of thoughts and contemplate it. As you toss it around notice how you feel – sad, depressed, happy, frightened, and so on. Every thought going by has an imprint on your concept of yourself. First be the observer, and then the contemplator. Now become the choice maker who can consciously decide to put that thought back into the running stream and pick a different one, a thought that perhaps allows you to feel better.

I am okay, I look fine, I will lose a few pounds, I am loved, I am Divine … these and millions more like them are thoughts that you can opt for rather than the ones you’ve become accustomed to choosing in the past. This is how you begin a new process to change your concept of yourself. You accept as irrevocable that it is not you setting the stream of thoughts into motion, and that stopping thinking isn’t possible at this stage of your evolution. At this stage the essence of your being is to observe, contemplate, and then choose. This can all be done in a fraction of a nanosecond. The thoughts will keep appearing on your mental TV screen just like the stock quotations. But you’ll now be choosing the ones you want to focus on, gather, retain, or let go.

I’m encouraging you to initiate a habit of choosing thoughts and ideas that support feeling good and powerful, and that elevate you to a higher level of consciousness where your self-concept welcomes your higher self.

I love Uell S. Andersen’s description of this process in his book Three Magic Words. I leave you to contemplate it as you prepare to befriend that indwelling self that is desperately wishing to be fulfilled at the extraordinary level, rather than at the ordinary where you have lived for far too long: We have assured the indwelling Self that it can be anything it accepts and has faith in, and we are now about to develop in it the habit of choosing only those thoughts and ideas that will constructively add good unto it. We are teaching ourselves to accept only good … We are deliberately compelling ourselves to accept all love, all kindness, all hope, all joy, all expansion, all abundance, all health, all vigor. We are deliberately compelling ourselves to reject all suffering, all sorrow, all depression, all morbidness, all inferiority, all aches and pains. We are saying nothing is true but the great and the good and the beautiful, only these will we add unto ourselves.

This is your new way of choosing thoughts that will introduce you to what I am calling your highest self – keeping uppermost in mind that if you want to accomplish something (anything), you must first expect it of yourself.

Excerpted from the book Wishes Fulfilled by Dr. Wayne Dyer. It is published by Hay House and available at all bookstores or online at: www.hayhouse. com.

Wayne W. Dyer, Ph.D., is an internationally renowned author and speaker in the field of self-development. He’s the author of 30 books including the phenomenal bestsellers Wishes Fulfilled: Master the Art of Manifesting, The Power of Intention, Change Your Thoughts –Change Your Life and Excuses Begone!

Wayne will be among the featured speakers at Hay House’s I Can Do It Ignite! Conference in New York City on Nov 3-4 at the Javits Center. Participants also include Louise Hay, Cheryl Richardson, Doreen Virtue, Kate Northrup, Jessica and Nick Ortner. For more information and to register, visit www.icandoit.net. Tickets for the conference can be purchased at www. hayhouse.com or 1-800-654-5126.