You Can Heal Your Life
Louise L. Hay
1984
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I finally read this classic, having been prejudiced against it by the "new age industry" that is churning out motivational books by the carload, including her Hay House publishing company. In looking at world history and contemporary human behavior, there does not seem to be a shred of evidence that we are all magically progressing toward universal enlightenment. On the contrary. Reading any newspaper will demonstrate that humans still regularly behave toward each other with zero compassion and often gratuitous cruelty in the personal, social, business, political and especially the religious context. It takes real insight and desire to overcome these tendencies that exist in all of us.

However, after reading it, I had to revise my opinion about her approach.

She really does go to the heart of the matter. Taking up the challenges and doing the exercises in this short book, written over 20 years ago, will definitely help you radically change, in the privacy of your own mind, your attitudes toward yourself and your life. (Use of an energy therapy like EFT will make it faster.) Although she has written other books since, she covered all the basics in this one. Her completely matter-of-fact tone goes some way toward buffering what some may see as the outrageous claims she makes for the power of self-acceptance and self-love and the forgiveness of self and others for improving health.

However, if you haven't yet been able to arrive at a firm position of simply fundamentally approving of yourself, you need these ideas. We generally cannot bear to see ourselves objectively enough to make real changes until we can turn off the self-attack. There are also tapes and card decks and whatnot if you prefer, but the main point is to DO what she suggests - just do the exercises first, commit to really doing them, and then argue later if you still feel the need. Having herself risen out of the trap of being a childhood victim of sexual abuse, and later healing herself of cancer, she has proven that this can work.

Cognitive Therapy addresses these same issues, presented in such a way so as to be acceptable to the left brain and to let it think that it's controlling everything. You can take a short-cut if you can manage to turn off your left-brain censor for long enough to get right to the point of the issue.

There is a new "gift"edition of the book, but you can get the original edition used very inexpensively.

The Process of Loving the Self

As I have said before, no matter what the problem, the main issue to work on is LOVING THE SELF. This is the "magic wand" that dissolves problems. Remember the times when you have felt good about yourself and how well your life was going? Remember the times when you were in love and for those periods you seemed to have no problems? Well, loving yourself is going to bring such a surge of good feelings and good fortune to you that you will be dancing on air. LOVING YOURSELF MAKES YOU FEEL GOOD.

It is impossible to really love yourself unless you have self approval and self-acceptance. This means no criticism whatsoever.

I can hear all the objections right now.

• "But I have always criticized myself."
• "How can I possibly like that about myself?"
• "My parents/teachers/lovers always criticized me."
• "How will I be motivated?"
• "But it is wrong for me to do those things."
• "How am I going to change if I don't criticize myself?"

Training the Mind

Self-criticism like the above is just the mind going on with old chatter. See how you have trained your mind to berate you and be resistant to change? Ignore those thoughts and get on with the important work at hand! (p.83)

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