Unless I’m super old and telling my age right now, you remember when your teacher used to make ill-behaving students go to the board (or pull out a sheet of paper) and write one sentence one hundred times. S/he probably meant it to be a punishment, but the psychological effects of this activity were bordering on positive. I am a huge advocate for writing things down. This is why I journal daily. However, I believe these teachers were on to something even “way back when”.
The more we write something down, the more it tends to stick with us. Our brains work in a way that replays what we see, say, and hear throughout the day, over and over, until it is sealed into our long-term memory banks. This can be good or bad, depending on what we allow into our space over the course of the day.
Repetition has always been an effective way for us to learn things. In fact, this is why practice and rehearsal are necessary for progress and elevation. I have been practicing faith for a while now. I say, think, and write things down, often, so that my mind will remember and accept the things I feed it as true. That’s when I start to see the results come in.
The reason I mentioned that the teachers’ method of “punishment” was only bordering on positive, but not completely effective, is because the words they often had the children write were negative. One would have to write “I will not be disruptive in class”, or “I will not misbehave” instead of writing more positive things like “I will be a model student and scholar.” Doesn’t the latter just sound and feel a lot better?
Take a page from your grade school teacher’s book, and start writing things out in the way that they “should” be. Here’s a hint…the way things should be is the way that you desire them to be. Adopt the habit of writing your desired outcomes down on paper, and watch things begin to shift for you.
What things have you been writing down lately?
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