If you want to live in the kind of peace that prevents you from developing a stomach ulcer or hypertension – the peace that allows you to really sleep well at night – you must learn how to properly see yourself. Developing the proper self-image includes learning to forgive yourself and making a quality decision to stop blaming yourself and mentally beating yourself up for your mistakes and perceived failures. If you constantly bombard your spirit with negative thoughts of regret and self-accusation, those thoughts will eventually mutate into a kind of self-loathing that is completely counterproductive to your having any real degree of success in your life.

Low self-esteem is a learned habit that is usually developed by believing in lies and falsehoods. Insecurity and feelings of inferiority are also merit-less mindsets that people acquire and cultivate throughout the course of their lives. The fear of rejection is the result of learned behavior, as well. But the good news is that any learned behavior can be unlearned! When you know who you are, you don’t have to waste time trying to prove to somebody else that you are valuable or talented. You can believe in yourself while being fully aware and accepting of your own limitations.

Being at peace with yourself comes from a balanced estimate of your self. The more that you are at peace with yourself, the less stress you will have in your life. Guard your heart and never let someone else’s negative words decide the direction of your life. No one should have more power over you than you, and you can determine your own stress level and how much pressure you will allow yourself to feel in a day. If you want peace, you can have peace. You are in the driver’s seat, so determine where you want to go, emotionally, and don’t waver from your intended course. Get a vision of a more confident, more centered you, and become that person.

No matter what has happened to you in the past, you can get it together if you want to. Being at peace with oneself is something that should be aspired to, treasured and protected. Your peace is stronger than your fluctuating moods or temporary thoughts of discouragement. Being at peace will positively affect your health and could even lengthen your life in the long run. It certainly will make you easier to live with and will condition you to have better relationships and live a more successful life. When your mind is at peace, you see things more clearly and with better perspective; you are less likely to become overwhelmed by your circumstances. You can change your life by changing the way you see things.

Worry distracts you and hijacks your all-important powers of focus, rendering you incapable of seeing certain important and essential things that can only be perceived by taking in the fullness of the big picture.  It narrows down your visual field until your perception of reality is limited to nothing but tunnel vision.  And when all you have is tunnel vision, you are unable to pay attention to the totality of any given situation, so that when you need to take action you are unable to do it in a rational manner.  Worry forces you to act on impulse as you react to artificial feelings and emotions.  It always causes you to miss the main point of any situation.

Worry is a heartless and dangerous thief.  It is heartless because it insidiously disguises itself as care and concern, exploiting the thoughtfulness of well-meaning people in doing so.  It is dangerous, because it can so easily creep in and take over someone’s mind that they become comfortable with the familiarity of its presence, and thereby regard it as an acceptable way of thinking and way of life.  Ultimately, they yield to its authority and allow it to rob years of creativity and productivity from them, as they waste most of their mental potential on fretting about things that more than likely are never even going to happen.  Worry shapes their perception into seeing every smokescreen as reality.

In the same way that regret causes you to miss the beauty of the now by sentencing you to live in the past, worry causes you to miss it by negatively projecting you into the future.  But there is hope for worriers.  As was stated earlier, prayer is a powerfully effective perception-changer:  “Don’t fret or worry.  Instead of worrying, pray.  Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns.  Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down.  It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life” (Philippians 4:6, 7 – The Message).  You can change your life by changing the way you see things.

Taking responsibility for your life is the ultimate confirmation and indicator of your own maturity.  It can certainly be sobering to recognize and have to admit to yourself that the largest part of your life is basically what you alone have made it, and that you can’t blame anyone else for what you don’t like about it.  But, it is also quite liberating and empowering to do so.  The admission of your own answerability is a testimonial to your own authority.  When you say yes to a state of mind that makes no excuses for what it has produced, you break the cycle of denial and clear the way for a greater reality and a greater expectation of yourself.

The bottom line is that there is much, much more in you than you have realized or have utilized up until now.  You’re bigger on the inside than you are on the outside and, as you become more keenly aware of what you have and what you can do, you will discover the strength and confidence to make a greater demand on your inner resources.  If you really think about it, you’ll realize that you’ve already triumphantly come through so many things that, at the time, seemed potentially overwhelming and impossible to survive.  But when you needed to step up to the plate, you rose to the occasion because you possessed the raw materials of success.

All that you need to do now is practice perfecting the process that develops those raw materials, namely, the process of involvement.  Real involvement in your life means getting off the sidelines and playing the game without any fear of injury.  It means taking the chance of making your own choices and refusing to limit those choices only to what seems possible at the moment.  If you don’t get in the game, it’s assured that you’ll never win.  And if your choices never challenge the boundaries of the reasonable, you have no reason to expect more from yourself and so you disconnect yourself from the true desires of your own heart.

Anything less than the highest expectations from your inner self is a compromise, and life is too short and precious to be compromised in any way.  The heart that willingly takes responsibility for its own quality of life knows that the most essential part of creativity is not being afraid to fail.  You can expect yourself not to fail and can forgive yourself even if you do.  But, more importantly, you can respect yourself for trying.  Things can start getting better for you right now if you simply start expecting more from yourself and stop waiting for something outside of yourself to improve your life.  You can change your life by changing the way you see things.

 People who never make peace with their past never find the grace to move successfully into their future.  If you want to change your life for the better, you must settle this fact in your mind, once and for all: it’s all about the now!  Begin to see yourself as a person who has the ability to let things go and to move on.  See yourself as someone who has the maturity to forgive, the perception to rightly discern what has happened to you in the past, and the vision to embrace the future.  See yourself as one who can look back over the course of events of his/her life – both the good and the bad ones – and not want to change anything.  See yourself thankful for your life.

Remember, it’s not what has happened to you, but what has happened in you, that has shaped you into the person that you now are.  You may have been victimized, but you don’t have to be a victim – or at least you don’t have to live like one.  You may have been betrayed, but you don’t have to be bitter.  Betrayal is what someone did to you.  Bitterness is what you do to yourself.  You may be alone, but you don’t have to be lonely.  Your vision determines the effect of your circumstances on your life.  One thing is for sure, you really can put closure on any pain from your past by seeing how blessed you are now.  Whatever may have happened didn’t kill you – you’re still here, so you might as well live!

Counting your blessings is truly an exercise in empowerment.  You should make a mental list every day of the things for which you are grateful and review that list when you are tempted to start seeing things in a negative light.  Self-pity is a useless emotion.  It doesn’t make you feel better about yourself, it doesn’t make someone else see the error of their ways, it doesn’t change anything, and it doesn’t glorify God.  Feeling sorry for yourself, even if you have good reason to do so, is utterly pointless.  Nothing good or important or constructive ever comes from it.  Giving in to it just causes you to spin your wheels on the road of life.

If you are nursing old wounds from the past that should have healed years ago, it’s time to move on.  Some things may leave a scar, but they don’t have to stay infected.  They don’t have to hurt anymore if you don’t want them to.  You can stop talking about the pain and can begin to see the good and positive.  You can embrace the strength and wisdom that you have acquired and can even help someone else through their healing process.  The more thankful you become, the more you will have for which to be thankful and the less you will want to concentrate on past hurts.  You can change your focus.  You can change your life by changing the way you see things.

Your mind is capable of experiencing moments of profound insight repeatedly throughout the course of your everyday existence.  An epiphany is such a moment of insight that usually happens once, or very rarely, in someone’s life, and it serves as a significant touchstone or turning point for them.  But having an epiphany is not something that has to be rare or limited to a singular, once-in-a-lifetime experience.  A virtually continual state of renaissance can take place in your thinking if you keep exposing yourself to the stimuli of new information and deliberately enlist yourself into environments that are conducive to inspiration.

Being around creative people on a regular basis is very healthy for your state of mind and can help secure a place for you, mentally and emotionally, where constant revival, rebirth and renewal of your thought processes can occur.  “As iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend” – Proverb 27:17.  Great ideas are often birthed out of invigorating dialogue between people who are on the same page in matters of vision.  Interacting with people who have different paradigms keeps things interesting and keeps you awake, mentally, so that you can be receptive to new concepts and can continue to grow personally.

When you finally begin to realize that your imagination and thought-life are the only things that can limit your possibilities in any way, you will see the importance of always keeping your mind awake and ready for renewal.  Buried deep within you are sleeping powers that can potentially revolutionize your life if they are properly aroused.  A resurgence of visionary thinking can energize every aspect of your life, including the physical.  As any professional athlete will tell you, excelling in competition is infinitely more of a mental thing than it is a physical thing.  Being strong and fit in your mind is ultimately what makes you strong and fit in your body.

Nothing is more empowering day by day than a continual flow of powerful thoughts.  And you have constant access to that flow – a flow that leads to untapped reservoirs of power in your mind that have never even been explored.  You don’t have to ride down the road of life asleep at the wheel.  Visionary thinking can enable you to grow more alert, more awake, and more alive with age as your senses grow sharper and sharper.  When you think correctly, you discover that there is so much more to enjoy and celebrate in the world than you ever imagined or thought possible before.  You can change your life by changing the way you see things.

Laughter puts things in perspective.  Having a sense of humor about the events that occur in your life every day really helps you to see things more clearly.  James Thurber said: “Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.”  Mark Twain said. “Humor is the great thing, the saving thing.  The minute it crops up, all our irritation and resentments slip away, and a sunny spirit takes their place.”  Mel Brooks stated that “Humor is just another defense against the universe,” while Groucho Marx said that “Humor is reason gone mad.”  The common thread in every attempted definition of humor is that it shapes and reshapes perspective and defines perception.

We certainly know that humor, especially as it is released in laughter, is something that possesses healing properties for the mind and for the physical body.  ‘A happy heart is a good medicine and a cheerful mind works healing, but a broken spirit dries up the bones” (Proverb 17:22 – AMP).  Some studies have shown that a good, hearty laugh can be as restorative to the body as a full eight hours of quality sleep and can significantly boost your immune system.  Some have even testified that they were literally cured of diseases through daily, extended periods of laughter via exposure to humorous material, and there is a good bit of scientific evidence to back up their claims.

“We all operate in two contrasting modes, which might be called open and closed.  The open mode is more relaxed, more receptive, more exploratory, more democratic, more playful and more humorous.  The closed mode is the tighter, more rigid, more hierarchical, more tunnel-visioned.  Most people, unfortunately, spend most of their time in the closed mode.  Not that the closed mode cannot be helpful.  If you are leaping a ravine, the moment of takeoff is a bad time for considering alternative strategies.  When you charge the enemy machine-gun post, don’t waste time trying to see the funny side of it.  Do it in the “closed” mode.  But the moment the action is over, try to return to the “open” mode – to open your mind again to all the feedback from our action that enables us to tell whether the action has been successful, or whether further action is needed to improve on what we have done.  In other words, we must return to the open mode, because in that mode we are the most aware, most receptive, most creative, and therefore at our most intelligent.” – John Cleese

Laughter does release certain peptide neurotransmitters in the brain called endorphins that have very effective pain-relieving properties, but the most important function of a sense of humor involves mental perception.  A sense of humor has the ability to make you take a second look at a situation, especially a negative one, and see it in a completely different light.  By being able to laugh at yourself, you actually can increase self-esteem, boost your sense of self-worth, and bring the inner image of yourself into proper balance.  Laughter keeps us in the open mode where we are able to see ourselves and the world around us in a more positive light and not be weighed down by our perceived troubles.

Because the Bible has been so misunderstood and misinterpreted, most of its readers don’t realize that when Jesus used phrases like “you strain at gnats and swallow camels” or “don’t try to get a splinter out of your brother’s eye when you have a 2×4 in your own eye,” He was actually using absurdist humor to get His point across.  These concepts may not get a chuckle out of our jaded, modern, western sensibilities, but you can be assured that when He originally said them His audiences responded with laughter.  Don’t take everything so seriously and you’ll be able to better hear these and other spiritual concepts.  You can change you life by changing the way you see things.

You can, in fact, change your life by changing the way that you see things.  It has been theorized that there is no such thing as reality, there is only perception—a premise that can be argued, ad infinitum, by philosophers and physicists, alike.  Whether or not it is actually and completely true, the fact remains that your perception of things really does determine how you think, feel and function every single day of your life.  It is a fact that God is, but it is also a fact that God is to you how you see that He is.

You can determine your own happiness by learning how to properly view and discern the circumstances of your past and present.  By learning how to see yourself correctly, you can become the person you’ve always really wanted to be or, better yet, you can reveal the best “you” that you already are.  You have the ability to choose an attitude and vision for each day with the same confidence and ease that you have when choosing what to have for breakfast in the morning or what clothes to wear for the day.  The more you are able to see how inner sight creates daily realities, the better skilled you will become in using it to your advantage.

Free your mind, open the eyes of your heart and prepare to change your life for the better.  You can be happy. You can succeed.  You can stop second-guessing your life choices, living in regret or blaming others.  You can break all the limitations of your own mind and tap into an inner power that will enable you to do things that you never thought you could do before.  And you can do it all by simply choosing to change your viewpoint and perception of the things pertaining to your life.  As you begin to realize personal transformation, let these words take on new meaning for you: I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see!

[A separate 20/20 VISION Workbook is also available.]

Even if I am the only optimistic person

that I know, I will not compromise

my optimism today.

Optimism as a characteristic is the inclination to hopefulness and confidence.  The individual who exhibits this characteristic is usually someone who was raised in a very secure home environment, surrounded by nurturing and supportive people.  Optimism as a philosophy is the theory that good must ultimately prevail over evil.  The person who subscribes to this philosophy is typically someone who has had a sufficient amount of positive reinforcement to shape within them a particular world view.  But optimism as a lifestyle is something that can be learned, cultivated and perfected in those who are willing to exercise their unique, visionary ability, regardless of how they were raised or what they have experienced.

Optimism is not naïveté.  Those who are naïve are that way simply because they lack the necessary sophistication or required worldliness to utilize any critical ability or analytical insight.  You can, without a doubt, be totally optimistic about life without ever being naïve to the harsh realities of the world around you.  Optimism is not denial, either.  Those who are in denial refuse to acknowledge certain irrefutable truths and are either so out of touch that they can’t see reality or are so fearful of the reality they see that they just ignore it altogether.  When you are fully optimistic, your perception of reality will change but you will still be able to exist and function in the real world.

But remember that you live in an age when it can seem that the majority of people in the world are absolutely prone to be negative and pessimistic.  In some circles today, optimism is considered to be a sign of insensitivity to the plight of oppressed people or an indication of political incorrectness.  Certain intellectuals regard optimism as evidence of limited intelligence, while others think that it is corny or a sign of immaturity.  But the root of the word itself is connected with sight and vision, as is indicated by other similar words such as optical or optometrist.  Optimists are just people who have tapped into the power of positive perception and have chosen to make it work for them.

The point is that you have to maintain your good vision and perception regardless of what anyone else says or thinks of you, even if you are the only optimist that you know!  The world is never going to be perfect, but one thing is for sure – being optimistic will get you a lot closer to perfection in your world than being pessimistic ever can or will, so you must never compromise your optimism.  Continue to believe in and embrace the good, and good will come to you.  “Optimists enrich the present, enhance the future, challenge the improbable and attain the impossible.” – William Arthur Ward.  You can change your life by changing the way you see things.

will attract prosperity to my life today.”

Prosperity is an attitude.  Just having some extra money in your pocket, or acquiring more stuff, or obtaining greater financial security, is not necessarily an indication of prosperity.  Even being rich is not the same thing as being prosperous.  Riches and material wealth are external things; prosperity is an innate state of mind.  Riches can be, and often are, transient and impermanent.  Prosperity is a foundational outlook on life and a fixed viewpoint – a way of seeing the world and the availability of its resources — that determines the long-range relationship of wealth to your life.  Prosperity begins on the inside and then manifests on the outside.

Poverty is also an attitude.  Being broke or temporarily without funds can be just a short-lived, seasonal condition, but poverty is a mindset that generally can take a lifetime to acquire and can, likewise, take a lifetime to overcome.  You could be virtually penniless and still not be poor if you knew how to properly see your situation.  You could also win the lottery or receive a huge settlement and never become truly prosperous.  Lottery winners, or people who quickly come into large sums of money and never develop a prosperous outlook and mindset, often lose their money in short order and end up worse off financially than they were before they got the money.

Creative survival that develops into an assured, prosperous mindset comes from knowing how to play the game of give and take with the intention of winning.  It is enjoying the process and staying in the game with an attitude that serves as a magnet for good things.  Both prosperity and poverty are less states of existence than they are states of mind.  They are both learned behaviors and they are both attractive.  A prosperous viewpoint always sees that it’s too early to quit and too late to turn back.  A poverty mentality sees that it’s too late to start and too risky to continue.  The most basic tenet of prosperity is that if you can see it, you can have it.

By practicing the daily discipline of replacing thoughts of lack and insufficiency with a vision of abundance, you can steadily build truth and an inner conviction into the fabric of your being until you cause prosperity and its fruit to become inevitable in your life.  Seeing the possibility of indefinite prosperity will empower you to reshape your future.  Dare to think new and attractive thoughts concerning what you need and what you have.  There is more than enough of what you need to make your dreams come true, and you literally have it all around you.  You have the power to make good things come to you.  You can change your life by changing the way you see things.