I AM is the two most powerful words that you can think or say.  These two words can change your life.  You can be who you want to be in life.  You can change your life to the one that you desire.

One of the methods that I used to change myself and my life was to decide who and what I want to be.  I thought about the personal qualities that I wanted to express through my personality.  I thought about the things that I wanted to achieve in my life.  From this point onward I did not use the words I Want To Be ________.  I started using the active and possessive words I AM to express the personal qualities of myself in a positive manner and in a positive, possessive way by saying and thinking I AM HAPPY, I AM HEALTHY, I AM LOVING, I AM LOVED and so on through my list of personal qualities so that from this moment on I Knew that I possessed these qualities by using the words I AM.

In using this method of creating the New You, you are leaving behind all non positive self descriptions.  You are using positive descriptions of yourself using the words I AM.

Most people think of themselves as they see themselves in the past. Using these two powerful words is using the present now to allow change to happen in our lives.

Notice that the words I AM is a description of yourself in the present and future now.  Some people have tried using the words I WILL BE and found that this does not work at all well because you are saying that you will be these qualities at some point in the future.  Let me say that we should want and express is that we want these qualities NOW not at some time in our future.  We want to express ourselves in the now and be in the now. 

I hope that this simple explanation will help you become a master of the two most powerful words that will change your life in an instant and that instant begins now.  Put this technique to work for yourself right now and watch your life change to the one that you desire to live.

Please leave a comment.  I would love to hear your thoughts and experiences.  

I plan my days so that I have a list of places that I want to go to when I take a day to come down into town from my mountain home.  I will usually take the most direct route to get to the first place and then I take the most pleasant route to get to all of the other places and my return home.  No matter what though I have a nine mile drive down a pleasant road with many cedar, pinion and cottonwood trees as I leave and return home.  This is such a beautiful drive both coming down the mountain and heading home.  Most days I  leave at a different time from the commuters who are rushing to a clock based job.

On today’s drive as I drove I soon learned that today was going to be a continuation of my lesson on dealing with unaware, self centered people and yet being able to maintain my peaceful state of mind.  The main road into town is a curvy road with a speed limit of 50 mph except through the tiny village and school area.  I always drive at the speed limit and today as I’m going through the village there is a Mercedes following very close it was right on my bumper and then it quickly speeds past me at it’s first opportunity.  I make a mental adjustment to drive extra careful and watchful today.  Have you found that some days require an extra amount of awareness?  I sure have as most days are safe and pleasant.  If I were a follower of astrology I may even call these days a time when Mercury is in retrograde.  Or on this day it was a day with lessons for me to learn about being in control of my mind and in a state of happiness.

Charlene and I enjoy shopping at Sunflower Market and today was a pleasant shopping time.  It’s fun to see all of the healthy foods that are available to us.  As I was backing out of the parking space a girl in her 20’s came around the corner and I was already more than half the way out of the parking space when she hit the gas and swerved around me barely getting through the small space left after my hitting the brakes as she headed to the McDonalds.  Now this did cause me to feel the anger come up and to think some thoughts about her self involved driving. 

I pulled back into the parking space to take a moment to relax and spend a moment thinking about my loss of peace and calm.  I wanted to quickly get back into my peaceful mind and think about how to not lose my happiness in these situations.

Friends, this is a good way to examine what response we can have to the things that we experience in life and how to maintain our own happiness and peace of mind.  Take some time to look at our thoughts after an event that causes us to lose our peace of mind.  We can become aware of our self by looking at our own response to the bad actions of others and decide how much of our happiness we will allow them to steal from us.  The quicker we get our mind back into a state of peace is the less time that we are away from our center of peace and joy.

Our ego wants us to keep the excitement going so it will start an anger dialog of all of the things that the other person needs to learn, in this case it is about driving and being a courteous driver.  At this point what we can do to maintain our happiness and peace of mind is to take control of our own thoughts so as to not even lose a moment of happiness.  Don’t allow the ego to get ourselves involved in a situation that we can’t change.  I am in control of my own thoughts is a good statement to make to ourselves.  Take a deep breath and center the mind on the present moment and thoughts of peace, calm and love.

The next place that we went to was a popular restaurant, as I was turning into a parking place another car pulled right in front of me and came to a stop blocking my way.  I took a deep relaxing breath and looked up at the driver and what I saw was an older man and his wife and he appeared confused as he wanted to pull into a parking space and I was blocking his way.  Who was wrong here?  Well it doesn’t really matter does it?  I smiled, sent a thought of love to them and pulled around them and parked my truck.  A few days later I had a realization in the middle of the night that perhaps he didn’t see that I was pulling into a parking space, after all I don’t remember if I had my turn signal on.  Note to me: Use turn signal even in the parking lots.  Plus he would have a difficult time getting around me because of the narrow space to go through.  So as I see this event, sometimes we don’t always see our own involvement in creating problems. It didn’t matter who was really at fault because I just want to be happy as many moments as I can and assigning blame to myself or the other person is a waste of time and solves nothing.  It wouldn’t change a thing by really knowing who was to blame.  It would become a wasted moment of happiness to even bother with the blame game.  There is a big lesson here for me as well as others.  Things are not always as they seem at first.  How many times have we gotten mad at someone when we were to blame?

We can’t change other people.

It really isn’t the other drivers that we can change.  We can change our reactions to the angry and bad drivers and not be one ourselves.  I have found that it’s best to accept that it not our job to change other people.  Send them love and allow them to change themselves when it is their time to change. 

We can change our self and the way we treat others and our reactions to events that happen to us.

I have made the decision that I will be a courteous and careful driver.  It makes for a much more pleasant day.

Therefore, in changing our reaction to other people we can make the decision to not allow our own ego to start up an ‘anger dialog’ in our mind.  If we are truly in control of our own minds and thoughts all we need to do is tell our mind ‘it’s not my job to change them’.  My job is to maintain and be in control my own peace and happiness.

I have decided to quickly let go of the ego’s response of anger so that I am at peace quickly, or even better I would like to not even allow my mind to go into disharmony and anger when these events happen.

When I think of the ego’s anger response I have to ask – was it me that allowed the dialogue to begin or does the mind have a mind of its own?  I have found that we have the ability to control what we think if we start the practice of learning to be in control of what we think about.

Consider this, if the mind is thinking about the past we can immediately stop that train of thought and think about the future.  Is this not so?  We can quickly change what our mind is thinking about by thinking of something else. 

As we become more aware we will find that our happiness is not in the past or in the future, our happiness can be always found in the present moment.  Happiness is in the now.  When we stay in a happy state of mind in the now we will therefore be creating a past filled with happiness.  Is this not so?  The more that we are happy in the present now gives us more happy in our past.

When we can bring our minds into the present moment we can enjoy that moment and it quickly becomes a happy moment in the past and the next present moments thought can be one that we enjoy as the happy moment that we are now enjoying.  This becomes a continuing chain in our mind of happy thoughts. 

It does take practice to begin to live in the present moment.  When is the best time for you start the practice of being in the present moment.  To do this I would suggest that you start to be in a present happy moment right now and every time you recognize that you are not in the present moment.

You may ask how you can have a future if you are living in the now.  When you are in the present now you can work on projects that you enjoy and you are therefore creating your future knowing you arrived there doing what you enjoy in the present.

The present happy moment is one that recognizes that you are alive and in control of your future because you are in control of each moment in your life.

If you have problems in your life whether it be in finances, relationships or any other area.  Know that you will take care of these problems at the exact right time.  By your living in the present moment you can realize that these things will be taken care of at the correct moment in your life.  Try dropping these events from your mind and live in the moment.  You will find the solution to a problem by being outside of the problem and not constantly in the problem.  Solutions will be found when you are living in the present moment, not when you are in the past or in the future.

I have found that we need to find a new way of thinking to begin to avoid problems in our lives.  After all wasn’t it the old way of thinking that got us into having to solve problems.  Try living in the present moment with the intention of making good choices.

How to be in the Present Moment.

In being in the moment you can start with what is closest to you that allows you to feel happy.  Right now for me it is the warm fuzzy blanket over my lap that keeps me warm with a beautiful snowstorm happening outside and a loving cat curled up on the blanket.  I can enjoy this moment and let everything else go for just this moment and then I look out the window and see all of the snow covered plants and trees and a small bird flies down into the snow looking for a bit to eat and pecks around for a few moments and I think there must be something there for a tiny bird to enjoy eating at this moment.  Then my mind wanders as I think about how Susie the cat was a feral cat born in the wild and she was a full grown adult when I trapped her and took her into our home, that was five months ago and I couldn’t even pet her until 5 weeks ago.  Today is the first day that she has come onto my lap.  So even as my mind leaves the present moment to think about this event it is a happy moment that was created by my desire to help a injured feral cat.  As I pull my mind back into the present moment I think about how I am enjoying my present thoughts because I have learned how to not allow others to steal my happiness even when they are driving reckless.  We can be in control of our thoughts.  Live in the present moment.

Today must have been my day to imprint this message firmly into my conscious mind.  Today as I made my rounds around town I had a total of seven incidents of other drivers creating situations that could have lead to angry moments for me except for my knowledge that I can not change the other person so it is best to not even leave my pleasant mood in these situations.  Show the other driver love and continue on with your day with love in your heart.

I am only in control of myself.

My present thoughts are created by being in the present moment and know that I am only in control of myself.  I have no control over the actions of others.  My mind is not bothered by the actions of others.  I accept responsibility for my own actions and my thoughts.

Spreading thoughts of love and happiness will change your world one thought at a time.

A final thought is – Good choices will lead to a good life.

I hope that you will take a moment to leave a comment.  I would love to hear from you.   Lee Miller

I received an online survey from a blogger yesterday asking readers to prioritize what makes them happy from a list of seven items including:  Excellent Health, Better Relationships, More Fun and Joy, More Energy, More Money, More Time and Less Stress.  This is the order that I arranged the list to reflect my priorities.  How would you have arranged your list?

In my life I have reached a point where all of my needs are met and my wants are very few so having excellent health seems to be one thing that I want to keep at the top of my list at all times. 

Later in the day my wife and I went to eat at a local buffet where they have an excellent selection of food, including a salad bar, choices of Mexican, Oriental foods or a seafood, and a Chef slicing prime rib to order.  On Monday and Wednesday they offer all of this plus a selection of things to drink along with a dessert bar at a two for the price of one so the total bill for two people comes to $10.56.  I need to mention that this is at a casino and I don’t gamble, but it is available without gambling, although I’m sure that most people do some gambling. 

Now here is where the story gets interesting…  As we were getting seated a person caught my eye because his hair was a mess and he had on quite worn clothes and he seemed to be past retirement age.  I was really pleased that he was able to enjoy a great meal here and something about him resonated that he was a good person. 

As we were eating I noticed a well dressed couple because the man was carrying a plate loaded with cookies and two desserts.  I thought to myself ‘this looks like a take home plate’.  I was right because under the table he started handing his wife about five cookies at a time and she would put them between her legs in the crotch area.  I thought that they really have a system going here. I asked my wife to watch and see where the cookies went from between her legs and neither of us could see her put them into a bag or container so we were wondering how they were going to get them out of the restaurant.  Finally they got up and left and I said that she must have a magic dress or a hidden pocket in the crotch. All I ever saw was her putting the cookies between her legs right at the crotch area.  Well, they will be eating crotch cookies for a week with the load that they took. 

I love watching people and I see interesting things all of the time.  Today had another adventure for me.  I noticed an employee standing by the salad bar with her arms folded and just glaring.  I looked to see what she was glaring at and it was the unkempt man.  He was eating his dessert, but he had two nice pieces of prime rib on a separate plate that had not been touched.  The employee headed off to the front of the restaurant and was pointing out the man to a supervisor who immediately circled around him and us and ended up in the pastry area where she had a prime area to see what the man was going to do with the prime rib.  I thought how badly the man would feel in being caught taking food and he seemed to need it.  I thought about this for a moment and then I got up walked up to the man and said “you are being watched” and then I walked over to the ice cream machine and got my wife a chocolate/vanilla swirl that she had earlier said that she may want.  As he was leaving the man stopped by our table and said “thank you, I was getting it for my dog”  I can’t remember what I said back to him as it was a swirl of thoughts in my mind, I think I said “I understand” but when he left I felt what I said was not enough.  I have made the decision to look for him the next time that we are there and invite him to join us and we can enjoy a conversation with him.

This whole event caused me to decide that the list that I prioritized above was not complete because what was left off of the list was having a home to go to and enough food to eat.  It brings tears to my eyes to thing of the number of people who do not have the security of these two things.

I hope that you will go to the comments sections and give your thoughts on the events that I experienced. 

Did I do right by warning the man?  I thought that the prime rib may be for him and that he was in need of a  extra bit of good food.  Well I still feel that I did the right thing, I would hate to see him banned from eating there because of his need.  There is a difference between a need and a want in my mind.  What say you on this matter?