This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "You Can Heal Your Life" by Louise Hay. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
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In her book, You Can Heal Your Life, self-help guru Louise Hay argues that your thoughts and your problems are directly related. She claims that negative beliefs—such as thinking we’re not good enough or blaming other people for our problems—actually bring more problems into our lives.
Below is a selection of quotes with explanations.
You Can Heal Your Life
In You Can Heal Your Life, Louise Hay argues that negative experiences in childhood cause us to form negative beliefs about the world, which in turn manifest in negative life experiences in adulthood. She says that the solution is simple: By transforming your negative thoughts into positive ones, you can create positive experiences in your life.
The following You Can Heal Your Life quotes highlight some of the key ideas:
“Your thoughts and beliefs of the past have created this moment, and all the moments up to this moment. What you are now choosing to believe and think and say will create the next moment and the next day and the next month and the next year.”
Hay asserts that your thoughts and beliefs literally shape your reality. When you think negative thoughts, your subconscious believes them to be true. Hay claims that as a result, you “attract” negative experiences into your life. For example, if you spill your coffee on your way to work and think to yourself, “This is the beginning of an awful day,” then your negative mindset will cause bad things to happen to you for the rest of the day.
“If you want to understand your parents more, get them to talk about their own childhood; and if you listen with compassion, you will learn where their fears and rigid patterns come from. Those people who “did all that stuff to you” were just as frightened and scared as you are.”
Because negative childhood experiences can have such an outsized impact on our lives, Hay believes it’s particularly important to forgive your parents. She suggests asking your parents what their childhoods were like to better understand why they acted the way they did. This will allow you to have more compassion for them, which in turn will allow you to have more compassion for yourself. They were hurt, and they hurt you—but you don’t have to keep hurting yourself, says Hay.
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Here's what you'll find in our full You Can Heal Your Life summary:
- The causes and effects of negative beliefs
- How to transform your negative thoughts into positive ones
- How to solve your problems with relationships, money, work, and even illness
