Louise Hay, the world’s biggest self-help publisher and author, is laughing at me. What’s your first thought when you wake up, she asks.
“Um, most days it’s, ‘Shit, I have so much to do’. Then I start composing emails and conversations in my head…” I stop and look at Louise’s face.
“OK. Correction. I used to wake up that way.”
This week Hay gave me a lesson in affirmations as she ate breakfast (scrambled eggs, three sausages and five prunes). (For more tips from my i/v with Louise click here.)
“Become aware of your self-critique and turn it into past tense,” she instructs.
This proves challenging. Yet highly entertaining for Hay. Hay’s 84 and I’m astounded by her energy and sparkle (her whole being is awesomely clear and bright) as she helps me switch my negative self-talkin’ ways.
If Hay didn’t invent positive-speak, she packaged and delivered it to the masses. Her first book, You Can Heal Your Life – which explains illness in terms of negative emotions in your body – has sold more than 50 million copies. When folk tell you your throat infection is about trapped creativity, they’ve read Hay. When they start quoting pretty much any self-help mantra they’re read one of her authors (she publishes Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer and dozens more).
I was born acerbic and I’m one of those people who protects their ego by taking the piss out of themselves before someone else can. “So I’ve got a lot of resistance to affirmations,” I tell her. (Dammit! Correction. I used to.)
So Hay shares her favourite trick after forty years of healing others and curing herself of cancer. “Get a mirror.”