Wayne’s Blog
Dr. Wayne Dyer’s transformational book, Excuses Begone!, is now available in trade paper!
Within the pages of this transformational book, Dr. Wayne W. Dyer reveals how to change the self-defeating thinking patterns that have prevented you from living at the highest levels of success, happiness, and health. Even though you may know what to think, actually changing those thinking habits that have been with you since childhood might be somewhat challenging.
If I changed, it would create family dramas . . .
I’m too old or too young . . .
I’m far too busy and tired . . .
I can’t afford the things I truly want . . .
It would be very difficult for me to do things differently . . .
and I’ve always been this way . . . may all seem to be true, but they’re in fact just excuses. So the business of modifying habituated thinking patterns really comes down to tossing out the same tired old excuses and examining your beliefs in a new and truthful light. Continue Reading
‘Tis the season when we really need a moment of silence. It’s also the season when we really have to work to make sure we get one. At a time we traditionally devote to loving, giving, and gratitude, the quiet and peace we need to appreciate our gifts seems all too elusive. Try to give yourself the gift of silence now and then during the holiday hubbub so you have a chance to really enjoy the experience of celebration. It’s when you merge into the silence and become one with it that you reconnect to your Source and know the peacefulness that is God. “Be still and know that I am God,” says the Old Testament. The key words are still and know. Mother Teresa described silence and its relationship to God by saying, “God is the friend of silence. See how nature—trees, grass, grow in silence; see the stars, the moon, and the sun, how they move in silence…. We need silence to be able to touch souls.”
Everything that’s created comes out of silence. Your thoughts emerge from the nothingness of silence. Your words come out of this void. Your very essence emerged from emptiness. All creativity requires some stillness. Your sense of inner peace depends on spending some of your life energy in silence to recharge your battery, remove tension and anxiety, reacquaint you with the joy of knowing God, and feel closer to all of humanity. Going into the quiet and listening will heal and inspire you. In silence, you make your personal and conscious contact with God. As Melville reminded us, “God’s one and only voice is silence.”
May the voice of silence bring you peace this holiday season.
If you find yourself looking forward to the end of the holiday season instead of the beginning, here’s a call to shift gears and reclaim what should be a time of appreciation, excitement, joy, and peace. Make up your mind that this is going to be your happiest holiday season ever. Your decision to emphasize the positive can reclaim a season that is supposed to bring out the best in us, rather than do us in. The truth is that this time of year offers us a wonderful opportunity to rekindle the spirit of love and living life to the fullest.
With your expectations set on positive, here are some attitude adjustments to try:
I’ll let the holidays flow, rather than trying to make them fit into a fixed schedule.
I’ll remember that people are more important than things.
I’ll relax my expectations for myself and others this year.
I’m going to live in the present moment and enjoy each activity for itself instead of always thinking about what is ahead of me.
I’m going to approach the holidays with a sense of joyful anticipation and wonder, just like I did when I was a child. Continue Reading
Many years ago, when the holiday season arrived and certain relatives were due to make their annual appearance, I felt a sense of increasing dread. Far too many of us suffer from the pain of family get-togethers, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Somehow we allow the expectations and demands of our family members to be the source of so much unhappiness and stress, when what we really want is to be authentically ourselves and at peace with our relatives. The conflict seems too often to be a choice between being authentic, which means no peace with certain relatives, or having peace at the price of being inauthentic. Being peaceful and authentic can define your relationship with your relatives. First, though, you may have to assess your relationship with the closest relative of all—you.
In order to change the nature of family relationships, you’ll have to change your mind about them and consider that you are the source of the anguish in your relationships, rather than the individual whom you’ve pegged as the most outrageous, the most despicable, or the most infuriating. Over the years, all of these individuals have been treating you exactly as you’ve allowed them to with your reactions and behaviors. This can miraculously change when you choose to be at peace with everyone in your life—most particularly, your relatives.
If the focus of your inner dialogue about your family members is on what they’re doing that’s wrong, then that’s precisely how your relationship with them will be experienced. If your inner speech centers on what’s annoying about them, that’s what you’ll notice. But if you’re thinking, I am authentic and peaceful with this relative, then that’s what you’ll experience—even if that relative continues to be exactly the way he or she has always been. Continue Reading
Have you noticed how often we use up the present moments of our lives, the very precious currency of life, consumed with a longing to be someplace else, doing something else? Or we waste present moments feeling guilty about the past or apprehensive about the future. Slipping away from the present happens because we are living our lives with an attitude of depreciation rather than appreciation. We can ease this dilemma by learning to pay attention to what’s going on in the inner world of our thoughts.
A great hallmark of mental wellness is the ability to be in the present moment, fully and with no thoughts of being elsewhere. Henry David Thoreau said: “He is blessed over all mortals who loses no moment of the passing life in remembering the past.” I would add, “In anticipating the future as well.” There definitely is a past, but not now. And there definitely is a future, but not now.
Our present moment is a mystery that we are part of. Here and now is where all the wonder of life lies hidden. And make no mistake about it, Continue Reading
“There should be less talk….Take a broom and clean someone’s house. That says enough.”
–Mother Teresa
Mother Teresa, the diminutive spiritual giant who worked daily in the streets of Calcutta, seeing “Jesus Christ in all of his distressing disguises,” as she put it, offers us some profound wisdom in her briefly spoken advice. “There should be less talk,” there should be more action on your part. The old aphorism, “I hear, I forget; I see, I remember; I do, I understand,” applies not only to what you want to learn, but also to how you wish to be treated. Behavior is the most effective way to communicate with others. When you find yourself embroiled in the futility of words, stop and remind yourself of the great wisdom of Mother Teresa’s suggestion. Ask yourself, “What can I do here?” By all means, talk it out, but eventually you must take the broom and clean the house of another if you are truly going to be of help. Your words, while important, risk being forgotten if they are not followed by action.
People of action, those who make a difference in life, those whom we most admire, all seem to know the truth of the ancient wisdom, “What you do speaks so loud, I can’t hear what you say.” Be a doer. And in the process you will do more to teach others and to bring fulfillment into your own life than all the words in the dictionary could ever convey.
“It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.” This is Ralph Waldo Emerson’s description of the deep nature of relationship between ourselves and our fellow human beings. If you desire peace for others, you’ll receive it. If you want others to feel loved, you’ll be the recipient of love. If you see only beauty and worthiness in others, you’ll have the same returned to you. You’ll only give away what you have in your heart, and attract what you’re giving away. Your impact on others—whether it be strangers, family members, co-workers, or neighbors—is evidence of the strength of your connection to the power of intention. Think of your relationships in terms of holy or unholy.
Holy relationships facilitate the power of intention at a high energy level for everyone involved. Unholy relationships keep the energy at the lower, slower levels for all concerned. Continue Reading
In my movie The Shift, I talk with the film crew about “quantum moments” and the changes that people undergo after having one of these awakenings of spirit. Thousands of people have reported experiencing these moments and describe the following shift which occurred in their awareness of life. They talk about having made the move from an ego-driven life perspective to a spiritually balanced one and feel that they have become more authentic beings.
Two research psychologists from the University of New Mexico, Dr. William Miller and Dr. Janet C’de Baca were intrigued by such stories of sudden and unexpected personal transformation. For their book, Quantum Change: When Epiphanies and Sudden Insights Transform Ordinary Lives, Miller and C’de Baca collected stories of people who reported having “quantum moments” and studied the experience of “quantum change” through the lens of scientific psychology. They describe quantum change as “a vivid, surprising, benevolent, and enduring personal transformation.” These quantum moments that turn life upside down are characterized by these four qualities; that is, they are vivid, surprising, benevolent, and enduring. They are intense enough for us to notice every detail and to remember them forever. They are surprising—unexpected, uninvited, and unforeseen. Continue Reading
This week a new book becomes available that I was privileged to discover just when I needed it most. I have heard it said that a coincidence is nothing more than God hiding behind a cloud and smiling. Well, the day that Pam McDonald and The Perfect Gene Diet came into my life, God was not only smiling behind that cloud, but I’m certain that he was winking and clapping for having arranged such a fortuitous meeting. Continue Reading
If you’re presently evaluating your level of achievement based on how much you’ve accumulated, here’s a way to make a major shift in your state of personal satisfaction and contentment. Verse 46 of the Tao Te Ching invites you to discover a more peaceful and self-satisfying way of knowing success. “Contentment alone is enough,” says Lao-tzu. “Indeed, the bliss of eternity can be found in contentment.” As you let go of the determination to acquire more, your new views will change the world you’ve known. You’ll find that the experience of inner peace becomes your true gauge of accomplishment.
The “disease of more” has created an environment that personifies Lao-tzu’s observation that there is “no greater tragedy than discontentment.” When you truly understand what it means to live peacefully, satisfaction will begin to replace your desire for more. Your world will begin to become tranquil as you change your own life and then touch the lives of your immediate family, your neighbors, your co-workers, and ultimately your nation and the entire planet. Begin by simply thinking of the opening line of the famous Prayer of Saint Francis when you notice that you’re demanding more of anything.
Silently say, Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace. As that instrument of peace, Continue Reading
Doesn’t everyone dream at one time or another about just taking off, about hitting the road for an indefinite period simply to travel? Maybe your fantasy is about backpacking through the mountains, visiting new cities and countries, checking out new cultures, or simply wandering aimlessly like the bear who went over the mountain “to see what he could see.”
Think about how the wandering instinct manifests in your life. There are many ways you can wander, travel, or explore. You can do it on foot or in a scuba-diving outfit, through a microscope or a telescope, a history book or a natural-history magazine. You can do it in your own town, in the jungles of Africa, or on the surface of the moon. It can lead you to discover the lost city of Knossos or a great Hungarian restaurant in the next block.
Take a few minutes of every day to fantasize about how you would wander, travel, or explore if you could. If you find this hard to do because Continue Reading
I am often asked, “How do I know whether it is my ego or my higher spirit beckoning me at any given moment in life?” At any given moment, you are choosing between two pictures or evaluations of yourself. Your choices include the one offered by your soul, or higher self, which I think of as the voice of God, and the one offered by the ego, or your false idea of yourself. The answer to the question above is, “If it brings you a sense of peace, then it is your higher self at work.” Your higher self is always nudging you toward a resolution of the conflicts that you experience in your life, so that you will have room for serenity and harmony. If you are living with inner turmoil, continually quarreling with yourself and feeling anxious and fearful, then you are allowing ego to dominate your life.
In every moment, you have the option to choose peace for yourself. Your false self thrives on inner anxiety because that is what it thinks it needs to stay alive. Ego promotes thoughts like these: I cannot be happy or content; I must be a bad person; If I am feeling peaceful then I will simply vegetate; I must constantly look at how others are living and performing in order to assess my value. The ego wants you Continue Reading