My Personal Mantra

I decided to take some time to talk about my personal mantra. This is what I say to myself on a regular basis to keep me on track, as it were. The nice thing about a personal mantra is that you get to take full ownership. The connection is stronger because I took the time and energy to create it. It makes sense to me, and it works for me. I am going to go through the process I went to develop my mantra, so hopefully it will help you make a personal mantra of your own.

My personal mantra started with the Reiki principles. I feel very strongly about the Reiki principles. The five principles are the core of the system of Reiki; and if you learn nothing else, the five principles will carry you a long way. So let’s start with a direct translation of the five principles.

Just for today
Don’t anger
Don’t worry
Be grateful
Work with integrity
Be kind to all

Now I wanted to take these and write them like I would an affirmation. Starting with, we need to eliminate the negative language. There is a myth running around that the Universe doesn’t understand negative terms like No or Not. Technically that is not true, the Universe understands them fine. The problem is that you can’t think about NOT something without thinking about it.

It’s like the Pink Elephant exercise. If I say to you, “Don’t think about a pink elephant. Don’t think about it’s long pink trunk. Don’t think about it’s floppy pink ears. Don’t think about the elephants four large pink legs, it’s large massive pink body, and it’s pink tail.” Odds are good, you are thinking about a pink elephant.

They use this exercise a lot in workshops, and it illustrates the point perfectly. You can’t NOT think about a pink elephant. When you try to NOT think about a pink elephant, you automatically think of one. You create the thought pattern of “pink elephant,” and that thought pattern will then go out into the Universe.

So rather than thinking NOT anger and NOT worry, I wanted to replace them with something positive. The opposite of anger is patience and the opposite of worry is at ease. So instead of NOT being angry, I will be patient and instead of NOT worrying, I will be at ease.

Which brings me to the next part. I don’t want to be any of these things later; I want to be them now. And I don’t want to try to be them, I want to be them. It’s not “I will be patient” but “I am patient.” The rest get the same basic treatment.

Finally, a mentor suggested I add one more to the end. She felt it was important to reinforce that I love myself exactly the way I am. With that, my personal mantra looks like this:

Today, I am patient
Today, I am at ease.
Today, I am grateful.
Today, I work with integrity.
Today, I am kind to all living beings.
Today, I love myself completely, exactly the way I am.

The last line feels a bit wordy to me, and over time it may evolve into something cleaner. But for now it works. Not only do I recite my personal mantra before and after meditation, but I also use it as an reminder when I catch myself breaking one of the six rules.

Hopefully, this will give you some insights into creating your own personal mantra. If you have one you would like to share, or any other comments, please feel free to leave them below.