MENTAL HOUSECLEANING 58Mental
housecleaning
In her book, You Can Heal Your
Life, Louise Hay asks her readers to
imagine they’re in line at a cafete-
ria, or a buffet in a luxurious hotel,
where instead of dishes of food,
they are presented with dishes of
thoughts. You get to choose any and
all the thoughts you wish, and these
thoughts will create your future
experiences. “Now, if you choose
thoughts that will create problems
and pain, that’s rather foolish.
It’s like choosing food that always
makes you ill,” she writes. “We may
do this once or twice, but as soon
as we learn which foods upset our
bodies, we stay away from them. It’s
the same with thoughts.”
Hay believes that we should
clean up our mental thinking much
like we’d set out to tidy and clean
our house. “I go through my mental
rooms and examine the thoughts
and beliefs in them,” Hay writes.
“Some I love, so I polish and shine
them and make them even more
useful. Some I notice need replace-
ment or repair, and I get around to
them as I can. Some are like yester-
day’s newspapers or clothing that’s
no longer suitable. These I either
give away or toss into the trash, and
I let them be gone forever.”BY ANTONIA CASEFlourishIllustration by Monica BarengoMENTAL HOUSECLEANING 58
Mental
housecleaning
In her book, You Can Heal Your
Life, Louise Hay asks her readers to
imagine they’re in line at a cafete-
ria, or a buffet in a luxurious hotel,
where instead of dishes of food,
they are presented with dishes of
thoughts. You get to choose any and
all the thoughts you wish, and these
thoughts will create your future
experiences. “Now, if you choose
thoughts that will create problems
and pain, that’s rather foolish.
It’s like choosing food that always
makes you ill,” she writes. “We may
do this once or twice, but as soon
as we learn which foods upset our
bodies, we stay away from them. It’s
the same with thoughts.”
Hay believes that we should
clean up our mental thinking much
like we’d set out to tidy and clean
our house. “I go through my mental
rooms and examine the thoughts
and beliefs in them,” Hay writes.
“Some I love, so I polish and shine
them and make them even more
useful. Some I notice need replace-
ment or repair, and I get around to
them as I can. Some are like yester-
day’s newspapers or clothing that’s
no longer suitable. These I either
give away or toss into the trash, and
I let them be gone forever.”
BY ANTONIA CASEFlourishIllustration by Monica Barengo