A few years ago, I am not exactly sure when, I started to create daily mantras. Rather than getting this advice from a friend or a good self-help book, this daily practice emerged from within. Yes, I have been exposed to mantras through my yoga training and practice and I liked them enough but often the mantras that other people gave to me did not work. Or, they did for awhile, but then lost their stick. But when I started creating my own mantras, they had some staying power and gradually began to transform my days and, yes, my life.
Like the practice itself, the mantras emerged not from thought, but from quiet. At the end of a morning stretch and sit (sometimes very brief), the mantra was born. It was never forced or debated, it just was like a true, good friend. And perhaps because it came from within, from this sacred space of quiet, I had this ownership that allowed it to stick with me throughout the day. Sometimes my mantras are short and simple like, "everything is fun," and sometimes they are longer and a bit more demanding like, "do not, under any circumstances, turn against yourself." Sometimes too they come back around and serve me again and often I lend them to my husband who often excepts them with gratitude.
I have thought about creating a book of mantras, but I think the more beneficial thing to do would be to recommend that you too find a space of quiet and from that allow your own mantras to be born.
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