You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay Book Review

Long before the Law of Attraction was “revealed,” Louise Hay was preaching that every thought we think creates our future.

Her first book was You Can Heal Your Body, following an episode where she reportedly healed herself of cervical cancer. This can no longer be verified, and invites skepticism, since she refused conventional treatment and focused on her own metaphysical program.

Later, she expanded that work and published this one. She’s also the founder of Hay House, which publishes many related metaphysical books, including some by Wayne Dyer, though also some quite different political and financial books by Ben Stein and Phil deMuth.

She had a rough childhood and dropped out of high school and became pregnant. Later she became a successful fashion model. In the 1980s she did a lot of support work for AIDS patients.

Her central message is not just to use your thoughts to attract wealth, though that’s an element. She recognizes it’s not that easy, because most of us have difficult emotional blocks to receiving wealth and good health.

More than most self-help authors, she stresses the importance of forgiveness — of others and ourselves.

And she writes something that I believe is particularly powerful. Many other authors say something similar in their own ways, but not as directly.

Our point of power is the present moment.

That is, you can’t change your life in the past or the future. You have to do something different, and you can’t do that in the past or future, only right now.

So time spent regretting the past, thinking about it and experiencing resentment is simply wasted and futile. So is time daydreaming about the future and what you’ll do.

Unlike the Law of Attraction, Louise Hay believes in taking action. And you can take action only now, in the present.

She also believes that all disease results from a need to forgive — others and/or ourselves. Some people have a hard time with this. And most of us don’t want to believe how much we hold on to the negative feelings of the past.

I’m not sure I agree that if we could somehow learn to love ourselves and others unconditionally that we’d be healed of all disease (which if you’re still a smoker, heavy drinker who eats too much and doesn’t exercise, and you get exposed to communicable diseases?).

Still, I do see how failing to forgive others is a way of blaming them for whatever it was they did to you. And by blaming them for what’s wrong, you’re not taking responsibility for your own life.

Thus, forgiveness is to reclaim the power to control your own life. It’s practical, not unselfish.

You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay Book Review