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When life feels completely overwhelming and nothing seems to work despite how desperately you struggle, sometimes there’s really not much you can do but sit down and pray. Fortunately, prayer and meditation actually does give a lot of physical and emotional benefits, and they may also lead you to the breakthrough you need.
To help you persevere during tough times, here’s a guide to help you calm your mind and seek help from a higher power.
More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams.
Alfred Lord Tennyson
How to Pray Effectively
Why should you learn how to pray?
Why I’m not usually “religious”, I do have a background in psychology and I’ve studied a bit about the benefits of meditation, self-fulfilling prophecies, stress management, and more. Aside from that, I’ve also read many self-improvement and self-help books (check out my recommendations here!) that explain the benefits of visualization, affirmations, and prayer when it comes to solving problems and improving the quality of your life.
Thanks to all that research and study, I can wholeheartedly tell you this:
If you engage in serious meditative prayer, you can gain all those benefits and more.
Norman Vincent Peale, the author of self-help classic The Power of Positive Thinking, taught that a peaceful mind generates power. In fact, that lesson is so important, he dedicated an entire chapter to it. Prayers and learning how to change the pattern of your thoughts “helps to produce health and well-being” and affirming peaceful, contented, and happy attitudes “are active and definite factors in creating satisfactory conditions”.
Serious meditative prayer helps you think more clearly and become more productive. Prayer, like meditation, can give you a sense of calm and give you hope and energy during tough times. You will also gain more confidence and have increased chances of success because you’ll feel like you’re working alongside a higher power instead of handling all the problems and stress by yourself.
Now that we’ve discussed some of the benefits or prayer, it’s time to learn how to pray effectively.
So how should you pray?
When praying, most people just kneel, do the sign of the cross, mumble their prayer, and end with another sign of the cross. That’s definitely a prayer, but if you want something more effective you need to take it a step further and treat it more like an exercise in meditation.
Before you begin, you have to take a minute or two to calm down, breathe, and just relax. Remember that a peaceful mind generates power. Jack Canfield, author of The Success Principles, taught that as you meditate and become more spiritually attuned, you’ll be better at getting ideas and inspiration from God through your subconscious mind.
After taking some time to calm down, start visualizing the things that you’re praying for, such as the goals you want in life, or the things you want to have real soon.
One important lesson you should learn is that you shouldn’t hesitate or be embarrassed if you think your wishes and prayers are shallow or materialistic. You CAN indeed pray for ordinary things like having more money or getting some stuff that you want. Never forget that God or the higher power you believe in wants the best for you, so don’t mentally close yourself off to physical and material blessings.
The blessing of the LORD makes a person rich, and he adds no sorrow with it.
Proverbs 10:22 (NLT)
In times of crisis, “Let go, and Let God”
You know how you start feeling better when you vent your problems to a close friend or relative? Well, you can also try releasing that stress and negative emotions to a higher power through prayer.
People pray during times of crisis for a reason, and one of those is for peace of mind. Whenever you’re feeling overwhelmed by all your problems, you have to try taking a break and release all your stress to God, and then pray to him for help.
In my case, whenever I’m feeling a lot of stress, the kind of prayer that helps me goes something like “God, I’ve done everything I can. I can do no more right now, so I’ll leave it to you. Thank you for helping me get through this.”
After saying that, I mentally hand over all the stress and anxiety I felt to God, and I try to encourage myself by thinking of several quotes like “God finds a way where there is no way” or “Be still, and know that I am God. Be still, and know that I am God at work in this situation right now”.
That, by the way, was an example of what Catherine Ponder calls a “prayer of denial”. It’s a kind of prayer designed to take away unhappy circumstances in your life. You must first try to deny the negative circumstances in your mind in order to make room for something better.
Next, visualize and pray for your blessings
After handing over the negative emotions and the problems to God, you must then pray for blessings to take their place.
It’s said that nature abhors a vacuum, meaning something always fills empty spaces. If you discard something from your life, you should make sure that something better takes its place. For example, when facing problems caused by a lack of money, you should pray for blessings of wealth. When facing problems caused by stress and other negative emotions, you must pray for wisdom, peace, and love.
Think about those blessings and visualize them coming true.
You know how when you think about something, you notice it more often? It’s like how when you think about red cars, you see red cars on the road more often, or if you think about traveling to another country, you start noticing all those travel brochures and promos at the mall? Well, you can actually use that ability of your brain to your advantage.
Spend some extra time thinking about and visualizing the blessings that you want to come your way. When you do that, you activate a special part of your brain called the reticular activating system (RAS). That’s the part which focuses your attention to details and opportunities that lead to you getting what you want, the things you think about and visualize.
Special tip: Do not wish for misfortune against your enemies. Not will that only breed anger and resentment in your heart, it can also backfire and bring misfortune on YOU. Let go of those negative emotions and learn to forgive even those who hurt you. Remember also that, similar to doing a good deed and helping someone else, wishing for love and wisdom for yourself and the people around you will bring you joy and peace of mind.
Two “secret ingredients” to make your prayers more effective…
The first secret is that whenever you pray for something, always add “that or something better” at the end. Remember that God always wants the best for us, so we shouldn’t limit ourselves to what we think is “achievable” or “realistic”. We shouldn’t settle for a ten-dollar blessing when a thousand-dollar one was on its way.
The last secret ingredient to making effective prayers is gratitude. We should always be grateful for the blessings we currently have instead of stressing out about the things we lack, and we should be thankful for the blessings that are on their way even though we haven’t seen them yet.
In Matthew 9:29, Jesus said “it shall be done to you according to your faith”. Start believing with all your heart that better things are coming and be thankful for them in advance. They may not be exactly what we want (they may not even seem like blessings at first) and they also may arrive very late, but they are surely on their way.
I hope you learned some new things about how to pray more effectively here on this article. The best thing to do now is to try them out yourself! I know I personally will, and I’ve already made them a habit.
Thank you for reading, and please share this article with your friends and family! It would certainly help us out, and who knows, it might also help someone you know!
If certain things do not come at certain expected times in the way you wished, do not consider it a failure. Since you have not received that thing, you can instead stand firm in the faith that something much better is on the way and will appear at the right time.
Catherine Ponder, The Dynamic Laws of Prosperity
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