Affirmations – 7 Essential Pointers
Get started on affirmations – with these 7 essential pointers! [ Affirmations – 7 Essential Pointers ]
by Francis O’Neill
The first thing to say about affirmations is that they work. In this Affirmations – 7 Essential Pointers article I am going to be looking at how they work to bring about what you want in your life. You will also find out how to create your own powerful affirmations that you can begin using from today.
What affirmations are
Let’s begin by saying that we are using affirmations on a daily basis, and mostly without our even being aware of it.
What we are doing is affirming what we have learnt from childhood and life experience in general. We are talking here about what we have imbued into our ‘subconscious’.
It would take a whole book to fully explore the subconscious as we call it, so, in brief here, let me mention that it lies just below our waking conscious state and is deemed to carry an accurate record of all that has happened to us.
Importantly, it deductively draws conclusions from what it has learnt or has been told. What it has been told can either be true or false in the real sense but it accepts as true. It is our learned response, natural reaction, our habits.
The subconscious in turn influences our self-perception, what we believe to be true about ourselves with all that that entails to colour our take on life, our expectations, our goals. [ Affirmations – 7 Essential Pointers ]
Here’s the rub…
The conclusions that our subconscious draws are dynamic. What you believe influences what happens to you. We tend to attract towards us life experiences that fit the conclusions our subconscious has made – like a self-fulfilling prophesy. [ Affirmations – 7 Essential Pointers ]
And does this tie in with the Law of Attraction theory? You bet! Knowing this opens us to the possibility that we can change the record – especially if it is broken. If we change these ‘conclusions,’ by consciously imposing a positive set of instructions on our subconscious to form new conclusions, we then begin to attract life experience that fit the new, more positive, conclusions.
Don’t beat up on your subconscious
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the way our subconscious works. It responds, reacts according to how it has been taught to respond and react to circumstances.
We live a large chunk of our lives on auto-pilot. One can say that this is important to our survival as we need to be able to respond quickly, habitually, to events around us – which would be impossible if we had to examine and evaluate every situation or event as it arose, as though each was new to us.
And after all, although things can change dramatically, we come to trust what we have in our lives today, such as the ground beneath us, the people, the things around us, our environment, our job, will also be there when we wake up tomorrow and the next day. These relative constants afford us to not have to think about them too much – we live in our ‘normality’ and daily navigate through it.
The ‘out there’ is a mirror for what is going on ‘in there’
So far so good dealing with the ‘out there’ but that ‘out there’ is going to be a mirror of what’s going on ‘in there’. In other words what our subconscious has been taught about ourselves and the conclusions it continues to affirm – particularly when these turn out to be of a dysfunctional nature. Consider:
- I believe life’s a pain and then you die! Some people invite themselves into the University of Hard Knocks by affirming powerful negative statements. Leaving aside this statement being said in humour, not even saying it but believing it to be true, is affirming it – and there will be other negative affirmations in there with it.
- Well I grew up poor and the way things are going I expect I’ll always be poor. Or it might be, We do the lottery every week but we never win. How easy it is to slip in an affirmation that requests things to remain as they are. The subconscious hears it and ticks the box marked ‘No progress or change required’.
- I always wanted to learn this (or do that) but I know I wouldn’t be any good at it. How often do we tell our subconscious to ‘play safe’ than risk failure or worse – success. We can spend our whole lives staying in the comfort zone, avoiding challenges, only to have failed ourselves miserably in the end.
- I’d love to have a partner in my life but who’d want me? Posed as a question but is actually a statement of low self-esteem coupled with affirming we are not worthy of what we want and therefore we won’t get it.
We unwittingly sabotage our good intentions
Truly, our negative affirmations can sabotage our good intentions and so often make sure we snatch defeat in the jaws of success. This is powerful stuff that either helps us to move forward towards what we want – success and happiness – or continues to lead us back to failure and disappointment.
Using positive affirmations will turn this, or whatever situation you are concerned with, around. By consciously affirming positive improvements you will alter your habitual patterns of thinking and will turn your life around if that is what you want. That’s the theory and it does work! But you must work at it too. [ Affirmations – 7 Essential Pointers ]
Creating affirmations
An affirmation is best given to the subconscious as if a new instruction that you firmly believe to be true, indeed given as essential and already in operation.
Look at it this way, consider that what you are is a director of a failing company and you are requiring new instruction from management down to the shop floor. The new directive being, that practices are going to have to change in order to turn the company around to being successful.
Keeping with this analogy, you would hope this new direction will be welcomed with open arms by the workforce – and probably it will – but also be prepared for possible resistance. Often a workforce finds change difficult to accept and old routines, old habits, a why fix it if it ain’t broke mentality will seek to re-emerge and can be hard to master. So treat the whole matter with maturity and work to influence improved practices through steady application and being watchful.
Creating affirmations requires thought and preparation. You will find a lot of ready-made affirmations on the Web and I will be suggesting one or two here. It is however always best for you to own the affirmation you choose – for it to emerge from you rather than someone else.
Affirmations – 7 essential pointers
Essential Pointer 1
Give yourself some time to think through your affirmations. These are going to be statements that you believe with conviction to be true of the new you.
Essential Pointer 2
Write them down on paper. Start with between one and five to begin with – avoid overkill particularly at the start. You don’t want them to become a chore to trawl through each reading. Besides too many affirmations could mean you are overlapping and possibly need to simplify your list. Keep it simple and to the point. [ Affirmations – 7 Essential Pointers ]
Essential Pointer 3
Incorporate ‘I’ to own each statement. Also write them in context with this happening ‘now’ rather than at some point in the future.
Essential Pointer 4
Arrive at affirmations that you would feel comfortable saying out loud to yourself. Road test them and check out your reaction to them. If an affirmation strikes an inner chord – feels good when you say it – then you are certainly on the right track. But resistance in itself does not necessarily mean you are on the wrong track – keep it honest.
Essential Pointer 5
Read them out at least twice a day – but preferably more, like four times. Develop your own routine.
Essential Pointer 6
Read each affirmation and repeat it – you could say it many times but two or three times will be enough. You might try reading an affirmation from your list the first time and then, eyes closed, repeat it from memory for the second time.
Essential Pointer 7
Say it with your listening ears on – it is important that you hear it being said, get the meaning, and not just reading a string of words. If you are in a more public space you can obviously read it quietly to yourself. There is however argument for ‘out loud’ having more impact.
Alternatively you could try something powerful – read out your affirmations while looking into a mirror.
Results
Your life will begin to turn around doing this. You may very quickly feel more positive about yourself, in a genuine way – with external results accompanying. Results over time will vary depending upon what you are seeking to achieve, your determination, and how stubborn the old affirmations are to replace. It mostly comes down to your commitment to making the changes you are seeking to put in place.
To help speed up the process keep vigilance on your daily thought patterns and behaviour. Immediately adjust to more positive expressions wherever you catch yourself reaffirming the old you. I will venture that you are on the verge of a very exciting time in your life so stick with your recipe.
Examples
The affirmations that you will find people using are along the lines of the following examples. Use to design your own:
- I am loved and a loving person
- I forgive myself for the mistakes I have made in my past
- I am succeeding in all my current endeavours
- I am happy with the direction my life is now taking
- I am well on my way to becoming wealthy
- As I’m changing for the better so my world is changing for the better too
Associated links:
Steps to Health Wealth & Inner Peace
MindZoom your way to success
Self-help through Self-hypnosis
Seven principles to becoming successful
Come on – use your imagination
8 tips using creative visualisation
Life success: No secrets