The Power Of Affirmations
In the field of personal development affirmations are considered an immensely powerful tool that can be employed in order to dramatically improve our lives.
A positive affirmation is simply a short statement that you say and repeat to yourself in order to get your subconscious mind reprogrammed.
If we truly want to change our lives for the better what we need to do is to redesign the way we think and speak to ourselves in line with more positive patterns.
Affirmations work beautifully because the hold the power to let our minds believe what we constantly repeat to ourselves.
This happens due to the fact that the mind cannot tell the difference between what is real and what is fantasy.
Practice a positive affirmation is really easy to do because all you have to do is choose a phrase and keep on repeating it to yourself.
There are many reasons to use positive affirmations such as:
– motivating yourself
– encouraging positive changes in your life
– boost your self-esteem
If negative self-talk is something that you usually get yourself caught up into, such positive phrases repeated over and over again to yourself can replace these subconscious patters with more useful and encouraging narratives.
It is crucial that you understand that every complaint is actually an affirmation of something that you don’t want in your life. For example, every time you allow anger to take hold of you, you are basically affirming that you want more anger in your life. Each time you focus on your victim hood you affirm that you want to continue to feel like a victim.
If you judge life for not providing you with whatever it is that you want in your existence, then this is a sign that you will never receive what you want if you do not make massive changes in the way you think and speak.
The point of affirmations is to create empowering messages that are absorbed by your mind. Most of the thoughts and actions that you have in your day are the result of what is in your subconscious mind.
One unbelievable and amazing fact of your subconscious mind is that it believes what you constantly repeat to it consistently and it does not matter how true or false the statement is.
What can Science say about affirmations?
Quite a lot of research has been carried out to understand how positive affirmations may or may not impact the human brain and if there is any positive outcome that comes with using them.
This research has shown that there is indeed a positive effect when affirmations are used on a constant basis and that they can truly help people build and sustain a positive self-view.
Scientific studies were carried out using Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (FMRI) and found that self-affirmations can activate certain reward centres in the brain, and represent the same reward centres that react when we are exposed to pleasurable experiences like eating a favorite meal or winning a price.
Affirmations take advantage of our ‘reward circuits’ and therefore can be quite powerful. Many studies have shown that these circuits can do things such as reduce pain and help us maintain balance in the face of threats. Furthermore, self-affirmations increase the activity in areas of the brain that are connected to self-related processing.
Steps To Make Affirmations Work For You
1. You have to do your affirmations daily – every single day – without missing a day. You have to keep doing it, you have to drill it into your subconscious. Your subconscious is like a primitive, animal mind, it does not think logically about things. Your mind will take on whatever you feed it, regardless of truth or falsity. This principle only works through persistence and repetition. The key is not miss a single day. At least commit yourself to a month of affirmations on whatever specific issue you want to be working on; maybe two months, or three months, depending on how much problem you are having in that area. The more problem you are having in there, the more deep seeded that problem is in past events, the more time you have to use to practice the positive affirmations.
2. An affirmation is a short concise phrase – ideally a phrase, not even a sentence. For example: “I am healthy“. A very short, simple phrase. This is something yon can repeat over and over in a short period of time, for example for five minutes. It must be something that you don’t even need to read on paper, you can simply memorize it.
3. Make sure that affirmations are stated in the positive – for example, if I am struggling with money and I have limited beliefs around money, I can still use a positive affirmation to work on that. I am not going to say – “I do not want to be poor”. What I say is “I am wealthy”. Always state affirmations in the positive. Another example, I want to lose weight; I do not say “I do not want to be obese” or “I want to be less heavy”, but I say “I am fit“, or “I am healthy” or you can specify the weight you want to be “I am 65 kg“. This is because your subconscious mind tends to exclude any negative statements, so when you say “I do not want to be poor” what happens is that your subconscious mind crosses out the “don’t” and it believes “I want to be poor”. Therefore, your mind has that picture of you poor with no money. You want to move your mind off from the negative pictures onto the positive pictures. This is also very important in visualization.
4. Whenever possible, start your affirmations with I AM – this is because every time you use I AM in any statements, the meaning of what you are saying goes to your identity, it is shaping your beliefs about who you really are at the core. When you say “I am rich” that says something about you, something that is within you, something that is attracting money to you. Every time you say I AM you are identifying with what you are stating, and it is shaping your image on a deep level. Whether if you say “I have lots of money” or “I am making lots of money” although this being a positive affirmation, it is not very identity-based. You need to make sure that the things you are stating about you come natural to you and you are also feeling it.
5. Be Specific – the more specific you can make your affirmation, the better. If you want to earn a specific amount of money in a year, include that in your affirmation. Do you want to be driving a certain type of car? include that in your affirmation. You want to be living in a certain Country, or City, or area within the City? put all that in your affirmation.
6. Make sure that your affirmations are stated in the Present Tense – I can say “I will be rich” or I can say “I am rich, right now”. This one is a bit tricky because we know that what we are affirming may not be true, however you need to trick your subconscious mind to believe it. Remember, although your conscious mind questions and rationalizes everything, your subconscious mind does not know the difference between truth or fantasy. The point of the affirmation is that you want to instill something in yourself, a belief, a sense of confidence – to do that, you say that you want right now, even if you are not. Although in the outer world now you may not healthy, in your inner world you are reprogramming yourself, you are getting in touch with that feeling of being healthy. You need to get in touch with the feeling – what does it feel like being healthy? You have created an affirmation because you want to be more confident: “I am confident” – what does it feel like when you say it and visualize yourself surrounded by people that compliment and appreciate you?
Daily Affirmations – Examples & Tips
You can create affirmations for any problem area in your life or any kind of goal that you want to set for yourself, whether is a fitness goal, relationships goals, money goals, career goals, business goals, hobby goals, any personal development goals, spiritual goals – you can create an affirmation for it.
“I am happy”
“I am healthy”
“I trust my own wisdom”
“I am confident”
“I am abundant”
“I am wealthy”
“I have unlimited energy”
“I believe in myself”
“I am strong and fit”
“I am incredibly cable of many things”
“I am loved and supported”
“I fully accept and love myself”
“I am safe and protected”
“I am always taking action”
“I am beautiful”
Remember that the way you think in this very moment is only a choice you make. Please go ahead and start doing affirmations, it is an amazing technique for getting yourself on top of your goals and working out your limiting beliefs and some of the stuff that is holding you back in your life.
Giancarlo has over ten years of experience in hypnotherapy and regression therapy. He is a member of the Past Life Regression Academy and the EarTh Association of Regression Therapy.
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