Affirmations
When I first came across affirmations in a Mind Power course with John Kehoe back in the 90’s, I thought that they would be a quick fix and that I would see instant results. Back then, I was young and impatient to solve the problems that I encountered.
What I didn’t realise is that, like most things, the fruits of one’s efforts can take time to materialise. Some thirty years later, I am now using affirmations again and can feel how they really do make a difference to my life.
What follows are my thoughts and experiences with affirmations that I hope will encourage you to try them and see how they can work for you.
The What
Essentially, an affirmation is a positive statement that is used to help you become the person you wish to be.
To better understand what an affirmation is let’s look at an example.
Imagine you struggle with confidence sometimes. The affirmation “I am confident” affirms to yourself that you are a confident person.
The How
The idea with affirmations is that through repetition they are reprogramming your unconscious mind.
Let’s use the confidence example again. If you say to yourself “I’m a confident person”, chances are your conscious mind wants to disagree with you. It is acting like a filter and not allowing this thought to enter your subconscious.
This is why repetition is used to bypass the conscious mind and reach the unconscious mind. The reason this works is that your unconscious mind does not filter - it accepts whatever it is given.
The Practice
There are various ways to practice affirmations. The one that I prefer is to use an audio recording with affirmations that I repeat after each one is spoken.
With this system, you hear an affirmation like “My health is getting better all the time” and then say internally or out loud, “My health is getting better all the time”.
A simple YouTube search for “affirmations” will provide a long list that you can start with.
Power Practice
What I’ve discovered through research and personal experience is that the off-the-shelf standard set of affirmations are not necessarily the best ones for you.
One reason for this is highlighted by the fact that the “I” versus “You” debate is still running in terms of when you are listening to the affirmations.
What refers to is that for some people, hearing “I am a confident speaker” is better than hearing “You are a confident speaker”. And of course, vice-versa, some feel the 2nd person affirmation (You) is better than the 1st person one (I).
Through my own practice, I’ve taken this a step further to understand that when I’m repeating the affirmations, sometimes “I” is easier to connect with than “you” and yet at other times, the reverse is true.
What this means for you is that you need to experiment to discover what system works best for you. Maybe, like me, it’s fun to use a combination of systems and to change them depending on your mood.
There are many other adjustments that can be made to increase the power of standard affirmations, but for the sake of this simple introductory article I’ve only mentioned one.
Your turn
Now it’s up to you to decide if you want to try using this simple yet powerful technique to have the life you deserve.