Photo by Renato Abati from Pexels
Affirmations are a powerful ingredient in positive thinking. They are not statements that you wish to be true; they are statements that you must believe are true.
Affirmations are positive statements describing a desired condition in your life. That condition may not yet exist, but the affirmation is spoken as though it does. A simple example might be: “I am at peace with my life.” This is repeated several times on a daily basis, out loud or mentally, the aim being to program the subconscious mind into producing the desired outcome. They must be sincerely felt, and spoken in the present tense with conviction and enthusiasm.
We carry out such mental programming every day whether we know it or not; the trick is to make this programming conscious and positive. The alternative is to be unaware that we are issuing negative affirmations to ourselves. If you have ever made a mistake and muttered “I am such an idiot”, you have given yourself a negative affirmation. The problem is that any negative affirmation you give enters your subconscious mind and has a harmful effect – it creates your reality.
Positive affirmations are made because you want to achieve something. That may be more money, a new car, a bigger house, a better job, more success, or, on a more personal level, love, health, happiness or peace. We all have such desires – we would be strange if we didn’t. But these outcomes can sometimes seem so far beyond our grasp that we do not really dare to think that they could be ours for the asking. Instead, we focus on how far away from our desired outcomes we are, and negative affirmations become our mantra.
Ø We desire to be wealthy, so we think: I’m never going to be rich.
Ø We want that promotion, so we think: It’s bound to go to someone else.
Ø We want love in our life, so we think: No one’s going to love me.
We are thinking about the things we want, but from a negative perspective. If this is true, then there should be no doubt as to why it is a good idea to flip the coin and start talking positively. It is not as though we are being forced to start doing something we aren’t doing already, or that is in any way laborious. How much effort does it take to say one sentence to yourself? And wouldn’t it be nice to speak to yourself in positive terms for a change?
Be Careful What You Wish For …
You will doubtless have heard this saying in the past. In full, it says: “Be careful what you wish for; you may just get it.”
This may appear an odd saying, because who in their right mind would wish for negative things to happen? Unfortunately, too many of us are thinking negative thoughts every day. Look at the examples above – how it is so easy to have a positive desire that is expressed in a negative way. Take the example of your desire for a promotion. Instead of repeating to yourself: “The promotion is mine”, you think: It’s bound to go to someone else. Perhaps this is a means of protecting yourself from disappointment, but what you are actually doing is repeating a negative affirmation. Your subconscious is receiving the message that you will not be promoted, and it interprets this as an order. You may think that your subconscious cannot affect the decision made by your boss, but your negativity comes through loud and clear. Your boss may be looking at you and feel reluctant to promote you because they sense you are not the positive person they want in a position of increased power.
So you fail to win the promotion largely because you have been thinking you won’t, and your boss has picked up on something negative that they don’t like. Although you didn’t actually wish that you would fail, you helped make it happen because failure was the dominant thought in your mind. The above saying may speak of wishes, but it more correctly refers to thoughts that are uppermost in your mind for the majority of the time. In other words: “Be careful what you think of; you may just get it.”
The results that are manifested in your life can be directly affected by the thoughts in your head, and the affirmations you give to yourself.
Another good reason to create positive affirmations for yourself is because it is so simple to do. As already mentioned, that does not mean it is necessarily an easy process to carry out – which will be dealt with in the next chapter – but it is certainly a simple process to understand.
In positive thinking, your mental attitude is often referred to as a coin. It’s an apt description. You have two forms of mental attitude: a positive mental attitude (PMA), and a negative mental attitude (NMA). Just like the heads and tails of a coin. And just like a coin, it can be flipped very easily and it will never come to rest on its edge. This means there is no third option of a neutral mental attitude. It is either positive or it is negative.
When something is so easy to understand, there is very little reason to simply stare at your coin and leave it lying there with its NMA side upwards. Whenever you notice that you are feeling negative, or you catch yourself making a negative comment to yourself, make a conscious effort to flip the coin to its PMA side, and counter the negative thought with a positive affirmation. As wonderfully complex as your mind is, it does not have the capability to focus on more than one thought at any one time. If you are thinking a negative thought, you can instantly dismiss it by bringing a positive thought to mind.
Controlling and Understanding the Subconscious Mind
This is a useful life-skill, and affirmations can help forge closer links between your conscious mind and your subconscious mind.
Once you start making your positive affirmations and you begin to see that they are working, you have proven your ability to control a part of yourself that remains out of reach to so many other people. Your subconscious mind is like the registry of your computer. A computer’s registry is its database that stores configuration settings and options. Most people have a vague idea it’s there, some may realize what it does, but very few will be able to open it up and start deleting or adjusting any of its keys or values because they won’t know what anything in there means.
You need to understand that it is possible to adjust your subconscious mind, and positive affirmations are the way to do this. It is how you can clear out all the redundant and harmful data your subconscious stores, and allow you to know exactly why you may be behaving in a certain way in a certain situation. When a computer is behaving oddly or sluggishly, it is often a muddled and messed up registry that’s responsible. Even when you delete a program, there will usually be remnants of it remaining in the registry. Your aim with positive affirmations is to reprogram your subconscious, and to continue to clear out any negative traces that remain from your previous way of thinking.
Positive affirmations help you become more in tune with how your subconscious operates, and why you may respond poorly in certain circumstances. The more you program your mind positively, the more easily you will recognize negative activity and be able to jump on it and delete it. Equally, you will find that you are far more tuned into the whispering of your subconscious mind that often bring answers to difficult dilemmas in your life.
Depending on how they are phrased, affirmations can create good or bad habits. You may start out with affirmations that relate to some grand goals, such as a better career, or a more peaceful life, but don’t forget that affirmations can be applied to any area of your life. They can be used to help control your weight, to quit smoking, to cut back on the booze, so stop biting your fingernails. You name the habit, and a positive affirmation can be phrased to deal with it.
Positive affirmations have a knock-on effect beyond the result named in the affirmation. As your life gradually improves, you will feel a sense of growing confidence, whether or not you have ever phrased an affirmation regarding a boost in your confidence levels. This is the natural consequence of personal achievement. Your outlook on life changes and your self-image is transformed. You create a virtuous circle where a vicious one may have existed before.
Again, this will be a side-effect of positive affirmations even when you have not phrased one that relates directly to your health. Negative emotions are draining on the psyche, and this can have a debilitating effect on your physical well-being. Negativity causes you to feel lethargic, and can cause genuine physical illness. Where positive affirmations can make you feel at ease, negative thoughts and habits cause you dis-ease. This is why people develop psychosomatic illnesses.
Psychosomatic means mind (psyche) and body (soma), and an illness of this sort therefore involves both the mind and the body. You will have heard the phrase “sick with worry”. It is entirely possible to make yourself ill through stressful thoughts. Some physical diseases are thought to be particularly affected by mental factors such as stress and anxiety. Psoriasis, eczema, stomach ulcers, IBS, high blood pressure, and heart disease, for example, are all aggravated by negative thoughts. In fact, there is a mental aspect to every physical disease in how we react to it and cope with it.
Positive affirmations can improve your health in three ways: Firstly, your mindset is healthier overall with a positive mental attitude, thus your immune system is stronger; secondly, a specific affirmation can be phrased to augment your health and counter illness appearing; thirdly, they can be used to speed recovery if you do get ill.
Positive affirmations create better relationships, as other people instinctively respond better to positive vibes and success. This can affect every type of relationship in your life – with your partner, your kids, your relatives, friends, acquaintances, strangers, work colleagues, and your boss.
Again, this is an area that will naturally improve as your affirmations take effect, even if they have not been targeted at your relationships. You are far more likely to be successful if you have created a more attractive aura for yourself through positive affirmations.
Because Everything Begins in Mind
This is the truth that underpins positive affirmations, and positive thinking generally. This is the concept that must be accepted if you are to truly embrace the possibility that positive affirmations can improve your life and bring success.
The easiest way to verify this statement is to simply look around you right now. Apart from Nature, everything you can see started life as a thought in the mind of a human being. The clothes you wear, the car you drive, the street you drive along, the house you live in, the TV you watch, the books you read, the computer you work at, the chair you sit in, the company you work for, everything started out as an idea in mind.
That should make you think. The power of your mind to invent and achieve is practically limitless.
