How To Achieve The Best Results With Affirmations
January 26, 2009 by DianeCorriette · 1 Comment
How To Achieve The Best Results With Affirmations
What did you do the last time you thought you had a bad habit? Nothing much, right? Perhaps just told yourself that you can’t continue like this. But telling yourself once can’t really fetch desired results. Repetitively uttering resolutions, instead, does the trick. So how do you go about it? Write down your resolution somewhere and go over it as many times as possible.
Repeating these affirmations day in day out ultimately makes you believe in them. Nowadays, affirmations are so popular that you can even buy them in the form of CD’s and cassettes. It’s great if you, too, want readymade affirmations for yourself. But it’s always better to create your own affirmations (since no one else understands your emotional needs better).
So what exactly should you remember while making your own affirmations? Go through the checklist below and find out-
1. The first thing that you need to remember is the final purpose of your affirmation. Any affirmation, no matter what purpose it is taken for, should make a person behave positively. For the same reason, the tone of your affirmation should not be negative. Do not use ‘do not’ in your affirmation even if it sounds perfectly correct. Instead, give your affirmation a positive tone. Consider this example- you have a habit of smoking and you create an affirmation that reads- ‘I don’t smoke cigarettes.’ Though the affirmation sounds grammatically right, your mind may take it otherwise. For some odd reason your mind might get stuck to the words ‘smoke cigarettes’ in isolation and you’ll fail to achieve positive results. So your affirmation should read something like this- ‘I should take care of my heart and lungs. Smoking won’t help’.
2. Next in line is how you make your mind take to the affirmation you have created. Perhaps your affirmation says ‘What I do now will affect my future’. If you actually want to believe in this you have to read it innumerable times. Remember, the biggest secret of making your affirmation work is repetition. But then repetition is not all. So what more do you need? You need to empower your mind so that it can linger over the true meaning of each word. The very first instance you can make your mind linger on ‘I’. Look within and decide whether what you’re doing will nurture your future or not. The very next instant you can focus on how your present actions can actually mould your life in future. Lastly, ask yourself how you’d like to see yourself in future. Repeating your affirmation singularly will not be as beneficial as when you combine that with inflection.
3. Thirdly and lastly, don’t pressurize yourself too much all at once. Going through an affirmation might seem to be the easiest thing but incorporating it can be really difficult. And this is precisely why you should not aim to improve a number of habits at a single instance- lose weight, improve punctuality, work harder etc. Remember the old saying ‘take one step at a time’ and move ahead to make a success of your affirmation.
Believe in you affirmations- Make them work
At every point in life you’ve met with someone or the other who has encouraged you. In school it would be your parents, at work it is your colleague and at home it is your partner. But the question is why do you need others to encourage you? Why don’t you, yourself devise ways to increase your faith in yourself?
Improving self- belief and confidence is not an uphill task anymore- all you need to do is create your own affirmations or get them from your neighborhood CD shop. So what exactly are affirmations? They are the words of encouragement that you utter to you own being.
But the concept of affirmations goes deeper than this. When you write an affirmation and say it what you’re actually doing is making your spirit believe in something better, something that you have not been able to incorporate in your own life till date. People plagued by bad habits are the most frequent affirmation users. These people want to get rid of their habits and want to believe in something more idealistic.
Consider the example of a smoker who badly wants to give up the habit but does not know how to go about it. If he writes an affirmation stating ‘Smoking kills. I will quit the habit’ and goes through it as regularly as possible after a while he’ll start believing in it. The appeal to his subconscious mind will work and in due course of time he will quit. That is the power affirmations have.
So what do you need to make your affirmation work?
1. State of mind- When you are thinking of practicing an affirmation you need to consider your own state of mind. This is a factor that can make or break the power of an affirmation. To make an affirmation effective, you need to have a relaxed state of mind. When the mind relaxes, the state of consciousness interrupts lesser and the subconscious mind is ready to absorb more.
2. Face yourself- Creating your own affirmation is not the end of all problems. You need to face yourself if you want to practise your affirmation effectively. Once you know you are able to face your own problems, you’ll understand you’re ready to incorporate the goodness of the affirmation. To make the affirmation work, stand before the mirror and repeat the affirmation time and again.
3. Do not suppress your voice- When you are uttering your affirmation you need to imagine that it is bringing about positive results. If you are practicing your affirmation in a loud voice, it is easier for you to imagine the affirmation overpowering your bad habit. It is precisely for this reason that you must practice your affirmation in an isolated place.
4. Choose the right time- Practice your affirmations regularly but practice them at times when the mind is not clouded. In fact, the best time to practice affirmations is early in the morning and late at night. Just after waking up from sleep and before going off to sleep the subconscious mind remains active and receptive.
About DianeCorriette
Diane…..you hit THIS one on the head! The idea of how we KEEP ourself IN THE FLOW, or make ourselves maintain, those affirmations that can so easliy drive us ahead. Two quick thoughts…
The first, what I do to make MY affirmations STICK?!?
POST IT NOTES! There are times at my house/office, where you would either think I was being ‘punk’d’ by friends who thought putting post-it’s on all mirrors and windows, was funny – OR – you would realize that I am on a mission, working to CHANGE A HABIT.
I have found that the constant reminder….works best for me. And, to that end, I suggest to ALL those that I work with, to INVEST heavily in Post-It’s…as they are one of the BEST reminder tools that can be used in this sometimes, passive aggressive method.
And remember, to the rest reading….Post-It’s now, come in ALL kinds of different flavors…..tabs, square, rectangle, multi-color, peel-AWAY BLOCKS…AND SO ON. So, there really is no excuse these days…there is a Post It to fit EVERY lifestyle.
Ok, now the second thought…I would love to sit and talk with you about this VERY topic on my BTR show. We might have a fun-filled conversation.
Get back to me…and thanks for this podcast…
Akiba