I'm not sure where it has happened in the evolution of self help literature but a great many people seem to place a lot of trust and faith in their affirmations every day. For those of you reading this article my definition of an affirmation is the continual repeating of positive statement over and over again. For example the most famous affirmation that I am aware of is Emile Coue's "Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better".
For many years I used to recite affirmations on a daily basis. I had my set of affirmation cards which would prompt me to recite them. I bought and listened to self-talk tapes on a daily basis, religiously following the guidelines given to me. The result - well not very much. In fact I was sure that this area of self improvement didn't work for me. I still believed in the power of what Louise Hay taught in her books but I felt that it was just not effective for me. Being a personal development coach I was curious and I wanted to know why I was different to all the other people for whom this worked. This puzzle led me to studying NLP, hypnotherapy and other performance improvement techniques. Then I made a discovery when reading a book by Joseph Murphy, the power of your subconscious mind which I will share with you.
The reason why the affirmation may not work
Many people affirm the following "I am wealthy and abundant". One thing that people don't understand is that the subconscious mind is actually quite dumb, so it will pick up on this affirmation quite readily. However the conscious mind causes the problem because it will say "that's nonsense - I'm not wealthy and abundant". In effect your conscious mind is resisting the message. Imagine for a moment that the affirmation is a seed. Where there is resistance to the affirmation, this would be like planting your seed on stony ground. Your seed is waiting for the birds to come and eat it.
So how can you get around this? Well your affirmation has to be believable. Rather than say "I am wealthy and abundant" instead say "Wealth, Abundance". Rather than say "I am healthy and fit" replace this with "Health, Fitness" and so on. This is beautiful in its simplicity because there is nothing for your conscious mind to argue about or resist so it simply by-passes many of your minds cognitive processes that would otherwise keep it from doing its work. This is like planting the seed deep in the fertile soil of your mind.
So what happened next?
Once I started doing this weird stuff started to happen in my life. One thing that changed was my dreams. In the past when I would dream about money I would dream about pennies. Now I dream about wads of notes. This is a positive sign that my subconscious mind is picking up on the messages and is seeking to achieve those goals for me. There have been many other instances that have proved to me that this is now working. So try is out for yourself and once you have started to see the changes happen in your mind you can then move onto the fuller forms of affirmation, but again only if they are believable.
Mark Buchan is a personal development coach who helps clients from all over the world to improve their thinking and creativity. Mark runs free monthly teleseminars designed to help improve performance and achieve goals. Visit Mark's website to see when the next free teleseminar is scheduled for.
Mark Buchan is one of Britain's most sought after coaches. He coaches executives, business owners and entrepreneurs from a wide variety of business sectors. His ability to facilitate change and assist his clients in overcoming their obstacles to growth is fast earning him the reputation of Worlds Best Coach.
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