What Are Affirmations?

Affirmations are a form of autosuggestion.

The revered personal development author, Napoleon Hill, in his classic book "Think & Grow Rich", describes autosuggestion as:

"..... all suggestions and all self-administered stimuli which reach one's mind through the five senses. Stated in another way, autosuggestion is self suggestion. It is the agency of communication between that part of the mind where conscious thought takes place, and that which serves as the seat of action for subconscious mind".

Autosuggestion is therefore a term used to describe all the dominating thoughts, but also includes everything that reaches the mind through hearing, seeing, feeling, tasting and smelling - the five senses.This happens whether we are paying attention to it or not. In other words, some of us are on 'auto-pilot' autosuggestive mode. Through what we see and hear on TV, movies, other people around us, what we read, etc. All of this is suggesting 'stuff' to us. ALL THE TIME. No wonder things happen and some of us wonder what we did to attract them.

Affirmations are therefore what we might call conscious self talk.

Positively affirming something is conscious positive self talk.

Many self help students use positive self talk to help them visualize the outcome of their goals and desires.

The Law of Attraction teaches us that manifesting our intentions is dependent on where our focus is. Positive affirmations help redirect our focus so as to move our actions toward our desired outcome. If you experience something long enough e.g. when you engage yoursenses in something long enough, you begin to believe it. You begin to believe in it.

Real belief is in our other-than conscious mind, for example the subconscious mind.

The results in our lives right now are the only indication of what we believe. Hard pill to swallow, but the fact is, when we believe differently, we manifest different results.

Positive self talk helps create belief. This state of mind then propels us to act upon our desired results.

Suffice it to say that if one is not taking action, they are fooling themselves.

Affirmations do not replace action, they complement it.

When They Don't Work

So what is the problem there?

Let us take this concept of autosuggestion for example. It does not take a rocket scientist to understand how to do an affirmation.

Napoleon Hill, in his book "Think & Grow Rich" continues thus:

"Remember then, when reading the statement of your desire .....that the mere reading is of no consequence -- unless you mix emotion, or feeling with your words. Your subconcious mind recognizes and acts only upon thoughts which have been well-mixed with emotion or feeling."

Hill goes on to add that this is the main reason the majority of people who try to apply this principle get no desirable results.

Getting Started With Affirmations

Positive self talk to get rid of fears such as fear of success, fear of failure can also be very effective.

According to NLP, we perceive communication in 3 different modalities:

1. Auditory - you learn best through hearing/sound.

2. Visual - what is "seen" is what impacts you the best.

3. Kinesthetic - you learn best by feeling

So, use the modality you think works best for you. You can write them down over and over. Or you can speak them out loud, over and over.

Or you can simply think them silently, over and over.

Whatever the case, do not forget to mentally image - visualize the outcome. As well, you must create an intense emotion as you image it. The feeling should be so intense that it feels like the pleasurable tingling feeling you might experience when you are in a moment of pure joy.

Remember to set aside a certain time of day, at leat twice a day, to do your affirmations. Repeat them over and over. There really isn't a hard and fast rule as to how many times you should repeat them. 10 times is good. 100 times is excellent.

What matters isn't really how many times you repeat them, but how much you "feel" the emotion of the outcome.

Some Positive Affirmations That Work

For example, constantly saying "I am sick and tired of ......." is a disaster waiting to happen.

A Few Good Ones