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Dear Self-Talker
Never underestimate the power of self-talk, because those words form your beliefs and colour your life, which is
exactly why you need to harness the power of
positive affirmations.
In the sections on
memory and
visualization, we touched on how the subconscious responds to what you feed it.
Here, we delve more deeply and reveal why positive affirmations can make a real and quick difference to your quality of life.
Defining Positive Affirmations:
Positive affirmations are defined as short sentences you repeat aloud or mentally, that describe a positive trait
you want to have or want more of. When delivered, they are always said in the
present tense - as if you already have them!
Let's take a look at some examples of positive affirmations and then we'll explain the present tense requirement.
- "I always convey confidence and great self-belief"
- "I am healthy, slim and fit"
- "My lungs are clear and I breathe easily"
- "I fully embrace wealth and am totally comfortable with it"
- "I have a great circle of friends who love and respect me as I love and respect them"
Just from the above examples, you can see many circumstances to which you could apply this powerful technique; confidence building, dieting, stopping smoking, wealth development and social life are only a snapshot - the list is endless.
"Understanding the power of NOW!"
Your subconscious
cannot differentiate between reality as is now and imagined ideas of the future - it just believes whatever you tell it and tell it regularly. So, when using positive affirmations, affirm in the present tense so your subconscious "thinks" what you are saying is actually going on now. It then starts to attract to you those experiences, places and people that resonate with what it believes in order to validate it.
If you affirm in the future, e.g. "I will be healthy, slim and fit", then your subconscious will validate that too.
How?
By making sure it
never happens!
Because you are affirming for the future, the future by definition never arrives and so neither will your desired outcome . Only the present can ever "be" - the future is always ahead in the distance.
What else you should do to make positive affirmations work:
If changing your life could occur through positive affirmations only, we'd all have what we want already. As we haven't, there must be other parts to the equation - and indeed there are.
Congruency:
You need to act in the same manner as your affirmations indicate. E.g., if you want to be slim, fit and healthy, you're going to need to exercise and maybe also change your eating habits. You can't eat hamburgers, drink beer, smoke and watch TV every night and expect to get fit!
Positive affirmations are part of the change equation , not the equation itself.
Eliminate conflicting beliefs:
Your subconscious needs clarity in what you tell it. Try to uncover your existing beliefs first before trying to implant new ones.
Let's say you are using positive affirmations to increase your wealth, but deep down you found that actually you believe wealth to be a bad thing - you're going to have 2 things in conflict! The best way forward is to uncover the deep-rooted negative belief you have about wealth and then turn in into a positive one.
To uncover your deep beliefs, take 15-20 minutes (longer if needed) by yourself in a quite place and just write everything that comes to mind about that subject. At the end you'll uncover your core belief and that is what you need to change, because until now it's secretly been holding you back.
Visualize:
Use visualization to magnify the power of your positive affirmations by imagining you already are or have what you are affirming.
Keep at it:
It takes 21 days to change a belief, so keep your positive affirmations going for at least this length of consecutive time. As with visualization, spend just 5-10 minutes twice daily to get maximum benefit - first thing in the morning and last thing at night.
Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life 
- with positive affirmations, you have a powerful tool to help change the way you think.
