You’ve tried positive affirmations. Talked to yourself until you were blue in the face; repeated the same phrases over, and over, and over again. You’ve even tried writing them down – again more times than you can count. You don’t want to hear anymore about how “like attracts like” or the power of the “Law of Attraction.” You’re done.
Actually what you’ve just done is essentially prove to yourself that affirmations can work – they just need to be constructed within certain specifications.
Of course, a good place to begin when it comes to getting affirmations to work is making sure you understand what an affirmation is, the science behind how affirmations work, along with some basic instructions as to construct affirmations.
An affirmation doesn’t need to be positive to be an affirmation
When we “affirm” something we are either declaring that it is true, giving our support to something, or confirming something. Additionally, affirm can also refer to making a formal statement.
Most usually people use affirmations as a means to bring about positive circumstances or change. This is obviously why they are called positive affirmations. For instance, you want to lose weight and have decided to include positive affirmations about losing weight as a part of your program.
While it may seem that we are adding the practice of using affirmation to bring about change or achieve a goal as “something new”, we’ve actually been using affirmations from the time we first became self aware.
This is where things get interesting. Our brain – as well as our subconscious according to the science of psychology, does not discriminate between a “positive” affirmation and a “negative” affirmation. What this means is that all the negative opinions and feelings that we have repeated over the years about ourselves, or heard from others about ourselves, have served to affirm (at least in our own minds) that they are true.
The Physiology of Affirmations
We don’t normally think of positive affirmations as a “physical” process, such as moving our arm, or digesting our food. However, our bodies definitely contain physical structures that process affirmation. Our brain contains neurons and neurons communicate with each using another structure called a synapse that passes chemical messages between neurons.
When we repeatedly think (or do) something, this process creates something called a “neural pathway.” Take, for example, someone who is learning how to knit. At first, this is a slow process where great concentration is required to ensure that each step of creating a stitch is being performed correctly. However, after repeating the same process over and over again, before long that one time beginner becomes so adept at knitting that is seems they don’t even have to give the process any thought.
And uur brains aren’t interested in keeping neural synapses and pathways that are not used consistently around. Sparing you a lengthy lesson in how “glial cells” function; let’s just say they like to clean house. On the other hand, neurons that are often “fired” serve to strengthen neural pathways.
Constructing Affirmations that Strengthen Positive Neural Pathways
The process of getting positive affirmations to work includes constructing them in a manner that will (eventually) become stronger than the negative or opposing thought or belief that you have about yourself. Remember, those glial cells stand at the ready to rid you of those nasty self-depreciating neurons.
The fact that there are complex physiological and chemical processes that need to take place in our brains to help our positive affirmations work makes it appear that creating positive affirmations that work would be similarly complex. Actually, constructing a positive affirmation that works has very simple components.
Be as specific as possible. Your don’t want to put yourself in a situation where neurons are firing all over the place trying to find exactly what it is you are trying to affirm. For example, affirming “I am losing weight every day” can cause some confusion up there in brain central. How are you losing weight? How much weight are you losing?
State your affirmation with respect for the truth. Let’s use our weight loss example again. It is likely that this isn’t the first time you’ve tried to lose weight. Most people diet repeatedly and, unfortunately, most of these efforts either fail or people gain their weight back. Let’s say that past experience has demonstrated that, even when following a health conscious diet and exercising regularly, you don’t lose weight every day. Instead, you tend to lose it in clumps. Affirming that you lose weight every day is simply lying to yourself.
On top of that, the neural pathway to the knowledge that you don’t lose weight every day is much stronger than your affirmation that you do. When we hear that nagging, never ending voice in our head tell us “That’s a lie” or “No you can’t”, what we are hearing are the messages from deeply ingrained neural pathways.
Give your affirmation something to do. Affirmations are not some sort of magic potion that makes your life work. You can affirm something until the cows come home but, unless you get out there and do something to round up those cows, they’re not going anywhere. An affirmation that states “I am losing weight every day” doesn’t give your brain any information about what sort of action is involved in making this happen. You need your affirmation to include what actions you are taking to make your affirmation a reality.
What a Correctly Constructed Affirmation Looks Like
Taking the above into consideration, this is how you might want to construct a positive affirmation for losing weight:
“I exercise and eat right every day in order to lose 30 pounds by my next birthday.”
This affirmation doesn’t say this is easy – which you would know was a lie anyway. It doesn’t set you up with the unrealistic expectation that you are going to see the scale go down every day. It gives specific actions you take to lose weight. It gives you a realistic date (assuming you have at least 15 weeks until your next birthday) that you will be able to realize the desired state you designed your affirmation to achieve.
You will also note that it is stated in the present tense rather than in the future – you don’t want to put your affirmation “on hold.” It is stated in positive terms in order to strengthen positive neural pathways. And it also relatively short. Remember, in order to work, affirmations must be repeated, and often. So, shorter affirmations are both easier to remember as well as easier to repeat.
Watch this video to learn more about the power of the subconscious mind
