In my last article I wrote about an experience I had when negative thinking caused me to approach a much-desired goal filled with fear and doubt. I was able to turn around my thinking and achieve success by using "affirmations", positive statements confirming my belief in myself and my abilities.
This week I'll describe how to create and use affirmations and I'll point you to a few places on the web where you can find more information.
WHAT IS AN AFFIRMATION?
Merriam-Webster http://www.m-w.com defines the word affirm as to validate, confirm, or to state positively. An affirmation does all these things.
An affirmation is not necessarily a statement of an existing condition. Rather, it is a statement of the way we want things to be in the future.
For example, if you are plagued by doubt and fear in your life, you might use an affirmation to assert:
*I am confident of my abilities to handle challenges in my life.
*I approach the challenges in my life with courage.
*I am a powerful, capable person.
This may be exactly the opposite of how you really feel. Saying such affirmations may even give you an uneasy, queasy feeling. You won't believe your affirmations at first and you may feel embarrassed using them. That's normal. With practise this feeling will go away.
The point of using affirmations is to program or re-program our brains. Often without realizing it, we carry around false beliefs about ourselves and about the world, beliefs that were planted in our heads when we were children. Maybe we were told that we were stupid, or unattractive, or not as good as other people, or that we wouldn't amount to anything. Maybe certain events beyond our control made us feel bad about ourselves, and the bad feelings just stuck.
Talk about the power of thought! This negative information may have been programmed into our heads by repetition over a number of years. Even though rationally, now that we are adults, we know it is not true, we have trouble believing anything else.
We can use affirmations to change this destructive brain programming and to replace our negative beliefs with positive ones.
WHAT KIND OF THINGS CAN I AFFIRM?
You can affirm anything you want or aspire to - career goals, health goals, travel goals, relationship goals. Do you want to build the house of your dreams? Get out of debt? Move to a new country? Do you want to go back to school, get a degree, open a restaurant, start a regular fitness plan?
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