The Affirmation Process: Part 1

Not everything I imagine happens, but everything that does happen, I imagined it first.

I am interested in the practice of affirmation making and visualisation. I can say with honesty that when done properly, these practices can bring significant and lasting personal change to your life.

But I think making and practising affirmations goes unattempted, done improperly or inconsistently by the vast majority of the population.

This piece will be the first of three blogs on the topic in which we break down some of the mystique surrounding the affirmation process.

 

Let’s start with the obvious, what is an affirmation?

An affirmation (in the spirit of this discussion) is a statement or assertion, writing in first person, past tenths. The purpose of which is to facilitate positive lasting change is a specific area of a person’s life.

 

Why do affirmations work?

The basis of the affirmation process works through the assumption that your beliefs form your future reality. Changing your internal belief in a specific area of your life quite literally will change your future reality. We have discussed this topic at length in previous blogs, but this quote hits the point well:

“The man who thinks he can and the man who thinks he can’t are both right.”  – Confucius

For all woman readers, please excuse Confucius he was writing philosophy about 500 BC, he includes you here in spirit. So in ancient Imperial China, Confucius realised that a person’s beliefs/thinking would directly affect their performance and results.

 

Where do most people get their beliefs?

Most people collect their beliefs about their current or potential skills they hold from personal experience and first-person observation of other people’s performance. The problem with forming beliefs in this way is that both you and all the people you know might have been terrible at something up till now.

The belief gets hard wired when a person’s current reality supports this as well.

Let’s take the example of Danny, a person whose parents and direct relatives are poor. Danny gets in a cycle of debt in her twenties and early thirties, probably because that is how she saw other people behaving. By mid-thirties financial planning is about how to juggle debtors and survive month to month, getting ahead is not even a consideration.

Danny has never had direct contact with a financially successful person, Danny’s past performance has been poor when it comes to financing planning, and now, her reality is debts and bills.

Danny’s belief is she is terrible at money management. She tells herself this every time she looks at her bank account or the piles of bills and jokingly says to her friends she is bad with money. She often wishes she had made better money decisions in the past.

Stepping back from this, you can see poor Danny is making personal and public affirmations around her money management ability. The reality is this belief, and the negative self-talk will keep her poor unless she changes that belief first.

 

Self-programming

Negative beliefs and self-talk are a form of self-programming; you are telling yourself how something is and looking for real examples to support your views.

Let’s catch up with Danny again.

She makes a new year’s resolution to get on top of her finances. No more frivolous spending and plans to save 15% of her wage every month. She contacted the bank, consolidated her credit debt and negotiated manageable monthly repayments. Over time it gets hard not to slip back into past spending habits, but our new financial wizard uses her willpower to stay committed. All goes well for 3 to 6 months. Then a few spending slips occur, the savings become less regular and the redraws on the saving increase. I know a lot of readers will be able to relate.

Why is Danny struggling? She knows the path to better finances, why is she having trouble sticking to a new direction.

The fact is Danny still believes she is bad with money. She has never seen anyone climb out of debt. Wealthy people do not need to work at sticking to financial plans, that is just how they act. People who exercise regularly do not have to remember to go to the gym. People who eat healthily do not need to abstain from eating muffins; they don’t eat them. For those people, it is just how it is.

 

Reprogram your beliefs to fix the problem

Affirmations are one part of self-programming. This is about improving self-talk and changing our internal beliefs. Trying to make a positive change in an area of your life without working on the assumptions that sustain current behaviour, is like trying to turn the wheel while autopilot is on. It might work for a little while, but ultimately, you go back to the old behaviour that matches the internal belief. To be rich, you first have to believe (really believe) you can be rich. This belief will shape your action. Consistently act as a rich person does, and you will very soon be a rich person.

So affirmations are quite simply a system to help you reprogram your beliefs. Reprogram your beliefs and shortly after your reality will follow.

There will be three more blogs on this topic, in the next one, we will get very clear on the most effective way to write and practice affirmation. Then we are going to troubleshoot some common reasons why affirmations might be failing to work.

I am loving having you on this Better Life Living journey and cannot wait to get right into the specifics around my affirmation process.