Using Affirmations for Change
Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.
Why do affirmations work so well and how fast can you expect results?
Using positive affirmations is a bit like brain washing except that you get to choose what you embed and what you wash out! You can use them to challenge, reassess and change unhelpful beliefs and to create new and empowering ones.
The idea of using affirmations to bring about change is not new and whether you realise it or not, you already do it all the time. Much of your self talk is just a string of affirmations about things you believe to be true and any thought repeated often enough will act like an affirmation, creating new beliefs and reinforcing old ones.
An affirmation is simply a positive phrase that you repeat consistently.
Why affirmations work
Affirmations work because as you say them your unconscious is forced to do one of two things. If can either accept what you are saying if it is in alignment with your current beliefs, or it can oppose it, and this is where the magic occurs.
If what you are saying in your affirmation does not fit with your current beliefs in this area, your unconscious will either try to avoid it, in which case you are likely to feel resistance to the affirmation, a strong negative feeling inside you, or it will reassess your current belief.
The wider the gap between what you are saying in the affirmation – what you want your belief to be – and your current inner perception – what you believe to be true, the more uncomfortable the feeling will be.
The moment you unconsciously accept to reassess your belief, the door is opened to change, because reassessing implicitly means that there is a chance that the belief is not 100% true and that’s all the rope you need to hang those unhelpful and limiting beliefs! The gap created by the reassessment can then be filled by your affirmation.
Remember, your beliefs are only true for you because you have accepted them to be so. They are not true for everyone and may no longer even be true for you.
For a better understanding of how you beliefs came to be, check out this post on beliefs.
Affirmations literally reprogram your thought patterns and allow you to replace limiting and unhelpful beliefs with new positive and empowering ones. This changes the way you think and feel about things, yourself included, which impacts on your self esteem, behaviour, outlook and whole life.
How quickly do affirmations work?
How quickly a set of affimrations will work depends on a couple of factors. How well constructed they are, how committed to change you are and how big a change is needed.
Some will feel quite comfortable from day one and you will enjoy using them and should start to notice a difference within days.
In areas where you are looking to make a significant belief change, the affirmations will feel negative to begin with, like you are lying to yourself perhaps and these areas will take longer to impact. Stick with it though because these are the areas where you are more likely to get life changing results.
If you are truly ready and want to make changes in your life, and you are prepared to use your affirmations consistently and with purpose and drive, you can achieve great results quite quickly.
In tomorrows post I’ll tell you how to write the most effective affirmations and some ways to supercharge them so be sure to check that out!