Six ways to make your affirmations powerful – Ellen Wood
The most important thing that affirmations do is change your focus from the negative to the positive. Here are six ways to make your affirmations most effective:
State your affirmation in the present tense. If you were to say, “I am going to feel good,” that’s a statement about the future, which never comes. “I feel good” brings your intention to the present moment. You might be thinking: Well, I don’t feel good now.
True, but once you start saying, “I feel good,” your brain starts to look for evidence that you actually do feel good. And if you’re open to that evidence, you’ll see it. If it still seems like too much of a stretch to affirm, “I feel good,” say, “I choose to feel good.” Your brain will start looking for ways that you are choosing to feel good.
Slow your brain wave frequency to alpha (7-13 Hz), relaxed wakefulness, which is good for programming your mind. Affirmations are enormously more powerful in alpha, compared to saying them in a beta (13-30 Hz) frequency, which is the normal waking state. Alpha is said to be the gateway to your subconscious mind and is the brain wave frequency of meditation.
Make your statement short and to the point. It’s much more effective and easier to repeat, “I am calm and peaceful,” in a relaxed and alert state, than it is to say, “My life is wonderful now that I handle everything that comes my way in a calm, peaceful manner.” One of my favorite affirmations is, “Something good will come of this.” It’s short, non-specific and lets the Universe decide what that “something good” is. Just watch for it.
Put your affirmation on sticky notes around the house and in your car. When you see it, take a centering breath or two to get into the alpha state and say the affirmation several times. Repeating the same affirmation for 30 days gives it enough time to make its way into your subconscious. Just be sure to change the position of each sticky note once a week because your brain no longer sees it after a week.
Write your affirmation seven times each day to really anchor it in. Whether you have a special journal for your daily affirmations or use scrap paper, make it a habit. It takes about two minutes to induce the Alpha state and write a short affirmation seven times. Doing it the same time every day helps make it a habit.
Use both hands – 4-2-1 to write your affirmation. Alternate between your dominant and non-dominant hand. That creates new neural pathways, activating existing neurons into a new “firing” pattern and engaging both the right and left hemispheres of your brain. Write it four times with your dominant hand, two with your non-dominant hand and one more time with your dominant hand.
Next month I’ll give you some reasons to use affirmations and short statement examples for each.
Ellen Wood of Questa is the award-winning author of the series of books, “The Secret Method for Growing Younger,” available at northernnewmexicoartists.com. Her website is howtogrowyounger.com. Contact Ellen at ellen@howtogrowyounger.com.
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Last month I told you I believe it’s not a good idea to be specific about affirmations and gave you examples of affirmations going wrong. Now I want to share with you why, when practiced properly, affirmations work.
1. Your subconscious mind doesn’t know the difference between real and imagined. If your affirmation is something that is possible, say it as if it’s already true. In his book, “Natural Brilliance,” Paul Scheele gives a good example of the fact that your subconscious doesn’t know if something is real or imagined. He tells about the time he was studying hypnosis and his teacher said, “Once you get someone into a trance, give them a suggestion that they can’t do some simple thing like they can’t lift their foot because their shoe is glued to the floor. Then repeat these words several times, ‘No matter how hard you try, you can’t.'” Later, during his first stage performance, Scheele was amazed to see this six-foot tall man stand in front of him that he’d just put into a trance and he couldn’t lift his foot because he really believed that his shoe was glued to the floor!
2. Your beliefs triumph over reality. New placebo studies explore how the brain works with suggestion, such as the experiment in which Japanese researchers blindfolded a group of 13 students who were known to be highly allergic to poison ivy. The researchers told them their right arm was being rubbed with a poison ivy plant, which was really a harmless shrub. Afterwards, all the students’ arms showed the classic symptoms of poison ivy: itching, boils and redness. The biological effects were the result of the students’ beliefs, even though no poison ivy had touched them. Next, the researchers told the students they were rubbing a harmless plant on their other arm, while they actually rubbed poison ivy on their left arm. Only 2 of the 13 students reacted to the poison ivy and broke out in a rash.
3.”Feeling” affirmations, rather than just saying or writing them, is what gives them power. In his book, “The Spontaneous Healing of Belief, “Taos County’s own Gregg Braden shares about his journey with a small group that accompanied him to Tibet and their experience at an 800-year-old monastery, hidden at the base of a mountain. Through their translator he asked the abbot, “When we see your prayers, what are you really doing? When we see you tone and chant for 14 and 16 hours a day … when we see the bells, the bowls, the gongs, the chimes, the mudras and the mantras on the outside, what is happening to you on the inside?” As the translator shared the abbot’s reply, Braden knew that this was the reason they had come to this place. “You have never seen our prayers,” the abbot answered, “because a prayer cannot be seen. What you have seen is what we do to create the feeling in our bodies. Feeling is the prayer.”