The Reason Your Affirmations Don’t Work
What it means to connect with positive affirmations
‘Positive Affirmations’ is a relatively new piece of vocabulary that has forged its path into the field of self-development over the years. To most, the idea of positive affirmations is uncomfortable, cringe or simply perceived as a group of words incapable of making any real differences.
Whilst it may feel that way at first, you’re most likely underestimating its impact and also how easy it can be to feel a change in your vibration this way.
What are positive affirmations?
It’s self-explanatory. A positive affirmation is a positive self-talk; a deliberate attempt to reprogram your subconscious mind in the hope of achieving something, may that be a tangible outcome or internalizing a belief about yourself.
Your thoughts control your mind, your mind shapes your habits and your habits shape your life. If you often engage in negative self-criticism, positive affirmations can be used to combat these subconscious patterns and replace them with more adaptive narratives.
How can you implement it into your own life?
A couple of ways you might choose to do this include:
- Journaling your thoughts and emotions and analyzing how you have described yourself, then re-writing/phrasing it to positively change the narrative of your thought-process
- Listening to prayers/guided meditation or Ted-Talks focussing on internal-driven success
- Repeating certain phrases over and over again to yourself
The goal here is that after repeating this numerous times, your brain will start to believe exactly what it is you have told yourself…
Essentially you have rewired your brain to think differently.
Is there a science to support the self-affirmation theory?
Yes — there is a growing body of evidence to suggest that carrying out positive affirmations can lead to outcomes such as:
- Decreasing stress levels
- Dismissing harmful health messages
- Higher academic achievement
- Becoming less defensive when presented with threats
“There is MRI evidence suggesting that certain neural pathways are increased when people practice self-affirmation tasks […] The results of a study by Falk and colleagues suggest that when we choose to practice positive affirmations, we’re better able to view “otherwise-threatening information as more self-relevant and valuable” (2015: 1979). […] This can have several benefits because it relates to how we process information about ourselves.”
The quote above and more information about the science behind self-affirmation theory can be found here.
The mistakes you’re making:
Oftentimes, most people stop self-affirming because they’re not seeing any changes — or more so, they don’t embody and deeply connect with the words they are telling themselves. Perhaps you just are saying a bunch of words but it’s not doing anything — you’re not seeing your goals manifest, energetically you still feel drained and you think it’s a bunch of rubbish. Why is that?
The problem is simple, you’re only attached to the outcome. It’s the only thing your thoughts are focussing on, and whilst it is a component of manifestation, an outcome cannot be achieved through thinking only about what the fruits of your labor will taste like- when you have not even acknowledged what this labor even looks like.
What should you do for your affirmations to work?
A pertinent question to ask yourself to figure this out is, do you currently embody the attributes necessary to become the person who can sustain the goals you have set out for yourself?
If not, then what steps are required of you to fill in the gap between the traits you currently have and the traits the best version of you has?
These crucial steps will be formed out of your habits, which are informed by your thought processes.
Reframing your thoughts can look something like this:
If you want 10,000 followers on Medium, affirm that you will build a community of like-minded writers with 10,000 followers. If you want to score highly on your next exam, affirm that you are a knowledgeable student who is consistently refining their skills to become a high achiever in the subject. If you want to become a musician, affirm that you are a disciplined student who is dedicated to practicing playing the instrument X times a week.
In this manner, you are training your mind to work on the characteristics required to build habits for success. It is a process of dismantling your desires and learning everything about the tools you need to build toward your goal.
It is through small, compounded gains obtained from changes in habits that transformations can be seen.
This is a key point to understand here. It is a subtle mental shift, but highly effective.
Conclusion
Oftentimes, an outcome is not determined entirely by yourself but by a multitude of circumstances out of your hands. You simply cannot control everything. What you can control though — are your efforts.
Reaping tangible outcomes is simply a by-product of positive habits iterated continuously and compounded over time to achieve a goal — all of which starts with the framing of your thoughts. If you focus on improving those, and therefore building positive habits, the opportunities will find you.
I’ll leave you with the following quote:
“It’s not who you think you are which is holding you back, it is who you think you are not.”
Thank you for reading! — I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Feel free to drop a comment and follow me for more at Aakshi :)
