Introduction
Are you affirmations not working? Have you ever tried to do affirmations just to realize that after weeks upon weeks of repeating the same thing over and over to yourself nothing has actually changed or even worse, it has gone in the opposite direction to where you wanted to go.
Well, that did happen to me and in this post, we are going to talk about why your affirmations are not working and how to quickly fix it. So get ready to build affirmations that actually work for you.
Why are your affirmations not working?
I have always been a firm believer that in order to fix something you need to know exactly what is going on. I also know that most people have heard that affirmations are a fantastic way to reprogram your subconscious mind. So if you are anything like me, and affirmations are not working you are left wondering why.
Affirmations do work. They work for everybody. zThey do as long as they are true. Wait! What?
Don’t panic and let me explain. The main point of affirmations is to bring alignment between your heart and mind. I normally refer to the heart as your subconscious and the mind as your conscious mind.
What happens to the subconscious mind?
The heart is willing to believe anything you tell it in good faith. If you say “I am smart”, the heart simply says “yes dear, you are smart”. If you say “I am a winner” the heart says “yes dear, you are a winner”. The same is true the other way around if you say you are a loser, the heart says “oh, is that what you are? Sure, yes dear, you are a loser”. The point here is that your heart is easy to convince one way or another as it doesn’t assign positive or negative meanings to anything, it only goes on what you decide you are. That is why you should be careful about the words you use when you talk to yourself.
What happens to the conscious mind?
Now, your conscious mind is a whole different game. The mind requires proof. The mind is not willing to believe what you say in good faith at all. If you say “I am really beautiful”, that mind goes and says “ok, if you are that beautiful prove it?” or even worse it looks at your behaviour and says: “if you are that beautiful why are you feeling like shit all day thinking about your body?”.The funny thing is that you can lie to anyone, but you can’t really lie to yourself. What you feel, you feel.
The problem here is that the more you try to bulldozer your mind into affirmations, the worse it will go for you. You will create resistance in your mind which will lead to anxiety and in time to self-sabotaging behaviours. In simple words, it’s a recipe for disaster. So how do you fix that?
The one thing your conscious mind needs
Let’s be honest, that one thing your mind needs is proof. Cut and simple. But now you will ask “if I am doing this affirmations exercise, it is because I do not believe I am this way already, so how can I prove that?”
I am glad you asked because proving to your mind that something is true, it is actually simpler than it looks although a bit tricky at the beginning. In order to understand how I am going to walk you through a personal example.
For the longest time, I struggle to believe that I was beautiful. I am a bit on the heavier side and continual exposure to super-skinny models led me to believe that I was ugly. I looked at my body with absolute disgust.
We all have been programmed to look at what isn’t working and try to fix it. For years, I did not even have a mirror in my apartment because I couldn’t stand looking at my body. Not proud of that. The thing was that the more I repeated my affirmations, the heavier I was getting and I couldn’t understand why.
My mind was reflecting my own feelings back to me. It didn’t matter how many diets I tried, the results were never permanent until I changed the dynamic.
Changing the dynamic
I was not going to let the fact that my affirmations were not working to keep me from achieving my goals. Albert Einstein supposedly said:
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.”
I want to believe that I am not insane, so I was ready to make changes and after hours of research, I came up with a plan.
Giving all of the tones of reality
As the first step, I made a list of what I intended to achieve, what is commonly known as affirmations. You should look at about ten positive statements. I decided to make them as colourful and adapted to my desires as possible. So if before I was saying “ I am skinny” which is very standard and not the most exciting statement. Now I will say things that resonated more with me “my body feels light, toned and gorgeous”. That simple shift gave my affirmations all the tones of reality and a visual cue.
Looking for proof
My second step was to look for any proof whatsoever of that statement being true. It didn’t matter how small it was, how little of a detail. I looked for a small comment someone said, a picture where I looked amazing, a dress that fit me like a glove, … it didn’t matter as long as I could use it as proof.
When you start looking for proof, you will realize that it is actually easier than you thought it was going to be. You already have a lot of proof, but you have decided to dismiss it in benefit to the harsh self-criticism.
You should aim to get at least three little reasons why your statement is true. If nothing more to prove to yourself, how easily dismiss to positive in benefit of the negative.
Using your proof
Finally, you will choose from your three reasons the one that feels the strongest to you. When you have chosen, you are ready to write your affirmations. And it works this way: your colourful affirmation + because + your chosen reason.
When you build your affirmations this way your subconscious mind, which is already in agreement with them, has a colourful picture to work with and your conscious mind can’t complain cause the proof is already built into them. All in all a win-win.
What about the results?
The mind likes repetition, so make sure to say those affirmations with emotion and conviction until you get convinced that they are really true. In my case, with that new dynamic, not only I stopped hating myself (currently I own more mirrors that I care to admit) but the whole process of feeling beautiful became easy and enjoyable. I was able to lose over twenty kilos and counting, without effort or stress and feeling like a goddess.
Conclusion
Affirmations, when built the right way, are extremely effective. Catering to what your heart and mind need is a great exercise of self-assessment where you realize how you been focusing your energy.
Shifting your energy is as simple as looking for supporting evidence for your real purpose, and the truth is that the evidence is already in your hands and you just neglected to see it because you were busy looking elsewhere.
